Physicist, Immigrant, Pilot, Dad. Former Caltech, Hyperloop, NASA JPL. Founder @terraformindies. Hiring!

NASAdena
Try this in the browser at mars.caseyhandmer.com/mars3d!
You can now enjoy a colored relief map render of this dataset streamed through Google Earth. Download the .kml file (drive.google.com/file/d/1bS1…) and open it in your Google Earth Pro client. Enjoy!
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Casey Handmer retweeted
My mama took Tylenol and now I’m obsessed with magnets.
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None if @sendcutsend can make parts fast enough.
How many display SR-71s will have to die in order to make one fly over let's say a 5 year period I wonder?
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So, uhh, have any of you read The Harry Potter Fanfic?
BREAKING: Elon Musk alongside President Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping, U.S. First Lady Melania Trump, China’s First Lady Peng Liyuan, AMD CEO Lisa Su, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, and Apple's Tim Cook. 📸 Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
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China wants to be a superpower. But China doesn't want to keep peace in the Middle East. China wants oil. But China doesn't want to fight endless proxy wars against people with nothing except rocket launchers and a will to die.
* desperately trying to sell chinese cars so my auto industry doesn't explode voice *
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Casey Handmer retweeted
After our field demonstration of off-grid H2, CO2 and methanol production, we're gearing up to produce a lot of synthetic methane. Thanks to our partnership with @westairgases, all the logistics are covered. If you need clean and affordable gas, search no more! We take orders.
I've been storing this one for quite a while! We now officially supply chemically pure grade methane in California with our partner @westairgases. Photos are with our first externalized six pack during the spring. An insane amount of hard work went into making this happen. I try not to think too much about the blood sweat and tears of the last five years but this milestone makes it particularly sweet. westairgases.com/news/terraf… Terraform is hiring! If you're an ambitious technically minded savant, Terraform is an incredible place to get exposed to every aspect of building a hardware business from sales and hiring to design test and analysis!
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Someone needs to force the EU to recognize Delaware corporate law until they get their shit together. It would be motivational. It would be a kindness.
Update on founding a company in Germany: The VAT ID arrived. 203 days after I started, almost €12k later. Then my tax firm asked for my trade registration. First time anyone mentioned it. Legally due the day I started. Filed it 3 weeks ago. Still waiting. Probably gonna get fined 1000€ for doing business before it. paolino.me/founding-a-compan…
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The thing is, it wouldn't be physically impossible for a nation state to do this. But that would require that the political class take their medicine, and they would rather trade their ego for their nation's sovereignty.
Canada confirms plan to diversify away from Elon Musk’s Starlink, per Cult MTL
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I've been storing this one for quite a while! We now officially supply chemically pure grade methane in California with our partner @westairgases. Photos are with our first externalized six pack during the spring. An insane amount of hard work went into making this happen. I try not to think too much about the blood sweat and tears of the last five years but this milestone makes it particularly sweet. westairgases.com/news/terraf… Terraform is hiring! If you're an ambitious technically minded savant, Terraform is an incredible place to get exposed to every aspect of building a hardware business from sales and hiring to design test and analysis!
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Australia does this but only to its enemies. You will get the death spider and you will like it.
This move is a diplomatic all-timer. It's like Messi cutting inside. You know it's coming. It doesn't matter how many times they run it. You're getting those pandas and you'll like it.
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The only way to protect this information is to not collect it.
Australia has a massive cyber security problem I discovered vulnerabilities on NDIS service provider websites. Which leaks personally identifiable information about patients, employeers, suppliers, their addresses, first and last name, etc I reported the vulnerability to the NDIS provider in Feb 2022, March 2022, June 2022. I reported the vulnerability to Australian Signals Directorate's ACSC in 2022. I reported the vulnerability to to Cyber.gov.au followed all the correct procedures I checked the URL today and guess what? It's still leaking personal data: 4 years later. The vulnerability is still live. You can still see peoples personally identifiable information from a misformed URL. It's publicly available. To anyone right now. I have seen many such cases. But this is the most egregious.
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Noone could have seen this coming.
Australia has been hacked. 'And today, I spoke with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, to express Australia's extreme concern about this incident. And I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred, and the nature of the way that that notification occurred as well was unacceptable.'
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Casey Handmer retweeted
I told you a few weeks ago this one was coming up. It has been a long yet short campaign if you considered that 9 months ago we hadn't even made the Gen 1 methanol reactor! Here is a closer look at the reactor and the team who built it. We are hiring #EngineeringJobs ! Join us.
The reactor team at @terraformindies has demonstrated successful production of high purity methanol at scale at our Muroc desert test site. Let's review our progress in 2026. In January, we closed on our Muroc test site. By March, construction was underway. By May, we had 1.8 MW of solar installed. In July, we produced CO2 on site (nitter.net/CJHandmer/status/20801…), and in August, hydrogen (nitter.net/CJHandmer/status/20847…). Terraform Industries has built an incredible team to revolutionize not just one or two key technical pieces, but the entire stack required to convert sunlight and air into fuel. Like plants, only 100 times higher productivity per acre and requiring no irrigation, fertilizer, or pesticide. Two years ago, Terraform produced pipeline-grade natural gas for the first time. Since then, we've scaled up our methane reactor, increasing production by 250x and reducing contaminants by 10x, which allows us to increasing revenue per unit of product by 100x because it's now at chemically pure grade. But it was always clear to me that natural gas was only one piece of the puzzle. It is possible to convert natural gas into other hydrocarbon products like gasoline or jet fuel, but given our precursors are CO2 and hydrogen, we can do one better by directly synthesizing methanol as well. Methanol is far easier to convert into longer chain hydrocarbon products, either via the MeOH->DME->ethylene pathway, MTG, or via variations on Fischer-Tropsch. Methanol also has significantly higher revenue per molecule than pipeline natural gas, which forms an essential part of our cost-reduction-through-profitable-scale-up strategy, explained in more detail in our post: terraformindustries.wordpres… TL;DR: If our learning rate is above 11%, our margins will strictly increase as we scale up into a market worth about $10t/year. Not including induced demand. Amir joined the team earlier this year and speed ran the methanol reactor development program, successfully demonstrating recirculation and heat recycling before integrating these new technologies in a production scale reactor, built from the ground up at Terraform's facility in Burbank. As soon as the hydrogen team was done, we shipped our latest reactor up to the desert, plugged it in, and began activating the catalyst. An extended test campaign through the heat of summer followed, punctuated by bunnies nibbling on hoses! The hard work paid off, with Terraform's production of significant batches of high purity methanol, now packaged and ready to ship. A huge congratulation to the entire team, including Amir, Enric, Dominic, Hugo, and @lucie_nurdin. With the completion of this test, Terraform has now demonstrated TRL 9 operation of all of its subcomponents, each developed from scratch, in house, to deliver the highest possible value to the end customer. Terraform will never rest until we have broken the geological and geographical monopoly on oil, unlocking unconditional energy abundance for all of humanity. Join us!
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I think this jet family tree is relatively complete.
Who has a family tree of every jet engine ever built?
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I always thought we'd need some space mirrors and/or greenhouse gases to Terraform Mars. Finding a microbe that can survive there today would be insanely hard, but Erika and her team has done it. With a bit of equipment they can bootstrap a self sustaining biome. The advantage of microbes is that they're self replicating, recurrently self improving, nano machines. Zero marginal cost.
Today, Pioneer Labs is announcing our first step towards terraforming Mars. 🚀🌼 With equipment that fits in just a single rocket launch, we can convert Martian dirt, water, and air into enough building materials to construct a small city on Mars. To do it, we made the first microbe for Mars. We found the best microbe on Earth and used evolution to teach it how to source all of its nutrients directly from Martian materials. The first astronauts will be greeted with safe shelter already filled with water, oxygen, and rocket fuel for the return journey. This is the first step toward using biology to make Mars a friendly place for life. It lets us live off the land and helps us build the next great frontier. It's the first of five organisms we need to green Mars ⬇️
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Look, addressable market!
The reactor team at @terraformindies has demonstrated successful production of high purity methanol at scale at our Muroc desert test site. Let's review our progress in 2026. In January, we closed on our Muroc test site. By March, construction was underway. By May, we had 1.8 MW of solar installed. In July, we produced CO2 on site (nitter.net/CJHandmer/status/20801…), and in August, hydrogen (nitter.net/CJHandmer/status/20847…). Terraform Industries has built an incredible team to revolutionize not just one or two key technical pieces, but the entire stack required to convert sunlight and air into fuel. Like plants, only 100 times higher productivity per acre and requiring no irrigation, fertilizer, or pesticide. Two years ago, Terraform produced pipeline-grade natural gas for the first time. Since then, we've scaled up our methane reactor, increasing production by 250x and reducing contaminants by 10x, which allows us to increasing revenue per unit of product by 100x because it's now at chemically pure grade. But it was always clear to me that natural gas was only one piece of the puzzle. It is possible to convert natural gas into other hydrocarbon products like gasoline or jet fuel, but given our precursors are CO2 and hydrogen, we can do one better by directly synthesizing methanol as well. Methanol is far easier to convert into longer chain hydrocarbon products, either via the MeOH->DME->ethylene pathway, MTG, or via variations on Fischer-Tropsch. Methanol also has significantly higher revenue per molecule than pipeline natural gas, which forms an essential part of our cost-reduction-through-profitable-scale-up strategy, explained in more detail in our post: terraformindustries.wordpres… TL;DR: If our learning rate is above 11%, our margins will strictly increase as we scale up into a market worth about $10t/year. Not including induced demand. Amir joined the team earlier this year and speed ran the methanol reactor development program, successfully demonstrating recirculation and heat recycling before integrating these new technologies in a production scale reactor, built from the ground up at Terraform's facility in Burbank. As soon as the hydrogen team was done, we shipped our latest reactor up to the desert, plugged it in, and began activating the catalyst. An extended test campaign through the heat of summer followed, punctuated by bunnies nibbling on hoses! The hard work paid off, with Terraform's production of significant batches of high purity methanol, now packaged and ready to ship. A huge congratulation to the entire team, including Amir, Enric, Dominic, Hugo, and @lucie_nurdin. With the completion of this test, Terraform has now demonstrated TRL 9 operation of all of its subcomponents, each developed from scratch, in house, to deliver the highest possible value to the end customer. Terraform will never rest until we have broken the geological and geographical monopoly on oil, unlocking unconditional energy abundance for all of humanity. Join us!
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Incredible progress from @Rainmaker. Augustus has inspired me and his business model is a master class. One of a tiny handful of companies @TerraformIndies has invested in.
Rainmaker has raised $100M to become the world’s best lab for weather modification and atmospheric science. Thank you @noavctech @upfrontvc @DCVC @lowercarbon @DreamVenturesVC and other visionary partners. We are aggressively hiring and scaling our research org to create a flywheel of atmospheric data collection, synthesis, understanding, and intervention. We will solve the weather and we will set the stage for the terraformation of Earth. More in my essay below.
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Imagine if countries could build their own fuel supply instead of buying it from petrostates. If Terraform Industries succeeds, it could fundamentally reshape global power.
The reactor team at @terraformindies has demonstrated successful production of high purity methanol at scale at our Muroc desert test site. Let's review our progress in 2026. In January, we closed on our Muroc test site. By March, construction was underway. By May, we had 1.8 MW of solar installed. In July, we produced CO2 on site (nitter.net/CJHandmer/status/20801…), and in August, hydrogen (nitter.net/CJHandmer/status/20847…). Terraform Industries has built an incredible team to revolutionize not just one or two key technical pieces, but the entire stack required to convert sunlight and air into fuel. Like plants, only 100 times higher productivity per acre and requiring no irrigation, fertilizer, or pesticide. Two years ago, Terraform produced pipeline-grade natural gas for the first time. Since then, we've scaled up our methane reactor, increasing production by 250x and reducing contaminants by 10x, which allows us to increasing revenue per unit of product by 100x because it's now at chemically pure grade. But it was always clear to me that natural gas was only one piece of the puzzle. It is possible to convert natural gas into other hydrocarbon products like gasoline or jet fuel, but given our precursors are CO2 and hydrogen, we can do one better by directly synthesizing methanol as well. Methanol is far easier to convert into longer chain hydrocarbon products, either via the MeOH->DME->ethylene pathway, MTG, or via variations on Fischer-Tropsch. Methanol also has significantly higher revenue per molecule than pipeline natural gas, which forms an essential part of our cost-reduction-through-profitable-scale-up strategy, explained in more detail in our post: terraformindustries.wordpres… TL;DR: If our learning rate is above 11%, our margins will strictly increase as we scale up into a market worth about $10t/year. Not including induced demand. Amir joined the team earlier this year and speed ran the methanol reactor development program, successfully demonstrating recirculation and heat recycling before integrating these new technologies in a production scale reactor, built from the ground up at Terraform's facility in Burbank. As soon as the hydrogen team was done, we shipped our latest reactor up to the desert, plugged it in, and began activating the catalyst. An extended test campaign through the heat of summer followed, punctuated by bunnies nibbling on hoses! The hard work paid off, with Terraform's production of significant batches of high purity methanol, now packaged and ready to ship. A huge congratulation to the entire team, including Amir, Enric, Dominic, Hugo, and @lucie_nurdin. With the completion of this test, Terraform has now demonstrated TRL 9 operation of all of its subcomponents, each developed from scratch, in house, to deliver the highest possible value to the end customer. Terraform will never rest until we have broken the geological and geographical monopoly on oil, unlocking unconditional energy abundance for all of humanity. Join us!
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TRL 9 feels incredible. Incredible work by the team recently enduring heat, wind, and vicious killer rabbits. This machine makes oil from sunlight without geology, which is good, because I'm in a hurry.
Last week the hydrogen electrolyzer team @terraformindies pulled off yet another first, the sustained production of >99.9% pure H2 from our vertically integrated, California-manufactured electrolyzer stack while it was coupled directly to a solar array at our Muroc desert test site. WTAF? Most commercial electrolyzers need carefully conditioned power from expensive battery-meditated backup systems. Ours runs directly off the sun. Clouds pass, the day turns to night, and we maintain purity from a stack whose Bill of Materials cost is well below $100/kW. Terraform's single-minded focus on capex reduction has allowed us to convert sunlight to hydrogen in an unprecedented demo at a cost below $2/kg. If that wasn't enough, we have a crystal clear plan of steady execution to push that cost below $1/kg in the coming years. Rather than linger on this point in response to experts-with-spreadsheets who said this was not only beyond my team, it was forbidden by known laws of physics, let me tell you a bit about how we actually pulled this off. We started building this test site in March. Once the panels and electrics were in place the CO2 team were the first to demonstrate production on site. Close behind them the electrolyzer team planned the logistics necessary to project substantial operational ability into a hostile test site in the middle of nowhere. It's no good to find you're missing a wrench half way through the day! Much of the test prep was completed before dawn, when the panels go live. The sun came up and the stack immediately started splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. The team carefully monitored purity and flammability as the sun climbed through the sky. As designed, the stack warmed up and conducted even more power, maintaining solid production until late afternoon when the setting sun shaded the panels. Terraform's synthetic fuel system is uniquely designed to follow the sun and extract the maximum possible value from cheap solar panels. Hydrogen is a pernicious molecule. It leaks through and embrittles metals, burns almost invisibly at a wide range of mixtures in air, burns hot and fast and can easily undergo detonation transition, and has about half a dozen other spookily dangerous properties. My advice is to never work with it unless you absolutely have to. The Terraformer produces and consumes H2 in one compact discrete area with a minimum of complexity and fuss, and as expected this demo was completed in accordance with our rigorous safety standards and no unscheduled excitement! This successful demonstration was also a profound milestone for the team after a testing anomaly last December compelled us to finally rip off the bandaid and move decisively towards the "future design" with half the parts but considerable complexity in assembly. No-one else makes electrolyzers this way and we, more than anyone, know exactly why. And also how to do it anyway, translating directly into a unique cost advantage. A huge congratulation to Ken, Sherman, @ckalitin, Nikhil, Abdullah, and Aaron for their successful test campaign. Terraform's hydrogen and CO2 are the chemical precursors for synthetic methane and methanol, which we make in our own synthetic fuel reactor. Combined, we make oil and gas out of sunlight and air. We are breaking the geological and geographical monopolies on oil production. In the limit, Terraform will deploy these electrolyzers by the millions and they will all be plug-and-play with solar PV arrays. The Muroc smoke test campaign is far from over. We will win!
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Update:
The reactor team at @terraformindies has demonstrated successful production of high purity methanol at scale at our Muroc desert test site. Let's review our progress in 2026. In January, we closed on our Muroc test site. By March, construction was underway. By May, we had 1.8 MW of solar installed. In July, we produced CO2 on site (nitter.net/CJHandmer/status/20801…), and in August, hydrogen (nitter.net/CJHandmer/status/20847…). Terraform Industries has built an incredible team to revolutionize not just one or two key technical pieces, but the entire stack required to convert sunlight and air into fuel. Like plants, only 100 times higher productivity per acre and requiring no irrigation, fertilizer, or pesticide. Two years ago, Terraform produced pipeline-grade natural gas for the first time. Since then, we've scaled up our methane reactor, increasing production by 250x and reducing contaminants by 10x, which allows us to increasing revenue per unit of product by 100x because it's now at chemically pure grade. But it was always clear to me that natural gas was only one piece of the puzzle. It is possible to convert natural gas into other hydrocarbon products like gasoline or jet fuel, but given our precursors are CO2 and hydrogen, we can do one better by directly synthesizing methanol as well. Methanol is far easier to convert into longer chain hydrocarbon products, either via the MeOH->DME->ethylene pathway, MTG, or via variations on Fischer-Tropsch. Methanol also has significantly higher revenue per molecule than pipeline natural gas, which forms an essential part of our cost-reduction-through-profitable-scale-up strategy, explained in more detail in our post: terraformindustries.wordpres… TL;DR: If our learning rate is above 11%, our margins will strictly increase as we scale up into a market worth about $10t/year. Not including induced demand. Amir joined the team earlier this year and speed ran the methanol reactor development program, successfully demonstrating recirculation and heat recycling before integrating these new technologies in a production scale reactor, built from the ground up at Terraform's facility in Burbank. As soon as the hydrogen team was done, we shipped our latest reactor up to the desert, plugged it in, and began activating the catalyst. An extended test campaign through the heat of summer followed, punctuated by bunnies nibbling on hoses! The hard work paid off, with Terraform's production of significant batches of high purity methanol, now packaged and ready to ship. A huge congratulation to the entire team, including Amir, Enric, Dominic, Hugo, and @lucie_nurdin. With the completion of this test, Terraform has now demonstrated TRL 9 operation of all of its subcomponents, each developed from scratch, in house, to deliver the highest possible value to the end customer. Terraform will never rest until we have broken the geological and geographical monopoly on oil, unlocking unconditional energy abundance for all of humanity. Join us!
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The reactor team at @terraformindies has demonstrated successful production of high purity methanol at scale at our Muroc desert test site. Let's review our progress in 2026. In January, we closed on our Muroc test site. By March, construction was underway. By May, we had 1.8 MW of solar installed. In July, we produced CO2 on site (nitter.net/CJHandmer/status/20801…), and in August, hydrogen (nitter.net/CJHandmer/status/20847…). Terraform Industries has built an incredible team to revolutionize not just one or two key technical pieces, but the entire stack required to convert sunlight and air into fuel. Like plants, only 100 times higher productivity per acre and requiring no irrigation, fertilizer, or pesticide. Two years ago, Terraform produced pipeline-grade natural gas for the first time. Since then, we've scaled up our methane reactor, increasing production by 250x and reducing contaminants by 10x, which allows us to increasing revenue per unit of product by 100x because it's now at chemically pure grade. But it was always clear to me that natural gas was only one piece of the puzzle. It is possible to convert natural gas into other hydrocarbon products like gasoline or jet fuel, but given our precursors are CO2 and hydrogen, we can do one better by directly synthesizing methanol as well. Methanol is far easier to convert into longer chain hydrocarbon products, either via the MeOH->DME->ethylene pathway, MTG, or via variations on Fischer-Tropsch. Methanol also has significantly higher revenue per molecule than pipeline natural gas, which forms an essential part of our cost-reduction-through-profitable-scale-up strategy, explained in more detail in our post: terraformindustries.wordpres… TL;DR: If our learning rate is above 11%, our margins will strictly increase as we scale up into a market worth about $10t/year. Not including induced demand. Amir joined the team earlier this year and speed ran the methanol reactor development program, successfully demonstrating recirculation and heat recycling before integrating these new technologies in a production scale reactor, built from the ground up at Terraform's facility in Burbank. As soon as the hydrogen team was done, we shipped our latest reactor up to the desert, plugged it in, and began activating the catalyst. An extended test campaign through the heat of summer followed, punctuated by bunnies nibbling on hoses! The hard work paid off, with Terraform's production of significant batches of high purity methanol, now packaged and ready to ship. A huge congratulation to the entire team, including Amir, Enric, Dominic, Hugo, and @lucie_nurdin. With the completion of this test, Terraform has now demonstrated TRL 9 operation of all of its subcomponents, each developed from scratch, in house, to deliver the highest possible value to the end customer. Terraform will never rest until we have broken the geological and geographical monopoly on oil, unlocking unconditional energy abundance for all of humanity. Join us!
Last week the hydrogen electrolyzer team @terraformindies pulled off yet another first, the sustained production of >99.9% pure H2 from our vertically integrated, California-manufactured electrolyzer stack while it was coupled directly to a solar array at our Muroc desert test site. WTAF? Most commercial electrolyzers need carefully conditioned power from expensive battery-meditated backup systems. Ours runs directly off the sun. Clouds pass, the day turns to night, and we maintain purity from a stack whose Bill of Materials cost is well below $100/kW. Terraform's single-minded focus on capex reduction has allowed us to convert sunlight to hydrogen in an unprecedented demo at a cost below $2/kg. If that wasn't enough, we have a crystal clear plan of steady execution to push that cost below $1/kg in the coming years. Rather than linger on this point in response to experts-with-spreadsheets who said this was not only beyond my team, it was forbidden by known laws of physics, let me tell you a bit about how we actually pulled this off. We started building this test site in March. Once the panels and electrics were in place the CO2 team were the first to demonstrate production on site. Close behind them the electrolyzer team planned the logistics necessary to project substantial operational ability into a hostile test site in the middle of nowhere. It's no good to find you're missing a wrench half way through the day! Much of the test prep was completed before dawn, when the panels go live. The sun came up and the stack immediately started splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. The team carefully monitored purity and flammability as the sun climbed through the sky. As designed, the stack warmed up and conducted even more power, maintaining solid production until late afternoon when the setting sun shaded the panels. Terraform's synthetic fuel system is uniquely designed to follow the sun and extract the maximum possible value from cheap solar panels. Hydrogen is a pernicious molecule. It leaks through and embrittles metals, burns almost invisibly at a wide range of mixtures in air, burns hot and fast and can easily undergo detonation transition, and has about half a dozen other spookily dangerous properties. My advice is to never work with it unless you absolutely have to. The Terraformer produces and consumes H2 in one compact discrete area with a minimum of complexity and fuss, and as expected this demo was completed in accordance with our rigorous safety standards and no unscheduled excitement! This successful demonstration was also a profound milestone for the team after a testing anomaly last December compelled us to finally rip off the bandaid and move decisively towards the "future design" with half the parts but considerable complexity in assembly. No-one else makes electrolyzers this way and we, more than anyone, know exactly why. And also how to do it anyway, translating directly into a unique cost advantage. A huge congratulation to Ken, Sherman, @ckalitin, Nikhil, Abdullah, and Aaron for their successful test campaign. Terraform's hydrogen and CO2 are the chemical precursors for synthetic methane and methanol, which we make in our own synthetic fuel reactor. Combined, we make oil and gas out of sunlight and air. We are breaking the geological and geographical monopolies on oil production. In the limit, Terraform will deploy these electrolyzers by the millions and they will all be plug-and-play with solar PV arrays. The Muroc smoke test campaign is far from over. We will win!
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Someone plug the raw data into Astra and see if they get a different answer for the extrapolated depth.
Explore our data analysis of the bizarrely exceptional Tulainyo Lake. Interactive version works on the website.
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