Replies to post #73599 on Kraig Biocraft Laboratories Inc (KBLB)

[dadofduck]

es1, knowing Kim the way you do, do you truly believe Kim would spend the money to produce a ton of silk without being almost certain he has a buyer for it?

I think that ton is near enough sold......

[Cee-It]

You say "people still want spider silk" but in reality what they want is a fiber that exhibits properties that are as good or better than spider silk and at an affordable price. You can assume that spinning a natural fiber is the only route to accomplishing that goal; but that kind of an assumption has often caused researchers to get blown away for being narrow thinkers just as someone comes up with the equivalent of the nuclear weapon or plastic explosive technologies while others were trying to improve on black powder.

The marketplace doesn't care about the worm or the spider or even the process; they care about the properties and the price. That you have to spin the product is merely an assumption based on current knowledge of process. That you have to have some animal spin it for you is merely a further extension down the assumption line. For all anybody here knows there may be a laboratory break-through at any moment that spins this using a form of laser technology, or ???, that was never even previously known to be applicable for such a purpose.

Every existing usage has behind it a specified (or producible) set of properties for the fibers involved. Every farmer knows the potential for inconsistencies (translated as risks), and they are sometimes catastrophic, they also know that properties from grown products can change over time just as feed-stock and bacteria can change. Viruses and defects from genetic propagation are real risks. The impact of environmental changes may prove to be real risks as well.

DuPont, as an example, may appear to have "given up", but that could change overnight due to a laboratory discovery. DuPont was pursuing a number of avenues and they apparently found dead-ends. KBLB could still find similar dead-ends from unanticipated consequences and they can still be displaced in their race by unanticipated breakthroughs. They have no market niche yet; so, the consequences of failure are far more devastating than they would be for DuPont abandoning a few lines of research and development.