SpaceX alums find traction on Earth with their Mars-inspired CO2-to-fuel tech

A trend has emerged among a small group of climate tech founders who start with their eyes fixed on space and soon realize their technology would do a lot more good here on Earth.

Halen Mattison and Luke Neise fit the bill. Mattison spent time at SpaceX, while Neise worked at Vanderbilt Aerospace Design Laboratory and Varda Space Industries. The pair originally wanted to sell reactors to SpaceX that could turn carbon dioxide into methane for use on Mars. Today, they’re building them to replace natural gas that’s pumped from underground.

Their company, General Galactic, which emerged from stealth in April, has built a pilot system that can produce 2,000 liters of methane per day. Neise, General Galactic’s CTO, told TechCrunch that he expects that figure to rise as the company replaces off-the-shelf components with versions designed in-house.

“We think that’s a big missing piece in the energy mix right now,” said Mattison, the startup’s CEO. “Being able to own our supply chains, to be able to fully control all of the parameters, to challenge the requirements between components, all of that unlocks some real elegance in the engineering solution.”

At commercial scale, the company’s reactors will be assembled using mass production techniques. It’s a contrast to how most petrochemical and energy facilities are built today.

General Galactic is focused on producing methane. However, Mattison said the company isn’t necessarily looking to displace the fuel from heating and energy. “Those are generally going toward electrification,” he said. Instead, it intends to sell its methane to companies that use it as an ingredient or to power a process, like in chemical or plastic manufacturing.

The company isn’t ruling out transportation entirely either. Mattison hinted that General Galactic is working on other hydrocarbons that could be used for transportation, like jet fuel. “Stay tuned,” he said.

Investors bet on General Galactic

The startup plans to deploy its first modules in 2025. To hit that milestone, it recently raised a $8 million seed round co-led by Harpoon Ventures and Refactor Capital with participation from BoxGroup, Climate Capital, Impact First, Pathbreaker, Plug and Play, and Seraphim.

General Galactic hopes its modules will be able to plug into existing infrastructure, speeding its adoption relative to other fuels like hydrogen. 

General Galactic’s biggest competition probably won’t be from hydrogen, but from startups like Oxylus Energy, Aerleum, and SpiralWave, which are all working to produce green methanol. Methanol has a few things going for it: it’s a key building block for many fuels and petrochemicals and it’s a liquid at room temperature.

Methane doesn’t liquify until -258 degrees F, and it’s a potent greenhouse gas, 80-times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Leaky natural gas infrastructure is suspected to be a significant contributor to climate change. Unless General Galactic can all but eliminate leaks at the point of production and downstream, dependence on methane could undermine its carbon neutral claims.

Still, relative to fossil fuels, methane produced using renewable electricity would have a lower carbon footprint. A liquid fuel targeted at industries like aviation and maritime shipping would be a juicier target from a climate perspective; it might be a good business bet, too, as those sectors are costly to decarbonize using batteries or hydrogen. The next pivot might be where General Galactic’s real opportunity lies.