Top all-time · #9756
Orca Sciences
Company blog · orcasciences.com/articlessciencebusiness
Orca Sciences is the company blog at orcasciences.com, writing about science and business. Since 2025, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 20 times, most often “There has to be a better way to make titanium”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Orca Sciences for long-form technical deep dives, such as pieces on titanium production and the copper supply chain. One thread also discusses its essay on whether money is the only moat left.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
R+D for the future of energy and materials.
Most-linked posts?
- There has to be a better way to make titanium5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2025-11-06
What Hacker News says?
That's what they're focusing on to start with, but the temperature is high enough to drive heat engines to make power. There's more on the concept at the seed company's (Orca Sciences) web site and at Austin Vernon's blog. https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal https://austinvernon.substack.com/p/building-ultra-cheap-ene... They talk about temperature up to ~600 C, which I believe is limited by the d…
Comment linking /articles/standard-thermal
on “Solar power is becoming bigger than nuclear”Submitted There has to be a better way to make titanium as a story · 40 points
HN discussionAnother possibility is retrofitting the coal plant with a thermal battery. https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal-copy > 3) (medium term) The world-conquering dream is for our PV-based steam to replace fossil-generated steam at conventional power plants. That will let us feed electricity back into the grid using otherwise stranded generating assets (e.g. a coal plant). You might see this as a way to…
Comment linking /articles/standard-thermal-copy
on “Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels”Submitted There has to be a better way to make titanium as a story · 13 points
HN discussionThese are interesting, but the cost per kWh of storage capacity is still probably too high for true seasonal storage. Short term storage runs into competition with batteries. I point again to Standard Thermal for an idea tailored to true seasonal storage. I wait for more news from them, particularly on their very low cost resistive heater technology. https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal
Comment linking /articles/standard-thermal
on “250MWh 'Sand Battery' to start construction in Finland”Submitted There has to be a better way to make titanium as a story · 9 points
HN discussionWhy use microorganisms when fats can be synthesized abiotically? https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/food-without-agricultu... Be an ultra-vegan; don't even kill microorganisms.
Comment linking /articles/food-without-agriculture-wbx6k
on “CRISPR fungus: Protein-packed, sustainable, and tastes like meat”Submitted Making batteries more like bombs as a story · 3 points
HN discussionPumped hydro is not appropriate for seasonal storage. It's not an environmental issue, it's a capital cost issue. The capex per kWh of storage capacity is two orders of magnitude too high. See the comparison tables at https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal-copy
Comment linking /articles/standard-thermal-copy
on “Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power, study”Submitted The future is made out of energy as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> The amount of lithium it would take to handle an unusually cloudy week would be astronomical. Unusual events shouldn't be handled by high capex, high efficiency storage. They should be handled by lower capex, lower round trip efficiency storage (as should long term/seasonal storage). I will once again point to Standard Thermal. https://www.standardthermal.com/ https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal…
Comment linking /articles/standard-thermal-copy
on “Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power, study”I used to think hydrogen was the front runner for this storage use case, but as I've pointed out previously on HN it's looking like ultra low capex thermal storage will be superior. https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal-copy
Comment linking /articles/standard-thermal-copy
on “Falling panel prices lead to global solar boom, except for the US”The place I saw this most clearly described was in Standard Thermal's concept, which will store the heat in huge piles of dirt heated to 600 C. The thermal time constant of such piles can be many years. https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal-copy https://austinvernon.substack.com/p/building-ultra-cheap-ene... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45012942
Comment linking /articles/standard-thermal-copy
on “Can “second life” EV batteries work as grid-scale energy storage?”What is needed is an alternative storage that minimizes capex, even if that means operating at lower round trip efficiency. Hydrogen or ultra low capex thermal storage. I'll point to Standard Thermal again here. https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal
Comment linking /articles/standard-thermal
on “UK's first small nuclear power station to be built in north Wales”> Unfortunately geothermal does not cover this need. Artificial geothermal could though. https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/standard-thermal The size is orders of magnitude smaller than the depth of natural geothermal wells, and the temperature much higher. Even so, they are aiming for heat loss of < 1%/month, entirely adequate for seasonal energy storage.
Comment linking /articles/standard-thermal
on “The time has finally come for geothermal energy”This group is funded by Orca Sciences, which is also behind Standard Thermal. https://www.orcasciences.com/
Comment linking /
on “Contrails Map”The author of this article is missing whats really going on: Hard novel things are still hard and valuable, easy things are now super easy and really aren't valuable anymore. Lets take an easy thing... like a meal planning app or a todo list or something. Its what we would all call a weekend project, but in 2022 it would be hard to develop, get the legal stuff reviewed, do the marketing, and do all the rest of the o…
Comment linking /articles/there-has-to-be-a-better-way-to-make-titanium
on “The Only Moat Left Is Money”I disagree! It's a vital problem to solve, especially if solar becomes significantly cheaper than wind (as appears to be happening; solar has the better experience rate). And solving it punctures the last argument bad-faith nuclear advocates use to argue against renewables. I will once again point to Austin Vernon and Standard Thermal, which has an approach that could truly solve the problem. The first principles an…
Comment linking /articles/standard-thermal
on “Scientists "bottle the sun" with a liquid battery that stores solar energy”Additions to that list: https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/running-on-empty-co... - the hidden world of copper supply https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/there-has-to-be-a-bett... - thoughts on improving the current titanium production process
Comment linking /articles/there-has-to-be-a-better-way-to-make-titanium
on “Ask HN: Favorite In-Depth Deep Dives”The easiest food to synthesize is probably fatty acids. Orca Sciences (the people who incubated Standard Thermal) have had a project on this. https://www.orcasciences.com/articles/food-without-agricultu... https://savor.it/
Comment linking /articles/food-without-agriculture-wbx6k
on “Total Surface Area Required to Fuel the World with Solar (2009)”
