Matt Gialich

We track about 20 asteroids for every single day for the next six years that we think are viable targets that we can get out to.

That's how we kind of think about this.

So there isn't one specific asteroid at any given time we're going to go to.

There's some of my favorites, but they may or may not be in the launch window when we actually take off on the Earth.

Gotcha.

They are almost the exact same distance as the Earth from the Sun.

Now, I say almost the exact same because we talk about this in astronomical units for distance from the Earth to the Sun, which is about 150 million miles.

I'm sure I got that off a little bit.

We operate within plus or minus 0.1 AU.

So we operate within plus or minus 15 million miles from Earth.

So when you say that, if you were to look at the picture of the universe, they're going to look like they're in the same orbit as Earth.

They're almost indistinguishable from Earth orbit, most of the ones we're looking at.

They are slightly off, and that allows them to be at a little bit different orbital speeds and thus go in and out of accessibility for us.

This is a fun one to talk about, right?

So the trick of an asteroid is when I get there, and let's use a random number that's pretty simple for everybody to understand, understanding this is not what we're going to run into.

But let's say the asteroid is 1% platinum group metals.

That means it's 99% shit that's not worth a lot of money.

And so if I bring it back to Earth,

That's just wasted material.

So what I have to develop and what we have developed is essentially a machine that can turn 1% platinum group metals into a much higher percentage of platinum group metals.