MARC ANDREESSEN: "We had meetings with the Biden admin where they told us to not even start AI companies because there's no way they'll let them succeed."
JOE ROGAN: "What do you do after a meeting like that?"
MARC ANDREESSEN: "You go endorse Donald Trump."
LMAO
BREAKING: Inside Impulse Space with Tom Mueller (@lrocket) (SpaceX's 1st Employee)
FULL TOUR
The famous engineer behind the Merlin engine, now Founder, CEO & CTO of Impulse Space (@GoToImpulse)
ICYMI: Merlin still powers Falcon 9 today, the most reliable rocket engine ever flown & the highest thrust-to-weight ever developed. It's the workhorse behind nearly every SpaceX mission: Starlink launches, Dragon crew & cargo flights to the ISS, & booster landings
Tom walks us through the factory floor, from the avionics clean room to a live rocket engine firing in the vacuum chamber
Impulse is building the in-space mobility layer: the vehicles & engines that move spacecraft after launch, from LEO to GEO, the Moon, infinity & beyond
We cover:
β Mira: precision maneuvering spacecraft & its saiph thrusters (8 thrusters, ~50 lbs thrust, 5-yr orbit life)
β Helios: long haul same-day delivery vehicle (12 tons of LOX/methane, LEO to GEO)
β Deneb Engine: 15,000 lbs thrust engine that powers Helios, ox-rich staged combustion, carbon skirt running over 3,000Β°F
β Why 3D printing is "almost a cheat code" for rocket engines
β In-house composite tanks, Novaloy, & copper liners machined from 700 lbs down to 25
β 3 spacecraft in orbit + a 1,200-meter rendezvous
β Starlink, iterating Merlin & Raptor, & working with @elonmusk
β Nuclear propulsion, the Moon, & why compute needs to move to space
ππππππππππ
(00:00) Tom Mueller, Founder, CEO & CTO of Impulse Space
(00:49) Inside Impulse Space
(02:32) Avionics Bay floor
(02:59) Building rockets at home
(03:50) Mira and Helios
(08:00) Why Tom left SpaceX
(09:33) The Deneb Engine walkthrough
(11:42) Testing in Mojave
(12:23) Favorite part of the Engine
(13:30) How it's 3D Printed
(14:21) Why 3D Printing changes everything
(16:54) Finding Talent for COPVs
(17:28) No Modern hardware without software
(19:52) The Mill Turn explained
(22:42) Payload Deck Design
(25:28) Entering the Secret Area
(30:48) Thrust, Flow Rate, & 100 Sensors
(32:13) Collision avoidance in Orbit
(32:57) The Electric Propulsion Chamber
(34:28) Nuclear Electric is the future
(38:49) Data Centers in Space
(40:28) SpaceX & Starlink's Growth
(41:10) Working with Elon
(42:07) If not CEO, then what?
(42:32) Moon matters more than Mars
Scott Pelley fired.
This commencement address last year was peak Pelley:
The drama. The theatrics. The self-important preening and performative outrage. The sermonizing. The propaganda.
Scott can now bring this kind of energy to Substack and hits on the Jim Acosta podcast.
Welp, that happened faster than I predicted. Thought it would be end of 2027, then early 2027, but agentic traffic growing so fast that bots have now passed human traffic online for the first time in the Internet's history. https://t.co/2zX5bHdhsa