Today we are thrilled to announce that Founders Fund and Lux Capital are co-leading our $9m seed round, with participation from Also Capital, Fifty Years, Raymond Tonsing, Justin Mateen, and Naval. As a part of this raise, Trae Stephens and Josh Wolfe will be joining our board.
The ideal product to make in space is something where very high chemical purity or perfect crystalline structure is meaningful, and, ideally, the end product is very low mass; chemistry and crystal growth work a bit differently in the absence of gravity; for example, you can grow proteins into crystals. So, applicable industries include semiconductors, silicon wafers, fiber optic cables.
Best potential industry, in my mind? Active pharmaceutical ingredients. Very low mass needed (1 kilo makes a whole lot of doses at 5 mg dose sizes), very high sale price per kilogram (order of $2M per kilo in some cases), very high purity requirements, and, most interestingly, it is possible (but not proven) that manufacturing some drug compounds can only be done in microgravity. Proteins might fold differently without gravitational forces, leading to novel drugs that can't be made any other way. If something like this is ever discovered, that's a gold mine for a pharma company.
Anyone who has studied the history of ideas, and especially the history of science, knows that's how big things start. Someone proposes an idea that sounds crazy, most people dismiss it, then it gradually takes over the world this is how google and other company started but most implausible-sounding ideas are in fact bad and could be safely dismissed. But not when they're proposed by reasonable domain experts. If the person proposing the idea is reasonable, then they know how implausible it sounds. And yet they're proposing it anyway. That suggests they know something you don't. And if they have deep domain expertise, that's probably the source of it. .
Can you give a simple example of what we should be manufacturing in space? Sounds totally insane. Wouldn't shipping costs be super expensive?
The ideal product to make in space is something where very high chemical purity or perfect crystalline structure is meaningful, and, ideally, the end product is very low mass; chemistry and crystal growth work a bit differently in the absence of gravity; for example, you can grow proteins into crystals. So, applicable industries include semiconductors, silicon wafers, fiber optic cables.
Best potential industry, in my mind? Active pharmaceutical ingredients. Very low mass needed (1 kilo makes a whole lot of doses at 5 mg dose sizes), very high sale price per kilogram (order of $2M per kilo in some cases), very high purity requirements, and, most interestingly, it is possible (but not proven) that manufacturing some drug compounds can only be done in microgravity. Proteins might fold differently without gravitational forces, leading to novel drugs that can't be made any other way. If something like this is ever discovered, that's a gold mine for a pharma company.
Anyone who has studied the history of ideas, and especially the history of science, knows that's how big things start. Someone proposes an idea that sounds crazy, most people dismiss it, then it gradually takes over the world this is how google and other company started but most implausible-sounding ideas are in fact bad and could be safely dismissed. But not when they're proposed by reasonable domain experts. If the person proposing the idea is reasonable, then they know how implausible it sounds. And yet they're proposing it anyway. That suggests they know something you don't. And if they have deep domain expertise, that's probably the source of it. .
Will you need Gallium Nitride or other semiconductor compounds for space? If so, let's chat.
--> rq@mivium.net
May the queen of the stars be victorious!
Good luck Delian and et al!