Hard Tech Often Requires Us to Look Up Hypersonic planes, LEO satellites, F-22, UAS. But who is building for the below?
@fervoenergy: Geothermal has been the most overlooked form of renewable energy, and Fervo is building the powerhouse to scale it. Ultra-reliability is one of the key advantages of geothermal energy - it is not affected by weather events like other renewable sources. This 24/7 energy is also carbon-free. The oil and gas industry has developed much of the necessary technology. Now, Fervo can apply the technology to geothermal - positioning the industry for expansion. Oil and gas have led the way in drilling technology. Horizontal drilling involves drilling a well vertically down to a certain depth, gradually turning the wellbore to drill horizontally within the rock layer. Applied to geothermal this massively increases resource potential. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, “there is sufficient geothermal energy available within the top 5 kilometers of the Earth's subsurface - readily accessible with current technology - to meet the entire electrical demand of the United States.”
@pipedream_labs (@thegarrettscott) Last-mile, a term coined by Amazon, refers to the final step of the delivery process between a local distribution center and the final delivery destination. 128 years ago, a pilot program was launched to bring mail directly to farms, removing the need for long travel, private couriers, and more - shifting how goods and information were delivered to some of the most critical people: farmers. Now, Pipedream Labs has introduced Otter: “a low-cost and high-speed autonomous robot that travels through standard utility pipes carrying grocery-sized totes.” Pipedream installs pipes across “5-mile-long high-speed loops,” leading to direct connections from residential and commercial developments to fulfillment centers. But not just that—your local retailer, grocery store, or restaurant could be connected as well. The final good is delivered non-invasively, meaning the delivery won’t be inside your house but at a “portal store, an ATM-like machine that shoots out the good strategically on the edge of your neighborhood.” Orders will be built out of Pipedream’s Rapid Fulfillment Center, with additional supply connections made over time. You may ask - what is the market for such services? The last-mile delivery market size sits under $200B. Additionally, the scale of delivery is mind-boggling in the U.S. - USPS delivers over 23 million packages daily, and Amazon delivers over a million within the country.
@durinmining (@teddyfeld) The key to American Hard Tech independence starts with extracting the right minerals from the ground. San Francisco, the city of technology marvels - home to Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, Apple, Google, OpenAI, and just about every defining technology company of the past 70 years - was largely built and shaped by the mining industry via the Gold Rush. And all the compute that enabled those companies to succeed relied on chips that would not exist without critical minerals. Durin is solving for step 1 of the value chain. The company is developing autonomous drilling for mineral exploration. The first step to developing more mines inside the U.S. and allied nations is exploration - a process that requires an expensive cycle of “drilling, assays, data analysis—then raising capital based on the results to continue more drilling,” according to Durin. Durin is shifting the cost curve to the left, reducing risk at the exploration stage through “automated rigs to double the efficiency of today's drillers and send data straight from the rig to the geologists.” This massively increases efficiency. Further plans include vertical integration, which will create unseen speeds at the exploration stage.
In conclusion, local utilities will have to make some room - Hard Tech is entering below.