The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 14 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Mueller predicts Deneb will be the highest-performing hydrocarbon engine ever
“This engine will probably be the highest performing hydrocarbon engine ever flown because it's, it has a very high area ratio.”
Mueller predicts global compute infrastructure will eventually move to space
“Compute will need to move to space at some point.”
Mueller argues the Moon is more important than Mars near-term
“I think the moon is more important than Mars in the near term, and I think the same thing I was talking about earlier, using the resources of space to offload the crush of resource on Earth.”
SpaceX's Merlin is the most reliable, highest thrust-to-weight engine ever
“My, probably my proudest development was the Merlin engine, which is currently flying on Falcon nine, the most reliable rocket engine ever developed, and also the highest thrust of weight of any rocket engine ever developed.”
Mueller says launch is solved; in-space transport is the next frontier
“Launch mostly being solved or is being solved. It's like the next big opportunity is to move all that payload, all that cargo around in space. So I started impulse space to do in space transportation as opposed to from earth to space transportation, which was …”
Rocket engines take three major iterations to become mature products
“And I always said it took three versions of Merlin to get it to be really tight. And it took three versions also of Raptor. I always say it takes really three, three iterations to get to a really, really tight product and Raptor's there.”
Solar electric propulsion will outperform nuclear on cost for near-Earth missions
“Nuclear electric NEP propulsion is going to be important for going out to the outer planets. If you're staying near earth or even between earth and Mars, probably solar electric is, is, is, is going to outperform it on, on cost and performance just because sol…”
Mueller calls 3D printing a "cheat code" for rocket engines
“For rocket engines, it's almost like a cheat code. It's so easy to make a high performance rocket engine with three D printing. Because the rocket injectors and the cooling passages are pretty small and complex. So to make a rocket engine by machining and asse…”
Mueller predicts large-scale nuclear rocket stages are decades away
“I think it's pretty far in the future. I mean, you know, and maybe, maybe a few decades away before we're really doing big nuclear stages.”
Mueller met Elon Musk through amateur rocketry projects in his garage
“In fact, that's how I met Elon was through the amateur rocket stuff that I was doing.”
Impulse Space's Helios vehicle can boost Mars payload capacity 5x
“This can take a large satellite, like a four ton satellite from low earth orbit at a couple hundred miles up to geosynchronous orbit at 22,000 miles. That's so basically escaping most of the gravity well over very high energy transfer. It can take, you know, f…”
Properly designed composite pressure vessels weigh half as much as titanium
“So a properly designed COPE will be about half the mass of a state-of-the-art, all metallic tank, like a titanium spacecraft sphere. The carbon's so much stronger, it'll actually be about half the weight.”