The developer of the Merlin and Raptor rocket engines, Thomas Mueller, has left SpaceX. The design engineer announced this on Twitter.
“I quit SpaceX! Thanks to [SpaceX CEO] Elon Musk, it was an interesting experience! “ — said the specialist.
ArsTechnica journalist Eric Berger on Twitter notes that Mueller was “the # 1 employee at SpaceX.” “He enjoyed the challenge of building a new rocket engine from scratch. He took up the position of a consultant about six years ago and is officially leaving today, ” the author noted.
In April, the Falcon 9 rocket, using engines of the Merlin family, for the first time in the number of launches bypassed the Atlas V launch vehicle, which receives the Russian power unit RD-180, which has been repeatedly called one of the most reliable and efficient in the world.
In March 2018, Musk announced that the Raptor will receive the highest thrust-to-weight ratio (thrust-to-weight ratio) of any engine ever in operation.
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