Nathan Silvernail quit SpaceX to make wood from grass.Building the first part of a rocket SpaceX ever reused - the nose cone - wasn’t enough. After a decade working for Elon Musk, he quit. Took everything he had learnt.And started Plantd. The plan? Make carbon-negative engineered lumber from fast-growing perennial grass. Climate tech meets space tech. Wood, without trees. Plantd's panels replace OSB, the oriented strand board that sheathes the floors, walls and roofs of almost every new American home. In this hotly anticipated episode, Nathan joins Thinking On Paper to talk about his SpaceX journey, why he thinks Mars is a distraction from the work in front of us, how the lumber industry accounts for the wood it burns, and why building a material stronger than steel turned out to be wrong. You’ll get insight into the nine-month harvest cycle, what it takes to change the culture of an industry without letting it notice, and why he believes the unit economics that let SpaceX displace ULA will do the same to timber.Please enjoy the show.Thinking on Paper connects the dots between technology and what it means to be human. New episodes every week.🏠 ⁠Buy us a beer on Substack⁠🫵 C⁠hoose your own technology adventure ⁠📺 ⁠Watch our beautiful faces on YouTube ⁠🎧 R⁠emember Steve Jobs on APPLE⁠📺 ⁠Get clips and exclusive videos on Instagram ⁠--Chapters(00:00) Grass building panels that replace wood(04:10) SpaceX: what the job actually cost him(07:56) What a payload fairing is and how SpaceX recovers it(11:52) Lumber: why anger put him in this industry(24:02) OSB alternative: a drop-in structural panel(28:00) Carbon negative building materials explained(29:50) SpaceX and ULA: the same playbook for lumber(35:55) Why hemp, bamboo and mycelium fail as building materials(40:14) Harvest: nine months against fifteen years(46:00) Why the Space Shuttle was retired

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.