[ckilmer]

Except that Elon musk splits water at his desalination plant and then combines it with CO2 from the atmosphere to make methane for his rockets. Think that model will scale?

[verum ago]

Except that Elon musk splits water at his desalination plant and then combines it with CO2 from the atmosphere to make methane for his rockets. Think that model will scale?

What plant? It was never built as far as I can tell.

But if you want to play with those numbers, Terraform Industries claims they have a design that will convert 1 MW solar input into 2300 MCF of natural gas per year. Given a heat content of 1038 BTU per cubic foot of natural gas, and 1055 joules per BTU, that means they're claiming they can convert 1,000,000 watts of solar input into...

...<80,000 watts worth of natural gas, and that's heat content, subject to further inefficiencies if you want to use it for propulsion. So 8% before taking into account losses converting into propulsion.

Oh, and their plant has an expected 5 year design lifespan.

I don't find that very promising.