Tom Mueller

[4] He attended a job fair upon his arrival in California and began working in satellite design and moved on to developing liquid rocket engines.

During his time at TRW, Mueller felt that his ideas were being lost in a diverse corporation and as a hobby he began to build his own engines.

[1] His design was the largest amateur liquid-fuel rocket engine, weighing 80 lb (36 kg) and producing 13,000 lbf (58 kN) of thrust.

The company develops chemical rocket engines, space tugs for moving satellites on-orbit, and planetary landers to deliver payloads to Mars.

[11] In 2014, Mueller was nominated for the Wyld Award, presented by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) for outstanding achievement in the development or application of rocket propulsion systems.

[12] He was a commencement speaker for Loyola Marymount University graduate students in 2013, the year after SpaceX became the first private company to send a cargo payload to the International Space Station.