Tom Mueller

Tom Mueller was SpaceX's founding employee and VP of Propulsion for 18 years, designing the Merlin engine that powers the Falcon 9 and the Draco thrusters used on Dragon spacecraft. His Merlin engine became the most reliable American rocket engine of its generation, achieving a record of over 300 consecutive successful flights. Mueller's engineering philosophy of radical simplification and rapid iteration defined SpaceX's approach to propulsion and helped make reusable rocketry a commercial reality.