#226 Matt Gialich - Debunking Aliens in the Ocean, Mining Asteroids and Black Holes

The Shawn Ryan Show

Shawn Ryan Show

Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.9 • 38.1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2025

⏱️ 113 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matt Gialich is the Co-Founder and CEO of AstroForge, an asteroid mining company founded in 2022 that aims to extract platinum group metals from near-Earth asteroids to redefine sustainable mining practices. With over a decade of experience leading high-performing engineering teams, Gialich holds a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. His career began at Toyon Research Corporation as an analyst developing novel navigation algorithms, followed by key roles at Virgin Orbit, where he led the flight software and GNC teams and oversaw avionics development. He later served as Director of Vehicle Software at Bird, where he met co-founder Jose Acain, sparking the idea for AstroForge amid their shared passion for space. Previously, Gialich was co-founder and CEO of Ex Scientia Technologies. A Y Combinator alumnus, he has guided AstroForge to successful missions, including Mission 1's launch, and advocates for commercial space innovation to address resource scarcity on Earth. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://betterhelp.com/srs This episode is sponsored. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. https://bruntworkwear.com – USE CODE SRS https://bubsnaturals.com – USE CODE SHAWN https://bunkr.life – USE CODE SRS Go to https://bunkr.life/SRS and use code “SRS” to get your 25% off your family plan https://shawnlikesgold.com https://helixsleep.com/srs https://moinkbox.com/srs https://mypatriotsupply.com/srs https://patriotmobile.com/srs https://rocketmoney.com/srs https://shopify.com/srs https://simplisafe.com/srs Matt Gialich Links: X - https://x.com/MattGialich LI - https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-gialich AstroForge - https://www.astroforge.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Matt Gallich, welcome to the show, man.
0:07.0	Thanks for having me on, man. This is awesome.
0:10.0	Mining asteroids?
0:12.0	Well, dude, that is so far out there. I can't wait to have this conversation.
0:18.0	But I am curious. Why mining asteroids?
0:23.1	What are you getting off of them?
0:24.5	Yeah, so we're going after what are called the platinum group metals, right?
0:27.3	Very critical resource we all use here on Earth, but they're also worth a lot of money.
0:32.1	And why asteroids?
0:33.0	Well, some of the best ore sources we've ever discovered of the platinum group metals are orbiting us in space.
0:39.4	It's a very specific type of asteroid called a metal asteroid that we're going to go after mine and bring it back to Earth.
0:46.2	Wow. Well, we're going to dive into that deep, so I can't wait.
0:49.8	But everybody starts off with an introduction. So here we go.
0:53.9	Matt Gowlach, co-founder and CEO of AstroForge, a pioneering deep space mining company focused on extracting platinum metal groups from asteroids. Engineering leader with over a decade of experience leading teams in high stakes technicalakes technical environments, turn down an opportunity
1:12.1	at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to start AstroForge in 2022, driven by a vision to act
1:19.2	faster and more economically than traditional aerospace giants. A risk taker who embraces
1:24.8	fear is a requirement for innovation telling your team that if they're not scared, they're not pushing hard enough.
1:31.0	I love that.
1:31.9	I think I know what it means, but I'm curious what is what is what do you mean by that?
1:39.1	Look, what you're going to go do something like attempt to mine asteroids or go travel to the cosmos, right? You have
1:45.3	an option to go do that in a very safe way at a big company you probably heard of called
1:49.2	NASA. I probably shouldn't call them a company, right? A big government agency called NASA.
	...

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