defense-space
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Jeff Thornburg Wants Spacecraft to Stop Sitting Still
After three decades making launch systems move faster, the Raptor architect is taking on the part of spaceflight that usually stays put: the satellite itself.
Halen Mattison
Halen Mattison is the co-founder and CEO of General Galactic, an El Segundo space-propulsion company building Genesis, a water-fueled engine that aims to combine hydrazine-level thrust with xenon-level efficiency. A former SpaceX engineer who worked on propellant generation for Starship, he left after being told his Mars-fuel vision was too long-term, studied at Stanford, and started the company to build the propulsion and propellant infrastructure he believes will become a railroad to Mars. The company raised roughly $9.9M across pre-seed and seed rounds and first emerged converting CO2 into methane on Earth before sharpening its focus on high-agility spacecraft and water-based propulsion.