The founding employee detailed the grueling trial-and-error process required to successfully privatize all human access to the cosmos.
NEW YORK—Appearing on Bloomberg’s "The Close" to discuss the evolving space economy, Impulse Space CEO and founding SpaceX employee Tom Mueller proudly recounted the inspiring two-decade journey his former company took from a cash-strapped startup to an inescapable, unaccountable orbital monopoly.
Speaking with hosts Romaine Bostick and Katie Greifeld, Mueller detailed the grueling early days of 2002, noting the intense skepticism the company faced from legacy aerospace giants who had no idea they would soon be reduced to helpless bystanders begging the startup for rides. Mueller fondly recalled the charm of the company’s repeated early test failures, describing the initial Falcon 1 explosions as necessary, character-building stepping stones on the path to completely cornering the global launch market. He emphasized that without those catastrophic setbacks, SpaceX would never have developed the resilience needed to casually brush off federal regulators and dictate terms to the United States Department of Defense.
It is incredible to look back at those early days on Omelek Island when we could barely get a single engine to fire, and realize that same scrappy team is now the sole proprietor of critical planetary infrastructure.
Tracing the company's milestones, Mueller praised the grueling engineering hours required to achieve vertical booster landings, resupply the International Space Station, and deploy the sprawling Starlink internet constellation. These technological triumphs, he explained to the nodding hosts, successfully transitioned space exploration from a collaborative, publicly funded international pursuit into a single private firm’s proprietary logistics network. He marveled at how the scrappy engineers he hired twenty years ago had ultimately built a system so dominant that NASA can no longer rescue its own astronauts without asking permission.
Looking to the future, Mueller expressed hope that his new venture, Impulse Space, could recapture that early startup magic by building orbital transfer vehicles capable of quietly monopolizing the last remaining slivers of the exoatmospheric supply chain.