It's Not Rocket Science

Jeff Ward

A podcast exploring the life arcs of smart, creative, driven people who helped Elon Musk and SpaceX revolutionize the space industry. How did they get there? What was it like? What world are they creating now?

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It's Not Rocket Science

Episodes (10)

Jun 16th Tom Mueller - Employee Number One
Jun 2nd Bulent Altan - The Right Type of Challenging
May 19th Krishna Pribadi - From Merlin to VO2 Max

It's Not Rocket Science

Jun 16, 2026
45½ minutes
42 MB

Tom Mueller became SpaceX employee number one through a quirk of paperwork, and went on to design every SpaceX rocket engine from Merlin to Raptor, all because a high school math teacher asked him if he'd rather design airplanes than maintain them. In this episode, Tom and I discuss the role of optimism in project scheduling, the birth and evolution of Starship, and how Tom founded Impulse Space to create in-orbit mobility for the space economy. (00:00) - IPO Hot Take (00:59) - Becoming Employee One (03:42) - Betting on SpaceX when others failed (06:06) - The math teacher who c...

It's Not Rocket Science

Tom Mueller - Employee Number One

Jeff Ward

00:00 -45:27