Closing Bell - Manifest Space: Lunar Resources with Interlune CEO Rob Meyerson 5/9/25

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Once the stuff of science fiction, moon mining is getting government backing. Seattle-based startup Interlune—a previous guest of the podcast— came out of stealth last year. Its mission: to harvest resources from the moon. Now, they’re ready to announce their first customers. The Department of Energy has purchased three liters of lunar-extracted helium-3 for a delivery by 2029. A nuclear energy byproduct, Helium-3 is useful for cryogenics, medical equipment and fusion power—but its scarcity comes with a hefty price tag at $20 million per kilogram. Interlune CEO Rob Meyerosn joins Morgan Brennan to discuss the massive opportunity in moon mining.

Helium-3 is a nuclear energy byproduct. It's useful for cryogenics, medical equipment, and quantum computing. It's exceedingly scarce, and that means a hefty price tag. $20 million per kilogram. Moon mining startup Interloon plans to extract it from the lunar surface. CEO and co-founder Rob Meyerson, who previously ran Jeff Bezos' company Blue Origin, says Interloon just signed its first customers. Among them, the U.S. Department of Energy,

which has purchased three liters of lunar-extracted helium-3 for delivery by 2029. It's extremely rare on Earth because its source on Earth is from the decay of tritium, and tritium itself is very rare, but it's plentiful in space. It's produced naturally in the sun, and the sun is a fusion reactor. And that helium-3 has been transported through space via the solar wind,

and it's been bombarding the surface of the moon for billions of years. So we know there's a lot of helium-3 out there in space, and we're taking advantage of all of the progress being made in space to build new rockets, landers, and rovers on the moon to go get it. On this episode, the massive opportunity in moon mining and why helium-3 holds the key. I'm Morgan Brennan and this is Manifest Space. Joining me now, Rob Meyerson, the CEO and co-founder of Interloon.

Rob, it's great to speak with you again. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me, Morgan. Happy to be here. So since the last time you and I spoke about Interloon, now you have news. You're announcing your first customers. Who are they?

Well, the first is the Department of Energy's isotope program, which manages the U.S. stockpile of helium-3 and other critical isotopes. They've signed up to buy three liters of helium-3 in April of 2029, and we're excited to have that first customer, first government customer. And this is the first time the government's ever bought a resource source from space. That's great, congratulations. Helium-3, let's take a step back and talk about helium-3, what it is and why it's so valuable.

Well, so helium-3 is an isotope of helium. It's used in cryogenics, making things really cold. It's also used as a neutron detector and it has the potential future uses in medical imaging and fusion energy. It's extremely used as a neutron detector and it has the potential future uses in medical imaging and fusion energy. It's extremely rare on Earth because its source on Earth is from the decay of tritium and tritium itself is very rare, but it's plentiful in space. It's produced naturally in the sun and the sun is a fusion reactor and that helium-3

has been transported through space via the solar wind, and it's been bombarding the surface of the moon for billions of years. So we know there's a lot of helium-3 out there in space, and we're taking advantage of all of the progress being made in space to build new rockets, landers, and rovers on the moon to go get it. And that is the focus and mission of Interlune is essentially moon mining and specifically

for Helium-3. That is our start, and that's our go-to-market. Helium-3 sells for $20 million a kilogram, so it is the only resource in the universe that's priced high enough to warrant going to space and bringing it

back to Earth. But we do see a future very soon where we'll be producing and selling rocket propellant, water, industrial metals and other resources that are our source from the moon and Mars and asteroids and beyond. So at 20 million a kilogram, can you at this point, and I realize you're still building out the hardware

and this is, you know, you're still developing all of the technology But can you actually bring helium-3 back from the moon and still make money on it at 20 million? We believe we can yeah the uh, there's been a lot of progress being made in um and Large cargo landers and large transportation systems. The key for us is that we're only going after the helium-3. You need to produce, process a lot of lunar regolith to get that helium-3. Because we decided to focus on the helium-3 itself, we've taken an approach that is mechanical in nature

and that requires about 10 times less energy than any of the other space resource extraction process that have been studied in the past. The key part of that process is excavation and we're announcing our our joint development agreement in partnership with Vermeer Corporation out of Pella, Iowa to build a large lunar soil excavator that can process a hundred tons of regolith per hour. And that is a key innovation that we've developed

and intend to deploy to the moon in the coming years. How quickly can you deploy to the moon? Well, that takes money and it's a stepwise process. So we have a number of missions we want to conduct, starting in 2027 with the prospecting mission, where we'll send about 50 kilograms to the moon to demonstrate that this mechanical process for separating helium-3 and other solar wind gases will work,

and also verify the helium three is on th not uniformly distributed mission will de risk rea a lot of the risk in the 2029 in the early 2030s w to extract the helium th back to earth. Are these demos of the hardware behind you?

They are, yeah. I'm in our lab here in Seattle at our headquarters and thanks for asking. On this side, on my right is our sorting machine, which is something we tested in lunar gravity last year. It's a machine that sorts out rocks from sand and dust and makes that downstream process of mechanical separation much more efficient.

And then on my left are subscale prototypes of our lunar excavator that were tested last summer. And we of course selected a version of it and we built that in full scale and tested it in Iowa earlier this year. we released an image of that full-scale excavator with our yesterday with our announcement. Wow. So is this really, it's a 2030 story in terms of being able to deploy this technology, get

to the places where it's going to be most productive to mine, and then perhaps most importantly actually be able to bring that helium-3 back? Yeah. But we've got a lot of steps along the way, so don't wait till 2030, Morgan. We've got a lot of conversations ahead. Well it speaks to, we talk a lot about the moon and through the Artemis program and we have all these lunar landers that have been making attempts to land, some of them successfully, some of them not as successful.

It speaks to this lunar economy that's beginning to emerge, that is commercially driven. And I don't think people fully appreciate just how robust that economy is above and beyond the, I guess, sort of government optics that are associated with it. That's right. There is a lunar economy brewing

and what's key about the Artemis program, as you mentioned, and the government and private investment is that there are landers and rovers and other systems that we can buy as services to build a company like Interloom and service those customers. I mentioned one of them, the Department of Energy, but of course the other one is our commercial customer,

May Bell Quantum out of Denver, is the first commercial customer for lunar helium-3, and they bought multiple years worth of helium-3 starting in 2029 and extending to 2035. So we see a big demand for a product, and that allows us to go put this new lunar industrial base to work. What's really fascinating to me is the fact that quantum in general, this emerging quantum industry, does seem to be making a lot of investments into space-related companies and projects and technology such as yours. Yeah. I think so, and I agree with you.

There's a lot of hard technologies out there in space and quantum, certainly go side by side. I would put fusion into that, into that mix as well. It takes smart people and a lot of capital to go to go make these things happen. And what we're seeing that's different now from say 10 years ago is that that capital is going into private companies rather into government labs. And so once that, you know, once those technologies come out of the government lab and they get into private development, we're going to start to see rapid progress,

like we saw at companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, like we saw in the satellite industry, and like we're going to start to see, we're seeing now in the quantum and fusion industries as well. And what does that mean in terms of being able to go out and raise more funds for interloon since you are VC backed as you do go through these processes to get to the moon? Well, it's it's it's

it takes a lot of capital and fundraising is is always difficult. It's always a challenge. But what we're finding is there there is an audience there's an audience for companies that have really, really bright and capable and experienced founders and that have a business with customers. As you know, Morgan, there are very few sort of pure play space for space companies out there. And what Interlune is, is starting out with a space markets product that'll be sold on earth, Helium-3. But our intent is of course to use that as a headstart

to go and develop the markets for, like I said, rocket propellant water, industrial metals, and other resources which are plentiful out there in space. They just lack customers today. And so we're finding an audience with investors and and certainly seven seven six who led our seed round in last year. Alexis Ohanian and Caitlin Halloway have been fantastic supporters of our of our efforts and and we're we're always looking for more. You just mentioned Blue Origin. They had the successful New Glenn made in flight. You were involved in standing up, you're the first president of Blue Origin, you

were involved in standing up that company. I wonder what you think about the evolution of the space economy more broadly right now and how policy is intersecting with it? Wow, that's a big question. It's come a long way Morgan and it's so exciting from to go from, you know, where I was coming from Kistler Aerospace to Blue Origin, a company of 10 people, and building that company working for Jeff Bezos, building it up to, you know, 1500 when I left in 2018 and well over 10,000 people today doing all

kinds of things. The market, the policy, the thinking, the belief that something like but there's still a long w space is still still chal too slow. I think it's not because people aren't well-meaning, because they are. I just think that there is a limited number of people who are qualified to go review licenses and support launches at our national ranges. So you see things like SpaceX building out Starbase, you see Blue Origin building their site at New Shepard, which is a suborbital, so it can be inland. But you see things like that, but not every

company can go do that. So not every company has the funding or the resources to go do that. So it's interesting to watch the whole industry transform. And then just in terms of future government funding towards things like the moon and now it looks like Mars is on the table in a more meaningful way in terms of the skinny budget proposal we got from the White House just a couple days ago. I guess how to think about space exploration and building out that deep space infrastructure in general and I guess the geopolitical aspects of it as we do talk about, I find myself so many times having these conversations about it being almost a new space race between the U.S. and China.

Sure, yeah. The first off the moon is our strategic high ground. And I don't see us, the US or the West ever seeding the moon to the Chinese or another country. There is progress being made on both sides relatively equally. So I want to make sure that we continue to have a valid reason for going to the moon. And Interloon provides that. That's really important to me, that we have a commercial purpose for going to the moon,

supporting, starting with providing these critical isotopes and then supporting with critical infrastructure that can support a wide range of other businesses on the moon. structure that can support a wide range of other businesses on the moon. NASA's you know Artemis program is all about going to the moon and then on to Mars and the moon is going to be a great development ground area to to develop new sources of energy in space energy new sources of energy, in-space energy, new sources of mobility, new capabilities that can apply to Mars and beyond.

And Interlund can also be a big part of that. So I think, you know, my goal is to make sure, to help give the government a reason to continue to commit to this complex program. We don't require humans in the Inter inner lunar architecture, it's all robotic, but it still has a meaningful impact on the whole in terms of the Artemis program. One more question for you.

And that's just, as you talk about, you know, the autonomous nature of, and the robotics that's involved in this kind of mining, are there applications for this technology that could translate back to earth and mining here as well? I think so. I think as we get more into it and working with companies like Vermeer, who is a global leader in agriculture and mining, we can start to find those things. And that's the whole reason for the partnership and the reason for having Jason Andrega join our advisory board. We have that sort of direct connection now to the company. The excavator is the first step and there will be other projects that we work on together. I also think that this technology applies to Mars and asteroids as well. This excavator, to Mars and asteroids as well. This excavator, there's

differences. I think the moon's environment is more extreme than Mars, but you have a different gravity well, different type of material, different type of soil material, but the need for high-volume continuous

excavation will be needed on Mars as well as the Moon. Rob Meyerson of Interloon, thank you so much for the conversation. Thank you, Morgan. That does it for this episode of Manifest Space.

Make sure you never miss a launch by following us wherever you get your podcasts and by watching our coverage on Closing Bell Overtime. I'm Morgan Brennan.