upvote
Can we solve the fertilizer price problem by hauling it with airplanes? Yes, we can! It's easy, just load the potash fertilizer into an airplane and unload it directly into the traincars. I even designed a neat conveyor belt system to speed up unloading!

Look at the numbers. 1kW of nuclear power capacity on Earth is around $2000, and that's 24/7 guaranteed power. So a 250kW cluster needs $500000 to cover its power demand with near 100% reliability and with some ongoing cost.

And if we're OK with some interruptions, then we can use solar+wind at around $100000 and with essentially no ongoing cost. If we assume the absolutely best projected launch cost of $100 per kg (vs the current one of ~$800), that's just 1 ton of material in space!

So you're off by 2-3 orders of magnitude in cost. And this kind of "it's unprofitable" is actually a fundamental issue.

reply