The $60 billion resource hiding in space, and the start trying to mine it (feat. Matt Gialich, Astroforge) | E2268

Mar 27, 2026

Guest

Yazin Alirhayim

Matt Gialich, CEO of Astroforge, builds low-cost spacecraft to prospect and mine platinum-group metals from near-Earth asteroids. Sam Dare, operator at Templar on the Tau network, works on decentralized AI model training and incentive design. Yazin Alirhayim, creator of OpenOats, demos a local, privacy-first meeting note agent. They discuss asteroid mining missions and economics, decentralized training runs and subnet incentives, and an open-source note-taking demo.

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INSIGHT

Cheap Repeatable Prospecting On Metal Near‑Earth Asteroids

Astroforge targets metal near-Earth asteroids using magnets to stick to ~200m iron-nickel bodies for sampling rather than dramatic landings.
Matthew Gialich plans 200 kg spacecraft using directed-energy lasers and magnetic sorting to return up to 1,000 kg worth ~$105M per mission.

ADVICE

Make Volume Not Size The Unit Of Scale

Lower launch and spacecraft cost by accepting constrained data rates and mass pricing to make many small missions economically viable.
Deep Space 2 aims to cost ~$10.4M including launch to keep per-mission economics attractive versus large single ships.

ANECDOTE

ODIN Mission Failed By Power Not Navigation

ODIN, Astroforge's first commercial deep space pathfinder, launched to translunar injection but suffered solar-panel deployment and power issues.
The team maintained transparency, published failure analyses, and used the mission to validate navigation philosophies despite not reaching the asteroid.

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