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Tom Mueller’s vision of shifting power generation off the planet and into orbit isn’t idle science fiction — it’s the next market he thinks is worth building for, and investors are betting on that bet. His company, Impulse Space, just closed a massive funding round to scale up in-space mobility and infrastructure that would make such ambitions at least plausible. The raw entrepreneurial energy behind that move is exactly the sort of private-sector boldness America needs to remain the leader in space.
Mueller isn’t some armchair commentator; he’s the propulsion engineer who helped make SpaceX a reality and then struck out on his own to found Impulse Space in 2021. That pedigree matters — this is hardware know-how, test stands and flight heritage, not a wish-list from a think tank. When seasoned engineers who built our launch capability start talking about supplying power where satellites, bases, and data centers will live, you ignore them at your peril.
Impulse’s approach is practical and incremental: its Mira vehicles have already flown multiple missions and the company is developing the larger Helios kick stage to haul payloads to higher orbits and even the Moon. Those “space taxis” that move satellites, deliver hardware, and assemble infrastructure are the backbone any orbital power plan would require. If you want solar arrays the size of small countries in orbit or on-orbit reactors, you first need reliable, agile logistics in space — and that’s precisely the business Impulse is building.
There’s real talk in the industry now about data centers in orbit and an orbital power grid to feed them, a market that barely existed a year ago but is already prompting startups and defense buyers to pay attention. The appeal is obvious: sunlight with no night, no clouds and far higher energy density per square meter than Earth-based panels. Conservatives who love American ingenuity should cheer companies that try to turn that raw physics into exportable services and secure infrastructure, while demanding rigorous cost-benefit analysis before taxpayers write open-ended checks.
Skeptics are right to remind us this is hard, expensive and technically thorny — beaming power across tens of thousands of kilometers, building enormous receiving stations, and proving safe, reliable economics are not solved problems. Serious engineers and analysts have raised doubts about timelines and costs for large-scale space-based solar and beamed power, and those cautions should guide policy and investment decisions. That’s not a call to stop trying; it’s a call to fund smart demonstrations, protect investors’ downside, and keep competition healthy so innovation, not bureaucrats, decides winners.
For patriots who want American industry to set the standards and secure strategic advantages, the right answer is clear: encourage innovators like Mueller, push for sensible regulatory guardrails, and let the free market pick the technologies that scale. We should not hand the keys to this future to foreign state champions or to Washington committees that prefer grand plans on paper to pilots in orbit. If moving power to space ever becomes routine, let it be because American hands built the machines, American firms paid the bills, and American workers swept the floors and bolted the panels together.
