Casey Handmer
Physicist, formerly at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and founder of Terraform Industries, which is building plant to make synthetic natural gas from sunlight and air. Writes about energy, space and manufacturing at caseyhandmer.wordpress.com.
Casey Handmer did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Our reading
Starship will bring the price of low Earth orbit down to roughly a hundred dollars a kilogram.
Their wordsStarship promises a near future with launch costs to LEO of perhaps $100/kg.
↗How to build a lunar mass drivercaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsAt even $500/kg, launch cost is only 5% of the total satellite deployment cost, so a lunar mass driver is unlikely to drastically improve the economics of space-based AI, by reducing launch costs.
↗How to build a lunar mass drivercaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 3 months earlier
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Their wordsThe economics of orbital “datacenters” or essentially glorified Starlink satellites with a bunch of GPUs attached are likely to be even better than Starlink.
↗Space AI: I guess we’re doing Moon factories nowcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsStarship can lift orbital power generation to about 100 GW with perhaps 10,000 launches per year, or about one per hour.
↗Space AI: I guess we’re doing Moon factories nowcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 2 months earlier
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Their wordsDo we need to drastically expand the grid in order to metabolize renewables? No.
↗Energy Predictions 2025caseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 6 in this piece
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Their wordsOn the flip side, these captive solar power plants will be curtailing approximately 75% of their generated power and will be able to provide net power on all but a few days per year.
↗Energy Predictions 2025caseyhandmer.wordpress.com 2nd of 6 in this piece
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Their wordsStoring electricity for months is economically difficult, but storing heat is easy.
↗Energy Predictions 2025caseyhandmer.wordpress.com 3rd of 6 in this piece
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Their wordsWhile heat pumps can achieve higher efficiency, consumer uptake has been much lower than expected because fundamentally, a heat pump is a 20 year bet on future power prices that most homeowners are unwilling to make.
↗Energy Predictions 2025caseyhandmer.wordpress.com 4th of 6 in this piece
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Their wordsBy 2045, natural gas will be used as LNG primarily for high performance supersonic aviation, shipping, and industrial heat.
↗Energy Predictions 2025caseyhandmer.wordpress.com 5th of 6 in this piece
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Their wordsThe only highly populated industrial country unable to trivially meet its electricity and synthetic fuel needs with solar alone is the United Kingdom, due primarily to a high population density and high latitude.
↗Energy Predictions 2025caseyhandmer.wordpress.com 6th of 6 in this piece
- 5 weeks earlier
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Our reading
A Chinese crewed landing on the Moon before America returns would be a defeat for the free world.
Their wordsI am far from certain that NASA can regain anything like the vigor necessary to respond decisively to the Chinese threat, but I am determined that the free people of Earth not live under a Red Moon
↗NASA’s Orion Space Capsule Is Flaming Garbagecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 4 in this piece
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Our reading
Orion is too heavy for any rocket that exists to carry it to low lunar orbit and bring it home.
Their wordsEven for $5.2b per launch, Orion is so overweight that there does not exist a booster nor an upper stage that can launch it to Low Lunar Orbit and return it to Earth.
↗NASA’s Orion Space Capsule Is Flaming Garbagecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 2nd of 4 in this piece
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Their wordsIt’s also a capsule to nowhere, designed without reference to any mission architecture that resembles our actual solar system.
↗NASA’s Orion Space Capsule Is Flaming Garbagecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 3rd of 4 in this piece
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Our reading
After fourteen years of redesign, Orion's heat shield performed worse than the one it replaced.
Their wordsThe updated heat shield design, after more than 14 years of development, had performed even worse.
↗NASA’s Orion Space Capsule Is Flaming Garbagecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 4th of 4 in this piece
- 7 weeks earlier
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Our reading
Nine tenths of the cost of Mars Sample Return comes from a single planetary-protection requirement.
Their wordssomething like 90% of the complexity and cost of MSR is driven by a requirement that the samples “break the chain” on the way home
↗How to get samples back from Marscaseyhandmer.wordpress.com
- 4 weeks earlier
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Their wordsI would never like hold up a flag saying I'm really good at building highspeed trains. Like that is just a sign that you're really bad at capital allocation.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 1st of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsChina is surrounded by 15 countries who are mostly hostile to it, right? with no good like mountain ranges or rivers or anything to really separate them. And then they get all their oil, almost all their oil from the Middle East, right in countries that they don't control, don't have strong diplomatic relationships with on fleets of oil tankers that they can't defend because their navy doesn't have the ability to to operate effectively in the Indian Ocean.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 2nd of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsIt absolutely asymmetrically helps China. We're not currently working with China. They don't plan to, but like the physics is very obvious, you know, and synthetic fuels have been around for 100 years.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 3rd of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsso the mainstream view would say, well, China has cheaper labor, which is no longer true, uh, say compared to Mexico, and it's got lower environmental regulations, uh, which is true, and that it is more businessfriendly, which is absolutely crazy.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 4th of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsAnd I think the United States could probably do that in 2 years or less if you started today. Like it's currently 11:00, so like we're going to start cutting checks by noon.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 5th of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsThey're focused on the chips, right? Because they understand like the key bottleneck is the chips, not the solar power, right?
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 6th of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsWe're not going to run out of natural gas at 1 gawatt per year indefinitely. Okay, what if we're doing 5 gawatts per year? What if we're doing 50 gawatts per year? What if we're doing 100 gawatt per year? Like, you can you can just break the situation.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 7th of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsyou're going to have to build your own power plant for them, which is how it used to work. Like if you if you had an aluminum plant back in the day, you would be building your own power plant for it as well.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 8th of 24 in this recording
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Their wordswell their cost of serving it is is like maybe a buck per million tokens or something like that and the cost of electricity is about 10% of that. So it's like 10 cents of electricity is generating $1,000 worth of economic value.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 9th of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsIt is not only the case that solar adoption, production, price decreases are continuing. They're accelerating. And the rate that they're accelerating is still accelerating.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 10th of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsYou you also don't know like in order to make that money back, you have to then operate that plant at that capacity for 20 years, right? And if I was looking at the same charts as they're looking at right now, I'd say what are the odds that in 25 years time we can produce gas turbines at a price that is relevant in a world where solar is already at its current price and batteries at a price where they're already like you cannot win.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 11th of 24 in this recording
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Our reading
Within a few years, the majority of newly broken-ground data centres will be mostly solar-powered.
Their wordsSo I think within a few years we'll probably see that like the majority of new DCs that are going in will be mostly solar
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 12th of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsBut then all you need to connect that to the outside world is like an optical fiber, right? An optical fiber cable which you can string up on poles, you can run underground, you could even use microwave links if you really wanted to.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 13th of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsactually it turns out that you can significantly decrease power consumption with a very small reduction in overall compute. So if you if you've got like three really bad days in a row or something, you can actually just like you can dial back your power usage quite a lot without compromising your inference or or um or training.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 14th of 24 in this recording
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Their wordscentral takeaway is that is that the hyperscalers are not power cost sensitive they are power availability sensitive
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 15th of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsIn terms of things that are causing us to lose to China, tariffs are neither here nor there because, as we've discussed, we're not sensitive to cost on power. But the environmental regulations that are actively preventing us from deploying renewable energy in the United States, like this is the reason Texas is winning. Texas is out deploying California 10 to1.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 16th of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsAnd the impact of solar array on desert is arguably positive because it shades the ground and improves like soil moisture retention. Um there like if you wanted to reverse desertification, you would basically just deploy solar panels on it and that would pay for the process.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 17th of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsthe meta problem here is if we don't move our industrial stack off fossil fuels in 10 or 20 years, first of all, we'll get poor the same way you UK did, right? Because they ran out of coal basically. And the second thing is we'll get poor because we'll flood our coastal cities in Florida underneath climate change.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 18th of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsSo it's just very clear that like the average distance the electron is going to travel between generation and consumption is going to decrease in the future pretty radically.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 19th of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsAnd the bottleneck prior to what we call the industrial revolution was uh metabolism, right? It's just like how much like oats can a human or a horse physically digest and then convert into useful mechanical output for you know their their um their peasant overlord or whatever.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 20th of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsbecause it's not competing against humans for most of those roles, it would be competing against the other labs, right? And so you'd actually see like the cost pushed down to, you know, a mult a small multiple of whatever the marginal production cost of those tokens is.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 21st of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsso what you actually need is a big slab of relatively cheap silicon to make the power and then a small slab of relatively expensive silicon to do the thinking.
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 22nd of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsone square meter of silicon like like the thickness of a sheet of paper floating in space that's a future human form that's that's my final form
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 23rd of 24 in this recording
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Their wordsYou can revisit a bunch of legacy industrial processes that are have been optimized for efficiency and say, well, what if we just like use twice as much power and we just want to do them faster and cheaper, right? Like less capex, less lead time, more power, right?
↗China is killing the US on energy. Does that mean they’ll win AGI? — Casey Handmeryoutube.com 24th of 24 in this recording
- 2 months earlier
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Their wordsIt is clear, however, that today’s NASA is but a shadow of its former self.
↗NASA Is Worth Savingcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Our reading
Their wordsI believe NASA is worth saving.
↗NASA Is Worth Savingcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 6 months earlier
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Their wordsWith the recent SpaceX Starship orbital flight tests, it is time to commit to building the largest physically possible space telescope.
↗It Is Time To Build The Monster Scopecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsCurrent PhD students will be nearing retirement by the time these missions fly.
↗It Is Time To Build The Monster Scopecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsThe same as JWST, only 150 times wider and 22000 times more sensitive.
↗It Is Time To Build The Monster Scopecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 3 weeks earlier
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Their wordsInert glass rectangles that, placed on the ground, print out wealth, at roughly 100x the rate of the best farm land.
↗Solar and batteries for generic use casescaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsFor loads below $1000/kW, intermittent operation with some modest solar array oversizing is the winning strategy. Above $1000/kW, we charge and discharge batteries daily to run them.
↗Solar and batteries for generic use casescaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsA battery that’s discharging every day gets great utilization, but one that’s only there in case the sun doesn’t come up for two days in a row, barely gets used.
↗Solar and batteries for generic use casescaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 5 weeks earlier
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Their wordsFour years on, the program has consumed another $20b with nothing to show for it.
↗SLS is still a national disgracecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 5 in this piece
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Their wordsThis is symptomatic of an agency who, compromising their technical integrity on their flagship program, subsequently lost the ability to maintain technical integrity anywhere else.
↗SLS is still a national disgracecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 2nd of 5 in this piece
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Their wordsSLS, like JWST before it, eats everything in its path, meanwhile NASA hasn’t sent a single mission to Venus since 1989.
↗SLS is still a national disgracecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 3rd of 5 in this piece
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Our reading
Without SpaceX, neither the United States nor Europe would have adequate access to space of its own.
Their wordsBut for SpaceX, both the US and Europe would lack adequate strategic access to space.
↗SLS is still a national disgracecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 5th of 5 in this piece
- 10 months earlier
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Our reading
Mars Sample Return as designed is too complicated, too slow and too expensive to succeed.
Their wordsThe brief summary is that MSR’s architecture, pictured below, is incredibly complicated, slow, and expensive.
↗What is going on with Mars Sample Return?caseyhandmer.wordpress.com
- 2 weeks earlier
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Our reading
There is almost no lower-impact use of low-value land than covering it with solar panels.
Their wordsIn summary, it is hard to imagine a lower impact use of low-value land than solar development.
↗Permitting Reform Or Deathcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 4 in this piece
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Our reading
The binding constraint on building anything in America is permitting and litigation, not money.
Their wordsYet solar development is hopelessly snarled by dozens of different development regulations which begin with the assumption that it will permanently and severely harm the environment unless proven otherwise, at exhaustive length.
↗Permitting Reform Or Deathcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 4 in this piece
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Their wordsThe primary driver of increased impact, longer time scales before displacement, and catastrophically high levels of avoidable pollution is environmental protection regulations.
↗Permitting Reform Or Deathcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 2nd of 4 in this piece
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Our reading
Delay in permitting clean energy kills more Americans every year than the September 11 attacks did.
Their wordsThe terrorist attacks on 9/11 killed 2996 people in a day of singular horror. Our ongoing indifference to regulatory inefficiency, considering only the area of green energy development, kills more people every year – more than 10 people per day, and that’s only within the US.
↗Permitting Reform Or Deathcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 3rd of 4 in this piece
- 4 weeks earlier
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Their wordsPer doubling of production, costs have fallen a consistent 30-40% since 1970, but it’s only in the last few years that this price has become competitive with legacy electricity generation
↗Radical Energy Abundancecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsA number of commentators have consistently predicted that solar cost improvements will level out “this year” since about 1990, and yet if anything deployment, cost decline, and the learning rate have only improved.
↗Radical Energy Abundancecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 2nd of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsThe logical end state of this displacement is not some hybrid grid with around 20% solar backed up by spinning generation, but a much more dynamic, versatile grid with around 200% solar generation and hours to days or weeks of battery storage, fully decoupling time of generation and consumption.
↗Radical Energy Abundancecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 3rd of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsThe default climate discourse in recent years has been congruent to an acceptance that curtailing CO2 emissions would require the regrettable but ultimately impersonal de-industrialization and re-impoverishment of most of the world, which is both morally repugnant and politically impossible to achieve without first use of nuclear weapons.
↗Radical Energy Abundancecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 5th of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsCheap solar is the unlock that brings human progress and climate action from the realm of fundamental incompatibility to complimentary inevitability.
↗Radical Energy Abundancecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 6th of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsFollowing current trends to second order, >95% of humanity’s energy needs will be downstream of solar panels by 2042, just 19 years away, and alongside enormous expansion in direct use of electricity, fuel consumption will grow to more than $25T/year in equivalent dollars.
↗Radical Energy Abundancecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 7th of 7 in this piece
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Our reading
Cheap energy will at least double global growth to 6% a year, tripling the world economy by 2042.
Their wordsWe expect growth to at least double to 6%/year, for a cumulative tripling of the global economy by 2042.
↗Radical Energy Abundancecaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 8th of 7 in this piece
- 8 weeks earlier
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Their wordsit is quite obviously impossible to enforce universal adoption of more expensive carbon-free energy through, eg, mandatory carbon offsets, as higher gas prices are political suicide regardless of system of government.
↗How to Produce Green Hydrogen for $1/kgcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordswe have to follow the cheapest solar wherever it leads – in this case away from 100% utilization and high electrical efficiency.
↗How to Produce Green Hydrogen for $1/kgcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsI am 100% confident that by the time we are mass producing this system at these prices later this decade, not only will this be the cheapest hydrogen available anywhere, it will also be the cheapest chemical energy and by far the most scalable
↗How to Produce Green Hydrogen for $1/kgcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 3rd of 3 in this piece
- 22 months earlier
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Their wordsA dollar spent on mass optimization no longer buys a dollar saved on launch cost.
↗Starship is Still Not Understoodcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 4 in this piece
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Their wordsNo, Artemis is still trapped in a pre-Starship paradigm where each kilogram costs a million dollars and we must aggressively descope our ambition.
↗Starship is Still Not Understoodcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 2nd of 4 in this piece
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Their wordsAt the same time, launch costs drop as low as $50/kg, roughly 100x lower than the present.
↗Starship is Still Not Understoodcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 3rd of 4 in this piece
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Their wordsEither the incumbent space industry adapts to Starship by finding ways to produce much more space hardware for much lower cost, or dozens of other new companies, unbound by tradition, entrenched interests, and high organizational overhead, will permanently take their business.
↗Starship is Still Not Understoodcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 4th of 4 in this piece
- 18 months earlier
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Our reading
Space exploration has never had majority public support, not even at the height of Apollo.
Their wordsThroughout history, space exploration has failed to attract even a weak majority of support among the general electorate, even at the peak of the Apollo program.
↗The big question: Why go to space at all?caseyhandmer.wordpress.com
- 8 months earlier
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Their wordsMy contention is that there are no known commodity resources in space that could be sold profitably on Earth.
↗There are no known commodity resources in space that could be sold on Earthcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 2 in this piece
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Their wordsMore broadly, for every industrially valuable ore, there is already a competitive and adequate, if not spectacular, supply chain here on Earth.
↗There are no known commodity resources in space that could be sold on Earthcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 2nd of 2 in this piece
- 7 days earlier
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Their wordsMy view is that space-based solar power is impossibly expensive and will never be used on Earth.
↗Space-based solar power is not a thingcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 1st of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsEven if all of Elon Musk’s wildest Starship dreams come true, transport costs will dominate the total capex of any space-based solar system, by many orders of magnitude.
↗Space-based solar power is not a thingcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 2nd of 3 in this piece
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Their wordsCommunications satellites remain the killer app for the commercial space industry.
↗Space-based solar power is not a thingcaseyhandmer.wordpress.com 3rd of 3 in this piece