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Not sure how "Spider DNA integrated into silkworm DNA" written and made into a visual by the GAO, the one in charge of how the DOD spends, can be viewed by a KBLB investor, or anyone following KBLB, as a NO-GO for KBLB receiving funding?
the golden cross is no joke...
its still a little early, but im saying that trend is done and we are now at the start of a long term uptrend...
Golden Cross...
More like the Golden "Double-Cross."
LOL! Having the clothing made and then inserting some Goo stuff in there is hilarious.
I have no idea what the internal communication between KBLB and Polartec is. But Maybe the extent of their relationship is that Polartec is willing to collaborate on a fabric with KBLB, not help them create a yarn. I'm not sure.
But I think very few people on this board understand the intricate process of creating a desirable and highly differentiated yarn composite. Maybe 80 years ago it would have been easy to compete with the natural fibers out there. But now a fiber>yarn>fabric>product has a much higher bar to pass in order to have something marketable.
This is why I would have rather Kim just create 100% spider silk products, but the decision was made to target performance apparel first. I'm not privvy to the reasons why.
I think there is something pretty interesting disclosed in this letter.
The process for creating a silk/cotton composite is a bit more complicated than most here would believe.
The nature of how silkworms are immediately spun from boiled cocoons necessitates a process where the raw silk is a spun fiber consisting of usually 8-12 individual filaments.
It's possible to create a composite silk/cotton yarn by simply twisting a (spider)silk thread with a cotton thread and getting a yarn. The only issue is that it wouldn't feel consistent or fine enough. It would feel bulby almost like 3 strand rope.
However, if you want to make a fine and seamless composite, you would need a process to open up or "untwist" the silk fiber before you twist in the cotton. This process would make an excellent fiber and is exactly what Dorton was brought in for. When He was first contracted, he informed Kim and Jon that hardly any performance apparels are created solely out of a single material. They are all composites, so if that's the space they'd like to sell to, they would need to make an excellent one that integrated the cotton in between the individual silk filaments.
It looks like we now have the process and equipment to do that. I'm hoping they didn't lose to much spider silk during this R&D process and have enough for a launch (like they indicated last year).
Nonetheless, it looks like Kim is holding out for the perfect materials instead of moving ahead with materials that could be seen as ones that don't highlight the amazingness of spider silk. We'll see how this goes from here, but it seems like Dorton's expertise, connections, and past positions at The North Face, has been very valuable so far.
There has been a concerted effort today to try and keep the 50 day moving average from crossing the 200 day moving average. That indicator is called a golden cross, and it is one of the strongest indicators of a long term bull run that technical analysts use when studying charts. The indicator usually brings a lot of buying interest into a stock.
Whoever is short KBLB shares is terrified of this happening, hence the massive effort to drop the share price this morning. But it's not a bad thing really, because the shares sold this morning were likely more short sells, which will eventually turn that shorter into a guaranteed buyer, and if they get squeezed, then the price will run up much faster, just like it did in 2019.
We haven't had a 200/50 golden cross on KBLBs chart for years. It's going to touch today, and likely cross tomorrow. Whoever shorted those shares this morning did it out of desperation. I don't think the near future is going to be very fun for them.
I will add that there is a difference in the AF funding development of the production of spider silk, and the AF funding research in spider silk. The AF would like a source of spider silk so they can conduct their own research on how to apply it to their needs. The only issue is they don't have a source. Which is where Kraig Labs comes in. So the AF will give Kraig Labs funding to build a domestic source of spider silk.
This is no different than semiconductors. The US military isn't in the business of creating their own manufacturing facilities that produce semiconductors. But they need semiconductors for their own research and applications in microchips for computing and weapons systems. This was the basis of the CHIPS act. These federal programs that were created in response to the embarrassing supply chain issues caused by the pandemic all have the same theme: Grant funding for important technologies that need to be on-shored for domestic production, and do it at all costs. This way the U.S. can be self sufficient in sourcing important components.
KBLB doesn't need to do research into making ballistic armor, ropes, or tents, etc. They will get funding to become a domestic source of spider silk, and the AF will do research into making spider silk into products they can use. KBLB just needs the funding to make spider silk domestically, and spider silk is a resource that the DOD has specifically named as an important component.
To think the AF would not be interested in funding Kraig Labs is ludicrous.
Good possibility this will run far better than anyone anticipates…
fast approaching a golden cross as well...
Rule 4560 is required for all members, and applies to the OTC as well as the major exchanges.
Are you saying that there is no way to actually track short interest? Or just that FINRA and OTC don't do it correctly?
At least you threw out another theory, which I appreciate. But I don't think that's what happened. At least that's not what it looked like from the action on Friday. Although, it was spurred by a single million share buy so maybe it's possible he was the buyer.
those numbers aren't correct. That's because finra only requires registered broker/dealers in the U.S. to report their short interests. And that's really only on the major exchanges. Anything on the OTC is largely voluntary, which you could imagine, would not be very accurate. Especially if the entity is trying to hide their short interests, which most do.
someone is using a program to disguise the bid. It's to make it look like there isn't as much buying interest as there really is. That's why they've been able to accumulate about 500k shares at .06 in the past hour, but only show 10k shares as "available". A short is trying to cover without driving the price up
a short is definitely trying to cover a bunch of shares at .06 without putting out a bid. It's and effort to be able to disguise support. Making people think there are only 10,000 shares available at .06 rather than the hundreds of thousands that they are currently accumulating. People are getting their shares taken from them at .06 instead of holding out.
And I think you'll see your .14 in the very near future.
A pretty silly game is currently being played on the bid.
I'm fairly sure I know. And it was pretty evident for anyone who had been watching level 2 for the past month
I think in May we leave the single digits permanently. IMO
Yes. Coupled with the effort to frighten people with the terms "P&D" and "insider trading". It's all pretty obvious.
So where would the "pump" that you are suggesting come from? How would it be coordinated with news? Where are the articles from 3rd parties trying to pump this?
The one where they are accumulating shares? Like I suggested? It’s like a “buy-pump-dump” scheme.
The trading has been almost all BUYS yet the share price is lower. Someone is definitely trying to buy while keeping a lid on this.
I want to thank the two posters who submitted the AFRL article published today, mentioning Musk Ox and Keratin. The article prompted me to review two of Kraig's pending patents.
The "fix" is in...
Watch what happens Monday.
someone finally took out that 1 million share ask that was designed to suppress the share price
Once again, a University lab is producing proteins found in nature using well developed techniques for protein fermentation. This time it's Cornell University, and the target protein is keratin.
Nothing new. This team seems to be about where Bolt Threads was in 2008-2010, and where Randy lewis (and even Amsilk) was in about 2006. Those efforts never became fruitful because the product is much too expensive to produce. Someone even posted a paper on the economics behind this process. Here's a link:
Utah State-Edlund paper
This new initiative with Cornell University will see the same fate as the past failures of protein fermentation for fibers. The process for obtaining target proteins using fermentation has been around for almost 4 decades, and has never yielded a protein that was commercially viable as a fiber for clothing.
Interestingly though, this new paper focuses on keratin. Some of Kraig Labs newest patent applications focus on replacing the sericin protein with keratin. Functionally producing keratin as a waste product in the production of spider silk. Furthermore, this keratin protein would be suspended in water, which would be much easier to separate and purify, than the minimal amounts suspended in a fermentation medium consisting of thousands of other proteins along with lysed cellular debris.
Plenty of videos out there on commercial silk production. Try watching a few.
Beast, I'm sorry about your father, and I know you've been disappointed in the past, but I think you are comparing two processes that are very different.
First of all, the domestic fibers built in large facilities and funded by the Air Force, will first likely be used for military applications, not medical.
2nd, medical applications would only need very small amounts that COULD be created in small sterile lab conditions, but that's not really necessary because...
3rd, regular silk has already been used in medical applications in the past. Silk can be made at normal sericulture facilities and then sterilized. Kraig Labs wouldn't be supplying medical facilities or hospitals with packaged and sterilized sutures or valves, like Millipore/Bayer. Kraig Labs would sell fibers to a medical supply company as a raw material for them to develop whatever medical device is needed. Simply, Kraig Labs isn't trying to become a Millipore/Bayer type company. They want to supply raw materials to a medical device/pharma company, and that's where the huge facility costs that you seem familiar with come into play.
The temperature and humidity levels for rearing silkworm could easily be maintained the same way indoor cannabis is grown. And if the facilities are in places like southern Texas or Florida, then maintaining an adequate range for silkworms to simply survive would not be too difficult. Capital costs would be high at first, which is why Kraig Labs has never done it. But if those capital costs are assisted by the AF RFI, then there is no reason not to produce in the U.S.
Take care, and I'm glad you are at least back in with a few shares.
Yeah and you pretty much described it with how the reactors are cleaned and taken care of between batches. Tomato-tomahto
That infrastructure doesn't really exist in the US (since the US doesn't produce much mundane silk of its own).
“Their facilities would be highly sensitive to contaminations.”
So are silkworm operations. Doesn’t take much to get a silkworm sick.
You forgetting something or are you just planning on the AF taking pickup loads of cocoons and doing something with them? It’s going to take a lot more infrastructure than what you’re thinking of to make anything worthwhile.
The AF isn’t going to pay for all that infrastructure. KBLB shareholders will through more dilution.
I will also add that this would be in contrast to a facility developed for protein fermentation (ie Bolt Threads, Spiber, Amsilk, etc).
Their facilities would be highly sensitive to contaminations. Having competing strains of bacteria or yeast present inside their bioreactors would be devastating to their production batches.
big enough to do the job...shouldnt take an enormous building...and it doesnt have to be an actual lab...just a highly controlled environment as far as humidity and climate...i doubt it needs to be anticeptic like a lab...more of a warehouse type building...
its just for raising worms...not doing anthrax experiments...
i should think $50 mil would be far more than needed...
Randy Lewis has worked on modifying silkworms to produce spider silk. I think he could scrape up a fiber.
I like how conveniently it's left out the part that shows the tensile strength of their fibers being weaker than regular silk. So Essentially a useless product.
Like I said, there is an inverse relationship between protein size and protein yield when it comes to expressing proteins with microorganisms.
That paper achieved nothing of significance in regards to material science. Someone would be better off just raising a regular silkworm.
Should I believe that Spiber can produce their fibers in an economical way competitive with natural fibers when GTman tells me this is impossible? As I said, I am uncertain about their costs but believe that the situation may be more nuanced than GTman suggests, partly because of the Randy Lewis paper arguing that sub-$100/kilo costs are achievable and partly because the venture capitalists funding Spiber are surely sensitive to production costs but still invested hundreds of millions into Spiber.
Assuming that both high protein expression and cell concentrations are possible, then reaching a protein content of 25 g l-1 would reduce the cost of production by 96% below the baseline, Case 1, to $32 kg-1 . Since the inception of the work, RSSPs levels have constantly been increasing. In comparison to other recombinant proteins, expression levels for spider silk have remained relatively low. This challenge is largely thought to be due to the size of the protein which is expected to limit the final yield compared to what has been achieved with other proteins. Economic modeling shows this to be the most valuable area where advancements can be made.
This challenge is largely thought to be due to the size of the protein which is expected to limit the final yield compared to what has been achieved with other proteins
Spider silk represents a new technology where little is understood about the large-scale flow rates and exact sizing specifications. The lack of process definition has an effect on capital cost estimation causing designs to be generic, and hard to optimize. For modeling purposes, pioneer plants are considered to be first of a kind (FOAK) facilities. The technologies are hard to troubleshoot this early on, so the first plant is expected to have high capital costs from lack of proper optimization that could be realized as greater process 24 definition occurs. As additional plants are built, a technology becomes better understood and optimized, resulting in lower capital costs due to reduced engineering, and lower contingency fees [65]. Considering this consequence, the benefit of being a more mature plant was included as a part of the optimized scenarios. The mature plant scenarios were considered to be the 17th plant constructed of their type under the assumption of a 0.06 learning rate as defined by NETL (2013).
4.2 Sensitivity Results A sensitivity analysis was leveraged to identify statistically significant inputs that can be improved to support the identification of a commercial viable pathway. Based on a 95% 30 confidence interval, inputs with a t-ratio less than 2.12 are considered to be insignificant. Only five input parameters were identified as substantial. Protein yield has the single greatest impact on sale price, Figure 5. Case 1 represents a low, but demonstrated protein yields of 1.0 g l-1 (Unpublished Data). Laboratory protein expression has reached higher levels but has not been consistently demonstrated. Increasing the yield by 3X corresponds to a 67% reduction in sale price, bringing the cost to $254 kg-1 . Protein yield’s dramatic influence on price is largely due to the batch nature of the first three sub-processes (fermentation, harvesting, and protein purification), which also make up 99% of the operational expenses. Increasing protein yield has a direct impact on increasing the amount of available product with minimal change in process volumes resulting in effectively no additional cost for downstream processing. Fermentation time is an important model input with a reduction representing an improvement in economic viability. IPTG pricing, capital costs, and NTA beads are also hefty financial burdens. Other individual material pricing estimates and model inputs had lower t-ratios and have relatively low impact on sale price. Results from the sensitivity analysis were used to identify the alternative scenarios explored in this modeling work.
4.3 Optimization The commercialization of synthetic spider silk through E. coli fermentation will require the integration of alternative technologies to those of the pioneer plant as well as improved protein yield. Alternative technologies are explored that represent advancements in strategic areas. Modeling improvements come from three sources: 1) process optimization, 2) experienced design for subsequent plants, and 3) increased protein expression (10 g l-1 ). 31 Individually, each of these methods are considered for their effect on pioneer plant economics. All of these advancements combined are considered for their mutual economic benefit in an optimistic scenario, Case 2.
IPTG induction is the process of triggering the E. coli to produce RSSPs and is a costly component of fermentation process. Since the price of IPTG is high, the implementation of heat induction (Case 1c) results in a significant benefit. A 28% sale price reduction is observed. The application of this method would have significant benefits towards achieving economic viability. While heat induction has not been demonstrated with the laboratory strain, it has been demonstrated on E. coli [43]. Some possible concerns with the implementation of heat induction are reduced protein expression or protein degradation but this has not been explored. The combined impact of integrating all the fermentation improvements (1a, 1b, and 1c) result in a 33% decrease in the sale price over Case 1.
Post fermentation, the E. coli are harvested via a centrifuge, and are then mixed with a salt solution. By skipping this first centrifugation step, and adding the salt components directly to the media (Case 1d), a 1.7% cost reduction is observed. Additional optimization during harvesting could come from reducing the pressure of the HPH process. Based on a literature review, successful lysis occurs between 1000- 1500 bar. Since 1500 bar was used in the model, using only 1000 bar would cut $1.75 kg-1 in production cost resulting in a 0.23% reduction in total cost (not shown in Figure 6). The integration of these two processes have minimal impact on the economics of the system.
Initially, flocculation in the laboratory could maintain high purity only when using volumes of a few milliliters, but this has since been rectified. This process has now been verified in volumes of up to several liters (Unpublished Data). The implementation of this technique will undoubtedly save costs for large-scale production, but issues with purity at this scale may need to be addressed.
The techniques described have the ability to be implemented together without interference, and the collective effect is significant. Their combined effect (Case 1g) results in a 55% decrease in the levelized cost bringing the minimum product sale price to $344 kg-1 . Most of these methods are feasible for large application, with some additional testing necessary. These identified methods of process optimization have substantial impact on price, but further optimization of protein yield will be required for the delivery of an economically viable product.
Combining all of the advantages discussed above, with the addition of increased protein expression, represents the optimistic scenario, Case 2. This scenario represents an optimized production facility, using the more economical processing options (Case 1g), and is the 17th production facility of its kind with a protein yield of 10 g l-1 . All of these inputs combined (Case 2) result in a production capacity of 3,550 tons per year and a sale price of $23 kg-1 . This is a 97% reduction in sale price from Case 1. As expected, the product price is dramatically impacted by the protein production level. Process optimization also has an important impact, but not at the same level as protein expression.
Applications using small amounts silk are better suited for economic viability. Due to its hypoallergenic properties and high strength, a likely candidate is the medical industry where only a few grams of spider silk might be used to make a replacement ligament, tendon, or other implant. The diverse properties of synthetic spider silk make it a promising material for a variety of applications.
Increasing protein expression is not only the most beneficial method of optimization, but is expected to advance through research and development. E. coli are commercially used to produce more than 150 recombinant proteins [68]. The techniques used for production and purification have been highly developed. The limit on protein production has been explored in E. coli. Increased yield can come through increased dry cell weight (DCW- grams of E. coli per liter of media) or genetic optimization for greater expression. Laboratory fermentations typically result in a DCW of 45 g l-1 (Unpublished Data).
Assuming that both high protein expression and cell concentrations are possible, then reaching a protein content of 25 g l-1 would reduce the cost of production by 96% below the baseline, Case 1, to $32 kg-1 . Since the inception of the work, RSSPs levels have constantly been increasing. In comparison to other recombinant proteins, expression levels for spider silk have remained relatively low. This challenge is largely thought to be due to the size of the protein which is expected to limit 39 the final yield compared to what has been achieved with other proteins. Economic modeling shows this to be the most valuable area where advancements can be made.
Another method of decreasing the emissions per unit mass is to increase the production through improved protein expression. The net effect of going from Case 1, at 1.0 g l-1 of protein expression, to Case 2 at 10 g l-1 of protein expression results in a 90% reduction of emissions to 55 kg CO2 eq. kg-1 . In spite of the optimization and increased yield, the reduced emissions of 55 kg CO2 eq. kg-1 are still higher than that of many other high strength materials. Linear low-density polyethylene and poly propylene have emissions of 1.62 kg CO2 eq. kg-1 and 1.59 kg CO2 eq. kg-1 [75]. Average steel has an emissions of 1.36 kg CO2 eq. kg-1 steel [39]. When compared with carbon fiber the emissions for silk are not quite as 0 50 100 150 200 250 Fermentation Harvesting Purification Drying Fiber Spinning kg CO2 eq. kg-1 product Materials Natural Gas Electricity 45 substantial. Emissions for the PAN carbon fiber are 31 kg CO2 eq. kg-1 [76]. There are additional benefits that an optimized plant would experience, such as reduced energy demand, which cannot be fully quantified at this stage of analysis.
Optimization through processing techniques and increased protein expression will be required before any of the three protein production methods can become feasible for large scale production. Additionally, as global warming awareness increases an eventual national carbon tax is conceivable. This would further affect the 47 economics as emissions are high. Further work to advance spider silk products should focus on the key model inputs identified though the sensitivity analysis, namely increased protein production. Increasing protein output sets off the high cost and emissions weight that are tied with low yields. Higher yields will not only increase the economic viability, but will hopefully increase social acceptance. Under this assumption it is likely that spider silk based products will start to enter the market in at least some industries. Additional market penetration is probably upon achieving higher levels of process optimization and protein expression
Like I said, might as well just raise a silkworm.
I will add that the pandemic changed everything. It exposed the U.S.'s reliance on foreign countries for basic component parts. It was a national embarrassment. This entire executive order signed by the president is a response to that embarrassment.
This was not the case in 2016 during the original Army contract. Back then, they didn't care where we produced our spider silk. There were plenty of ways to circumvent the Barry amendment since there were no domestic producers of spider silk.
Kim and Jon thought we were going to get production rolling in Vietnam much sooner, and would be able to supply the army with a mass produced, uniform product, using expert sericulturists (not available in the U.S.). But in reality, they went through 5 years of red tape and getting the run-around from the Vietnamese government. Their business certificates were perpetually "just around the corner". Then they finally got the certs and licenses, and then a year later the pandemic happened. Add that to the multiple missteps that the company self-inflicted, sprinkled with some bad luck, and you get Kraig Labs riddled past. It has nothing to do with their incredible technology. And the Air Force will pay top dollar to on-shore this tech.
But no one should kid themselves thinking the 2016 situation is the same as our current one.