From Mercedes to Morpheus

By Heiko Weckbrodt

Dresden. Saxony instead of Swabia, Morpheus instead of Mercedes, ion drive instead of six-cylinder: if you like, Martin Kelterer has a job in Dresden exchanged a star for an entire universe. However, he also gave up a well-paid management position at the brand with the famous star on the engine grill - just to start again at a young company in Dresden. Why did he do this?
"110 flights and 200 hotel nights a year... you have to like that. Or at some point you don't," muses the electrical engineering graduate, who worked in various positions at Benz for 26 years. "What's more, when you work for a car manufacturer, it's always the same in the end: four wheels, one engine, one steering wheel." More and more often, Kelterer remembers the feeling he had as a child when grandpa pulled out his war stories for the 999th time: the same thing over and over again!
Yet he had undoubtedly carved out a career in southern Germany that many others would perhaps envy: Studying electrical engineering at the University of Stuttgart development projects at Fraunhofer on. After that, at Mercedes-BenzHe worked his way up from assistant to manager of several plants and finally to head of the entire engine production. But at some point, he had just had enough of a fairly mature technology on four wheels and literally aspired to higher things: "I finally wanted to do something completely different."

Fascinated by space travel
Then a friend told him about this fascinating start-up in Saxony, spun off from the TU Dresdenwhich develops innovative ion thrusters for satellites, but could definitely use some help with its international expansion plans. "I've always found space travel very fascinating," says Martin Kelterer. "What's more, my father used to study mechanical engineering in Dresden, so there were already points of contact." And so it was that in August 2022, he took up his new role as Chief Operation Officer at Morpheus Space, in other words as head of day-to-day operations alongside founder and Managing Director Daniel Bock.
The two recently passed an important milestone when they completed the first Morpheus factory for ion engines in Dresden. In the space industry, the young company is regarded as a promising supplier of propulsion systems for navigable small satellites. And local politicians often like to present the university spin-off as an example of how Saxony can get involved in the so-called "New Space". Of course, Kelterer, Bock and the Californian Morpheus team will still have a lot of door-to-door contact with investors and potential customers before the new fab is fully utilized and the company is no longer dependent on external capital injections.
Kelterer will certainly not be bored in Dresden, not least because the innovation cycles in the aerospace industry are different to those in the automotive industry. He has certainly not regretted the move to Saxony, he says - even though he now only sees his wife and grown-up children in Stuttgart every 14 days as a commuter. "They are really great people here," he says about the Saxons in general and the Morpheus team in particular, which has long been very international. The quality of life is also good: "I often cycle to Saxon Switzerland, I now know all about Augustus the Strong and I've got used to the peculiarities of the Saxon language," he says with a wink.
However, he was already looking ahead to the state elections with real concern: "I see big problems for the economy here if this blue party wins," he warned in August. "A few of my international colleagues have already asked me: 'Will we have to leave if they win?"