From SpaceX to Solving the Global Water Crisis
What if the answer to water scarcity has been sitting in plain sight all along?
On the latest episode of A Climate Change with Matt Matern, Matt sits down with Jonathan Criss, former SpaceX engineer and co-founder of Vital Lyfe, a company on a mission to make clean drinking water accessible anywhere by turning ocean water into fresh water using portable desalination technology.
After spending more than a decade helping build groundbreaking technologies at SpaceX, Jonathan and his co-founder asked a simple question:
If 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered in water, why are billions of people still struggling to access clean drinking water?
That question led them to build their first desalination prototype in a garage near Long Beach Harbor. When the machine successfully turned ocean water into drinking water, they knew they were onto something.
A Different Approach to Desalination
Traditional desalination plants are massive, expensive infrastructure projects that can take years—or even decades—to build. Vital Lyfe is taking a different approach by creating smaller, portable systems that can be deployed quickly and used directly by communities, boaters, RV travelers, humanitarian organizations, and eventually regions facing severe water shortages.
The company’s first product, Access, is designed to purify ocean, brackish, and freshwater sources while avoiding many of the environmental challenges associated with large-scale desalination.
Why Water Is Really an Infrastructure Problem
Jonathan argues that the world doesn’t have a water shortage—it has a water access problem.
Only a tiny fraction of the world’s drinking water comes from desalination despite oceans covering most of the planet. By making desalination more affordable and scalable, Vital Lyfe hopes to help communities gain access to water that already surrounds them.
The need is urgent. Billions of people lack reliable access to clean drinking water, while regions from California and Arizona to Mexico and Cyprus are facing increasing water stress.
Scaling Fast
The company has already raised $24 million and opened a manufacturing facility in Torrance, California. Their goal is ambitious: produce tens of thousands of units annually and continue driving costs down so the technology can reach developing communities around the world.
For Jonathan, the mission is simple:
Clean water is a solvable problem. We have the technology, the resources, and the people. The challenge is getting access into the hands of those who need it most.
Listen Now
This conversation offers a hopeful look at how engineering, innovation, and first-principles thinking can help address one of humanity’s most pressing challenges.
🎧 Listen to this full episode on A Climate Change with Matt Matern to hear how a former SpaceX team is working to transform access to clean water around the globe.
