Why Impulse Raised $500M to Move Things in Space | President & COO Eric Romo

Eric Romo, President & COO of Impulse Space, joins Sourcery on the company's manufacturing floor in Redondo Beach to break down the freshly closed $500M Series D co-led by 137 Ventures and BANNER VC that pushes Impulse past $1 billion raised.

We get into what the capital actually unlocks (hiring and production, not flashy CapEx), why "space tug" doesn’t cut it for Mira, and how a single successful flight spurred demand from across the industry. Eric explains Impulse's three products — Mira, Helios, Caravan — and makes the case for staged access to GEO against traditional options.

He also gets candid: reality on orbital debris cleanup, why Impulse is "closer to a fighter jet than a tugboat," and the hard lesson from his SpaceX days (he was employee #13; CEO Tom Mueller was #1) that made in-housing manufacturing non-negotiable.

Eric Romo: https://x.com/_Eric_Romo 

Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 

Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy 

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(00:00) Eric Romo, President & COO at Impulse Space

(00:58) Fueling the next phase with a $500M Series D

(04:30) Crossing the $1B funding mark

(06:00) The freedom to execute

(07:09) Why startups die from indigestion

(08:30) Building beyond SpaceX

(13:32) How defense became the real opportunity

(16:19) Impulse’s product stack: Mira, Helios & Caravan 

(23:43) The economics of urgency

(26:23) "Closer to a fighter jet than a tugboat"

(30:40) The new era of space defense

(37:33) The SpaceX DNA at Impulse

(38:27) The biggest lesson from SpaceX

(44:23) Hiring world class engineers

(45:38) If not COO, then what?

(46:43) The road to first Helios launch