Transforming Fossil Fuels into Carbon Fiber with Nicola Ferralis, Research Scientist and Program Manager at MIT

(Intro Narrator at 00:00:03) Hello, my friends. Today, Joel is talking to Nicola, research scientist and program manager at MIT, and they discuss how Nicola is working on ways to make carbon fiber out of fossil fuel byproducts, benefits of carbon fiber in constructing cars, planes, and rockets, and the machine learning tech Nicola employs for big data analytics in his research. All of this right here, right now, on the Modern CTO podcast.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:32) Here we go. This is the Modern CTO podcast. I was super excited to talk with you mostly because I'm a nerd. But a few years ago, I was researching the carbon fiber nanotubes and what they're doing with them for power lines as a potential power line. I was so excited about it, and then I found out that they were only making them very, very small.

(Nicola at 00:00:59) That's right. So they're not the same thing. Carbon nanotubes, carbon fibers are very different. But the effort, both academic, but also from a manufacturing point of view, is just that: making a lot of it. And it's a challenge that has been tackled.

(Nicola at 00:01:16) Things got better, but still we're not there. And it's actually part of, you know, maybe some of the challenges and some of the things that we could do towards that end. But to be fair, transmission lines are just one aspect. I'm sure you know, carbon fibers are potentially to be used—I mean, carbon fibers are now in many other things, specifically for what we call structural applications, and that means making things actually out of robust material just as good as steel, basically. Right? And so, things like making a car out of carbon fiber. There are applications, by the way, structural applications where you can buy a bike made out of carbon fiber, right? Or a tennis racket, or, you know, those things exist.

(Nicola at 00:01:57) But they have a lot of volume, very specific, very niche type of things. So the idea is, can we literally replace steel out of that? And that's where the challenge is because, again, in terms of cost, we're not there. In terms of sound consistency in the feedstocks, it's not there. In terms of sustainability, we're not really there, you know.

(Nicola at 00:02:18) It takes a lot of energy, takes a lot of emissions. All things that, again, there's a very active field of research, and I'm happy to talk more in detail on what that entails.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:30) How do you get the material?

(Nicola at 00:02:32) It's a good question. So most of the carbon fibers—and again, we need to distinguish between carbon fibers and carbon nanotubes. They're made very differently, and they actually are very different at the end in terms of the product that you actually make. And we can go to that. So let's start with the fibers first.

(Nicola at 00:02:49) Most of the fibers are actually made from a specific polymer. It's a fancy name. It's called polyacrylonitrile. It's a polymer. So it's a chain of small molecules attached to each other, very long, and it's derived from petroleum for the most part.

(Nicola at 00:03:05) So much for it being a green product. It's still made out of petroleum, which isn't a bad thing per se, but it requires essentially taking petroleum, refining it, getting feedstocks—basically small molecules, ethylene and other molecules that we can actually make, not necessarily for combustion. So it's not like residual from making gasoline or diesel. It's specifically to actually produce it, and big companies actually make it. And then the long molecules, you take them and you make fibers, which you then cook at very high temperature, so then they become basically like sheets of graphite on top of each other, which are actually very strong.

(Nicola at 00:03:44) That's kind of roughly how you make it. The process, as you can imagine, is quite energy-intense because you have to reach very high temperature. Graphite is nice. Graphite is one of the best materials, and you'll find it everywhere. You'll find it in lubricants.

(Nicola at 00:03:59) You'll find it in batteries. Every lithium-ion battery has a chunk of graphite, and it's actually in the end of the negative electrode. So you have that. So graphite is a great material. And it's great because it's actually robust.

(Nicola at 00:04:11) It's actually the strongest material. And it shares that kind of commonality with lots of other commonalities. So CNTs, carbon nanotubes, are basically similar. Rather than being sheets, they're basically tubes. Graphene is just one layer of graphite.

(Nicola at 00:04:25) So there's a lot of commonalities. And they're very strong because literally what makes it strong: take two carbon atoms, you put them together to form this network. It's one of the strongest bonds you can actually have. In fact, I joke sometimes. There's a commercial from a company that I won't name that says, you know, diamonds are forever.

(Nicola at 00:04:43) That's not true. That's not true. Diamond is a different kind of form of carbon, and it's not forever. It's nice and all, but graphite is forever because the bond that you actually establish in making graphite is forever. So if you want to give a nice ring, you're a nerd.

(Nicola at 00:04:58) You want to give a ring to your girlfriend or something, it should be with a chunk of graphite. I'm not sure, you know, she'll receive it alright, but if you want to make the point that that's a link forever, you know, it's a bond forever, that's how you sort of make it. No. But jokes aside, graphite is actually very strong.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:14) Have you ever—earlier you were talking about the process of actually making the carbon fibers.

(Nicola at 00:05:20) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:20) Have you ever actually done that yourself?

(Nicola at 00:05:23) So good question. Yes and no. So I've done it in a sense that most of the contribution that I provide is computation, meaning that we actually model the process. So did I make it? Yes, in a computer.

(Nicola at 00:05:35) We make it all the time. It's easy, convenient, no problem. As far as actually making carbon fibers, we don't have the facilities at MIT to actually, believe it or not, because, again, the energy that actually takes, it's so incredibly high that it's, you know, essentially you either have it or not. That being said, though, we do make a lot of carbon materials. We make nanotubes.

(Nicola at 00:05:57) We make—I made it myself, nanotubes. I made graphene and all the like. But it takes a slightly different approach. And I'm not going to go too much into detail because it's actually quite complex. But essentially, one way to reduce the energy is to actually use basically what we call catalysts.

(Nicola at 00:06:12) They're usually metals. So what that does basically, a metal, if you add a metal to a process, that metal basically allows carbon to come together naturally at a much lower temperature. So rather than being 3,000 or more, it could be 700, 800 degrees Celsius, which is high, but much more achievable. You can actually achieve that with very simple means. And so with that, you can actually grow.

(Nicola at 00:06:38) The problem with that is you can't really use it for carbon fibers because we're not talking about just a single sheet of carbon here. You need a bulk, you know, literally a fiber which is much bigger. And so with that, we actually rely on that. But that being said, we actually have been working with our collaborators at Bridgestone to actually—we take their process, we take their chemistry, we actually have computer games, if you will, where rather than playing actually games, we actually make the materials. And we actually then deploy the simulation, being atoms will start moving around according to the laws of physics, chemistry.

(Nicola at 00:07:15) And then we put together these basically fake fibers in the computer, which we then test and then see if it's what the sponsor, which in this case is the federal government, wants or not out of this application. And then we start tuning parameters. You say, what if we do this? What if we do that? Because the goal here is that we want to have, to the best of our abilities, essentially fibers that could be used to make cars at large scale, like your F-150 for that matter, you know, not the Ferraris of the world.

(Nicola at 00:07:48) They just really the cars that people really want to buy. For lots of advantages. And I'm happy to go into some details there. But before I get there, just want to point to the difference in cost because that kind of gives you a little bit of a sense of what we're talking about here. So right now, cars are made out of steel, okay, for the most part.

(Nicola at 00:08:06) And so steel is usually—I mean, I haven't checked recently the commodity prices, you know, with all inflation, there might actually be a complete dispute. But usually, say, before the inflation started to rise, it was around 50 to 75 cents per pound. Now, aluminum is also very much used, and that goes to about $1.50, $2. But obviously, it's a lot higher. It's two, three times higher.

(Nicola at 00:08:34) Carbon fibers at the moment, for automotive, so good enough to actually make the body or the chassis of it, it goes about $10 to $15 a pound. So it's a lot higher, right? And so because of that, only that initial application, where cost is an issue. So we developed processes, and we actually did the full, as it's called, techno-economic analysis, basically evaluating the cost of individual components, including making a factory.

(Nicola at 00:09:01) We were able to bring down the cost using some specific type of pitches and processes and all that to about $3 a pound, which is what the Department of Energy, the sponsor of this program, wants to see. It's still high, you know, it's still about, I would say, five, six times higher than steel.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:19) Do you need less of it?

(Nicola at 00:09:20) That's a good question. Yes. Absolutely. So, and in fact, it's actually not limited to cars. If you want to make anything out of carbon fibers, the moment you start doing that, because it's a stronger material, but also you need less of it, you can definitely recoup a little bit by using less.

(Nicola at 00:09:36) And in fact, the way you actually make a car with carbon fibers, or anything, it's not really like you're taking a process for steel and you just replace it. You have to basically redesign the whole process. And I'm happy to go into some details about that. Essentially, yes, you can recoup, but it's still a little bit higher. But that's okay.

(Nicola at 00:09:53) You know, given the fact that the car is not just about the chassis, there's a whole lot more going on. Even if you have a cost multiplier that is a little higher, meaning that the cost of actually using that material will still lead to a cost that's a little higher based on that. But then the whole car, let's say, comes down to be lighter to allow for everything else to be light. And I'm thinking about, for example, brakes don't need to be as big. The structure of the car doesn't have to be for a crash.

(Nicola at 00:10:23) It doesn't need to be that strong because the car is much lighter. But I'm even thinking about batteries, you know. So if you have an electric vehicle, you don't need to have so much of a large battery pack to sustain because the car is lighter, right? And it's complicated because it depends really what kind of car you're targeting and all that.

(Nicola at 00:10:40) But essentially, yes, there's a component that comes down to the fact that it's a lighter system. But the whole car, being lighter, allows you to actually benefit from not just the carbon fiber itself, but all the rest of it. You have less batteries, for example. You have smaller brakes. Everything becomes cheaper at that point.

(Nicola at 00:10:56) You have to redesign the car, but that's okay. But the key here is that you cannot achieve that when the fiber costs about $10 to $15 a pound. It's still way too high.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:07) Now I've got a question about the look of carbon fiber. I have a carbon fiber gun holster. I've seen the hood of a car that's carbon fiber. It has this very distinct pattern. Is that something they're adding in after the process, or is that just what the carbon fiber looks like?

(Nicola at 00:11:26) No. So that's a good question, actually. And in fact, there's different types of looks. No. It is actually specific because of the fiber.

(Nicola at 00:11:33) Think about a fiber as literally what it is. It's a fiber. Fiber means, like, you know, when you weave it, if you take a piece of cloth, well, that basically is a fiber that's been woven into a fabric. The way you make carbon fiber composites, so you don't really use the fiber per se. What you do, you actually make a composite, which basically means you make a cloth, and then you actually embed that cloth into a polymer, which you then cure, and that gives you the structure.

(Nicola at 00:12:03) And you do that based on the needs of the particular thing that you're making. It could be a racket, it could be whatever, a car, a bike, whatever it is. But if you start looking closely, you do see it's a matrix made out of this woven material. And the reason for that is the traditional—the carbon fiber industry took a lot of inspiration from actually, you know, the way we actually make clothes for good reasons. I mean, that's basically the same idea.

(Nicola at 00:12:27) But also because it's really the only way you take a one-dimensional object like a wire and you make it good, you know, for being a bulk system, so supporting loads. And these days, computationally, I mean, you get software that allows you to actually take, given the property of a fiber, one single fiber, to actually design and to actually make it. So for example, you can go on YouTube and check how they make a wind turbine blade. It's all carbon fibers. And you can see that this machine goes back and forth and back and forth in kind of not necessarily obvious ways.

(Nicola at 00:13:00) But then it really makes a cloth. And then there's a layer of epoxy, another polymer that goes on top of that. It's cured and then another one, and you're going to—I mean, you make that continuously, which is a completely different way than you would make anything compared to, say, steel where you either cast it. So you've got a big stamp to cast it or it's machined out of a big chunk.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:21) Now I want to sort of touch back to earlier. Sure. I am married. I've got a wife and two kids and a third on the way. But when we were shopping for wedding rings, I think the band that I got—I don't know if this is true, so you can fact-check the ring salespeople.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:36) But they said it was tungsten, and that's what they make rocket engine nozzles out of.

(Nicola at 00:13:40) It is true. Okay. Cool. It is true. I mean, titanium, it's not just nozzles.

(Nicola at 00:13:45) I mean, the titanium actually sustains—it's a very strong material, sustains high temperatures. So, yeah, sure, you can definitely done. Keep in mind that it's never about just one, in this case, element. It's all about alloys, right? And so if you look at steel, there's really not really steel.

(Nicola at 00:14:02) There's tens of hundreds different types of steel. And so, and they actually have basically ratios of different elements. You got, for instance, carbon, obviously, carbon and iron, that's what steel is. But also, you have other little things, additives and other metals, nickel and copper. To allow for the kind of whatever you need to actually have, maybe it's a little more malleable at a specific temperature, so when you actually cast it, it's easier.

(Nicola at 00:14:28) You know, so there's a lot of different types of steel, and you can search it. And the same is true for everything. So I'm sure it might be too also for your ring. But, yeah, that titanium, yes. Absolutely.

(Nicola at 00:14:37) Absolutely. I'm old style. Mine is gold. So, but it's like gold, which basically means that, you know, there's nickel in it. And so what I'm saying is it's all about literally not different than cooking.

(Nicola at 00:14:48) You know, you add your base recipe for your cake, but then I'm sure barbecue for that matter. Think about barbecue since you guys are in barbecue country. Ideally, you can make a barbecue brisket. But the way you guys make it is different than, you know, they do it in Memphis or they do it somewhere else, right?

(Nicola at 00:15:04) So it's the same idea. It really depends on traditions and what you really need to achieve, the process, and all that.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:10) Now what would the forever ring look like? You said there's—I think it was graphite or graphene, something that's forever if you wanted it. What would that ring actually look like if you made it?

(Nicola at 00:15:21) It's a good question. So if the ring will be made uniquely by fibers, so that will be not composite, just a fiber alone, that will be pretty much it. It's basically a chunk of graphite around your finger. That might be pretty much it. What color is graphite?

(Nikola at 00:15:37) So graphite is blackish in a sense that it's actually a semi-metal. It's a very complex spline. You can actually take a diamond, you compress it, and under specific conditions, high temperature, and it becomes graphite. So it becomes transparent to black. So it will be black, and that's okay.

(Nikola at 00:15:56) But, you know, it will be black. So it's the only element, I want to say, in the periodic table that allows you to do that, by the way. There's nothing else. And it's actually one of the reasons why life exists in the first place, because the flexibility of carbon is unmatched by any other element.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:10) Yeah. I've got something I've been wrestling with that I'm hoping you can help me clear up my thinking on. So I was researching new and smart materials, and it seems like they're constantly doing elementary things that computers do.

(Nikola at 00:16:27) Mm-hmm.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:27) And, like, very basic things. And then I see computers, you know, silicon-based chips, and I was trying to find where's the line between the computing we know of today, like how we're having this conversation, and when the smart materials are really smart.

(Nikola at 00:16:45) So if I understand the question, it's to say, what is the limit of silicon, and then we go to some other material? Is that what you're asking?

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:53) Yeah. Would that be like if you have a computer and it's organic, right, and they're showing it being able—like, these materials being able to think or do something or whatnot—and then you have the computers that are silicon-based. Is it the material itself? Is this silicon-based intelligence? This is graphite-based intelligence?

(Nikola at 00:17:14) So it's a very deep question. It's actually a question that's not necessarily for me as a material scientist, but more as a computer scientist. The question will come into us as, can a silicon-based computer achieve the level of consciousness that a biological material would? Now that assumes the fact that we know what consciousness is in the first place, and we don't, frankly. We don't know. That's why people saying artificial intelligence, general intelligence specifically, you know, the one that would be able to be like HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, you know, that kind of stuff. We don't really know what that implies.

(Nikola at 00:17:48) That being said, though, a lot of the technology that goes into computers today, silicon one, isn't very different than the one when silicon was pretty much deployed by Intel back in the sixties. We're still relying on a transistor, which has changed, obviously, in all these years, but fundamentally, the way it's designed to be, it's the same. You got current going from one way to another, and there's a gate, literally, that stops it and then makes it switch. So that's basically that.

(Nikola at 00:18:22) So all our computers work in the same way. We just have many more, many, many more—trillions now rather than just a few. But the idea is basically pretty much the same. So would you be able to make a computer out of graphene? Sure.

(Nikola at 00:18:37) But it will probably not be very different than what you actually have when it's made out of silicon. It will be faster, possibly. But, you know, it's about performance rather than philosophically being different. Does that make sense?

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:49) Yeah. And then what type of technologies are helping you and your teams make materials smarter?

(Nikola at 00:18:58) It's a good question. It's a very good question. And I appreciate you asking it because it is really changing the way we do science these days. So to answer that question, let's go back a few years, and a few years means a lot of years. Think about Edison when he was actually making the light bulb.

(Nikola at 00:19:13) If people had a chance to go to the Edison Museum in New Jersey, basically where he had his lab, it's fascinating because you go in and you find a lab that will pretty much be old, but still viable these days. However, what will not be viable these days is the story. There, you'll find all bits of things. You find elephant hair, you find fabric from the Middle East, you find all these other stuff that he was collecting with the idea that he was looking for the right filament, for the right material to do. So in science, that's called the Edisonian approach, meaning that if you really want to discover new stuff, you'll have to try every possible thing you can think of.

(Nikola at 00:19:52) And literally, that means you get the stuff, you put it on, you produce it. And to be fair, Edison took, like, a major significant amount of years to actually go and almost a few bankruptcies to actually get where he needs to be. And to be fair, that's what science did—I would say more technology did—for a long time. You just try until it works. I'm not going to say it doesn't work.

(Nikola at 00:20:16) I mean, there's plenty of examples where it did work. However, when you develop complex systems, complex materials or devices, it just takes a long time, and we don't have that much time. So you use computers, simulation tools. They actually are literally helping design new materials.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:37) Now, I got to do a pretty cool interview with Bob Sutor. He's the head of quantum computing over at IBM, or one of the heads. And when I was asking him about practical applications of quantum computing happening now, he listed a couple. One of them being researchers being able to run quantum computations that they need to run for their quantum research.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:02) But another one that he mentioned that was in the near future or currently happening—like, I can't remember—was specifically for the case of modeling particles, modeling atoms, modeling these things. Have you ever used quantum computing in your actual work?

(Nikola at 00:21:20) No. And I don't even know if it's available, frankly, to the level that we need, but no. The reason is actually not necessarily because quantum computing is bad, but quantum computing is fundamentally different than conventional computing. One of the main differences is that silicon-based computing relies on a sequence of zeros and ones. And so, essentially, it allows you to do computation on a binary level.

(Nikola at 00:21:48) Quantum computing takes that beyond and discretizes a lot. So basically, it means that you have a whole lot more possibilities than that. But what I'm saying is, all the tools and the software that we use and we develop are still based on the conventional stuff. Bringing it over on the other side will require many years of development simply on the tools, not even having to do anything useful for it, but eventually the tools, which will become available.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:11) I was just curious if it's come up because, you know, being a software engineer, I imagine the way that it would happen initially would be you're using some software on a normal silicon computer that you're using, and then you want to run some simulation, and it might offload part of that rendering to a quantum computer, you know, sending it over to it and then pulling the result back.

(Nikola at 00:22:35) Frankly, again, I'm not super happy to not qualify at all to actually speak in detail because we never really use it. But one question is always about performance of the simulations. As I was saying before, conventional supercomputers, we're now right now almost, if not, they're ready in the exascale regime, which basically means it's incredibly fast, that we can do a lot of things at the same time. If actually quantum computing doesn't really solve that problem necessarily by itself in a small scale. What it allows you to do actually is look at different possibilities and probabilities. But if I can model a system where I need to model, say, 10,000 atoms, let's just say, in a quantum computer, then I'll have to do it in a conventional system.

(Nikola at 00:23:16) So what I'm saying is there are opportunities, but it's not that I'm comparing a quantum computer to a laptop. I'm comparing a quantum computer to, you know, billion-dollar worth of equipment that is actually sitting in a national lab. So that's kind of a little bit where the discussion is. And but I'm sure, I am absolutely sure, that when the time comes—and by the way, Summit at Oak Ridge, it's actually based on IBM technologies.

(Nikola at 00:23:40) I mean, it's not like the lab built it itself. You know, it's actually IBM computers put together in a way that is designed by that lab. So what I'm saying is, at some point, it will come the time when IBM will start basically putting these things massively in scale, and then that's where we'll start using it, because that's actually when we start transitioning. So I think that's one of the spaces that's worth looking into for the future, and I'm sure it's actually going to direct it. But I foresee that it will take still a bit of time to get there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:12) Now, what is the largest impediment to advancing in your space? Is it computing? Is it humans in their minds? Like, what is it?

(Nikola at 00:24:27) I would say it's a combination of people in terms of, not necessarily what they're capable of, but how far they want to go with it, and money. And the two things are actually connected. The days where you could give a bunch of people, a bunch of scientists, free rein to say develop the next big thing as long as it takes, they're over. If you look at, you know, the transistor was basically made that way. It says, look, you know, this is not something developing in a year or not.

(Nikola at 00:24:57) The cycle of science development right now is much shorter and much more applied, which basically means that if you want to develop something, you'll be given by—anything, by the way, sponsored by doesn't matter. It could be corporate environments, it could be companies, big companies, small companies, government, doesn't matter. The funding cycle is much shorter. It says, okay, look, you have one year to prove that your idea has some merit. Then you may have another year to develop it, and then one other year to commercialize it, which if you think about it, it's obscene.

(Nikola at 00:25:28) I mean, it's preposterous almost, because in science, if I had the answer to all my questions right now, that wouldn't be science. That would be R&D, and I would have a company. But that's science. In science, we don't have all the answers. In fact, science is about getting some of the answers that allows us to.

(Nikola at 00:25:43) So the mentality is different. And that is because, regardless if you're in the company or if you're in the government, there's no guarantee that the funding will continue. And so there's a push towards making sure that within the means available, you're getting the best of it. That's at least what the funding agency actually does. They have a fixed budget, and you don't know maybe, you know, if you are a government, the administration is changing, and so you don't know if the next administration will pick up on that.

(Nikola at 00:26:12) And I don't mean that just in the US; that's everywhere. Or if a new thing—maybe because the pace of development is so fast—maybe there's a new technology that comes along and, you know, you may be investing in the wrong thing. So you don't want to invest too long on something that might actually be superseded by something else coming somewhere else. So this combination of cautiousness, but at the same time rapid returns, is somewhat, I'm not going to say detrimental, but places a lot of emphasis, I would say, more than on wild ideas, into something that is more evolutionary. And so that doesn't mean that innovation doesn't take place.

(Nikola at 00:26:50) But if it does, it has to be something that, you know, comes with very big constraints in terms of deliverables. So, for example, if you're asking for money from the government to do something, it's not going to say, oh, I'm going to make the next big carbon fiber. That's not going to fly. That's not going to go anywhere. What they want is to say, we want the next carbon fiber that does this, this, and that.

(Nikola at 00:27:10) It has this performance metric. It has to cost this much, and it has to be delivered by, you know, the next five years, five, ten years. Those are the constraints. And then you have to work out your research project, your questions that you have within those kind of frames. So if you don't, then you're basically now becoming a competitor.

(Nikola at 00:27:27) So to me, it's just the way it is. I mean, it's not something that—it's just the way it is. But it is some sort of limit towards what we could otherwise be achieving if we have a little bit more freedom. And by freedom, I don't mean to say go crazy. But again, we don't have all the questions answered when we start science, you know.

(Nikola at 00:27:48) It's just, again, science is not—that's the antithesis of science. So to me, that's kind of the biggest limitation. Computers, sure, they can be faster, but you can do a lot these days with computers. I mean, just look at the kind of microscopes or telescopes that are available these days. They're remarkable.

(Nikola at 00:28:03) You can get a lot. You know that. And in fact, accessibility, thanks to federal government, I must say, has been phenomenal. I mean, we can access tools that otherwise wouldn't be available to us. I mean, we use microscopes in national labs for free that would otherwise cost, you know, $30 million to acquire, and they're free.

(Nikola at 00:28:22) And that is because, again, that's how the government helps developing new technologies or even, you know, new science. So those things are available, cheaply accessible, meaning that it's not like it's crazy to actually get access. No, no, it's not. Again, it's the idea of, how far—if you're too far out there in terms of the ideas—how far is too far out?

(Nikola at 00:28:47) I mean, so that's kind of the limit to me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:49) Well, you don't want to ask me because I like to go really far. I'm an explorer.

(Nikola at 00:28:54) No, I'm the same way. I mean, unfortunately—so if you look at, for example, the James Webb Telescope, it took $20 billion or so to be built. It took 20 years to actually do it. But it was commitment from the government to do so. If I personally, you know, went out to say, okay, I'm going to build this kind of thing, they'd say, and the government, you know, may have said, like, 20 years, $20 billion, forget it. You know, it's not going to happen. So, you know, it really depends. And it must be, it must be, because if everybody starts asking for that, you know, you're not going to get there necessarily.

(Nikola at 00:29:29) So there's an upside to that that I should say, and that is sometimes as scientists, you go too far out. And it's okay. It's just the way we are. But the world has pressing needs, right? You do have to face climate change, for example. You do have to face a lot of things that actually are happening right now. And you don't have the age of the universe to actually fix them. And so having some constraints could be a good thing. Basically, meaning, is the idea that I have really a good idea? Meaning, something that could be—I'm not going to be here in 10 years still looking at the first report when there might not be one.

(Nikola at 00:30:09) Number one. Number two, which is also important, is because it gives you context. It gives you the ability to say, how does this thing relate to reality, to the needs that we actually have? And number three, it kind of takes you out from the bubble that you live in. In this case, it's a scientific bubble.

(Nikola at 00:30:24) It says, you know, I have the best idea in the world. My colleagues think I'm great. I don't have to worry about anything else. And then it says, wait, but you're irrelevant. So it takes you out from that bubble and it puts you right into a societal context.

(Nikola at 00:30:37) Could be manufacturing, could be like a company in the needs of a new manufacturing process or a new product, or it could be the government in the needs of actually literally finding a crisis to a solution. I mean, right now, the government, specifically the Department of Energy, is incredibly interested in anything that could be helpful to extract new critical materials, minerals—lithium, nickel, cobalt, and a bunch of others—that are in critical supply right now. Anything that you can find that to actually process, anything that you can find from old mines, waste, anything that you can get your hands on, then you can extract this material that we can use for engineering, it's highly needed. Something that, as a scientist, you say, okay, you know, it's good. It's good.

(Nikola at 00:31:19) But it's kind of specific, too, right? And but no. But it forces you to actually be in a place where you start facing reality. So it's not always a bad thing to have constraints.

(Nikola at 00:31:28) It could be actually quite good in its own way.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:31) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email, [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.