About K+

Some ideas carry a sense of inevitability, resonating across both science fiction and scientific discourse as something that will happen, timing being the primary unknown. From the first mention by Konstantin Tsiolkowsky in the pre-rocket era (Beyond the Planet Earth, 1900) through to the amazing academic work by Gerard O’Neill (The High Frontier, 1976) up to the novel series by Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (The Expanse, 2011-2021), the idea of mining for resources on asteroids has captured the imagination and has been recognized as an essential stepping stone to grow and expand our civilization sustainably.

We conceived of the Karman+ name as a tribute to Theodore von Kármán, a Hungarian astrodynamicist who is most famous for his work on defining the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space. This Kármán line at 100km above our heads defines where we want to focus.

As we started working on the ideas and roadmap, we noticed this inflection of feasibility (on a technical, scientific and economic level) combined with an existential urgency to fundamentally change the system. Small incremental steps are not enough to fix challenges like climate change, resource depletion and ecosystem degradation.

Our big bet is mining asteroid regolith, to start the flywheel of a cis-lunar economy and to produce sustainable and carbon-free resources and energy for the earth.