If We Find It, You Can Mine It, Says Durin's Ted Feldmann

Описание: Down, down to Mineral Town. Ep. 15

🎙️ Ted Feldmann (@teddyfeld), founder of Durin, joins Tool or Die to discuss how his startup is tackling one of the most overlooked but vital problems in American reindustrialization: the lack of modern drilling rigs for mineral exploration. Ted explains why the U.S. is decades behind on core sampling tech, how Durin is building a programmable drilling rig from the ground up, and what it would take for the U.S. to decouple from China’s stranglehold on critical minerals.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 The goblin problem and bad sci-fi drilling
01:00 What Durin actually does: small-bore exploration rigs
03:00 Why drilling is the single biggest cost in mineral exploration
06:00 Automation vs. skilled labor in the field
08:00 Real-time sensor challenges underground
11:00 U.S. resource potential and rare earths supply constraints
14:00 How public data could kickstart a new gold rush
17:00 The regulatory bottleneck: permitting vs. drilling
21:00 Naming a mining company after a Tolkien character
23:00 Space mining and what Durin might do next
25:00 Rig update: pilot test in Nevada and what comes after
Key Topics:

Why U.S. mining is bottlenecked at the exploration stage
How Durin is building “programmable rigs” for remote, autonomous core sampling
The massive opportunity in rare earths—and why we’re under-exploring
A more cost-effective path to identifying economic deposits
What mining (and drilling) automation really looks like
The national security implications of letting exploration lag behind
👉 Learn more: durin.com

TOOL OR DIE is produced by Johnson & Roy (Johnson-Roy.com), a strategic advisory firm focused on technology, mobility, manufacturing, and robotics. Your hosts are Joel Johnson, tech media veteran behind Gizmodo, Jalopnik, and Wirecutter, and Alex Roy, General Partner at New Industry Venture Capital (NIVC.us) and longtime voice in autonomy and transportation.

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