It’s true that I only read the first 17 pages of the article and skipped page 18 (which only listed references). Not sure why you thought this was a 60 page paper. The supplement was only 6 pages long. I also mentioned that Randy Lewis was not the first author. Your extensive quotations from the paper are likely in violation of copyright law, by the way.
There is a big difference between the $37,000/kilo production costs mentioned on the KBLB website for this process and the $761/kilo the paper proposed for a “Pioneer Plant”. Specifically the costs have been cut by 98%. I never said that Spiber had hit the $23/kilo mark, only that the paper indicated sub-$100 costs were achievable. I don’t remember your estimation about manufacturing costs, but they struck me as much closer to $37,000 than to $761.
$761 for a kilo of textile fibers is not a sustainable price for clothing applications. Spiber would have to do better or go out of business. If their fibers are only as strong as the one I recently posted (that used proteins from mussels to increase strength), then mundane silk is stronger and there is no reason to brew such fibers — as I mentioned in a previous post.
In summary: I don’t know how much it costs for Spiber to make their fibers. I don’t know how strong they are. I understand the protein length/yield trade off. You could be absolutely correct that they are making fibers weaker than mundane silk and a lot more expensive than mundane silk. If so, the investors who dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Spiber are going to be disappointed. They may be that foolish, or perhaps Spiber has some tricks up their sleeve we don’t know about. Usually people who drop hundreds of millions of dollars into a company ask hard questions and don’t write checks unless they get good answers. But Theranos reminds us that people with big checkbooks can be duped by a savvy con man (or woman).
I also don’t know a lot about KBLB: how tough their current fibers are, how much they cost, what the yield is, or why they keep struggling to produce commercial quantities. That is even more concerning to me than Spiber. If Spiber goes belly-up, I haven’t lost a dime. If KBLB goes belly-up, I’ve lost lots of them.
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