[The Louiswu]

So we gotta haul the seed, nutrients, water, to orbit, build a very large place to grow the stuff and keep the plants and the people safe from hard radiation.

Then once you have a crop of any meaningful size you got to send it back down to Earth, then since the system will have some loss you gotta haul more o everything back into orbit and start again.

On top of the thousand other things you’ll need and the hundreds of things that can go wrong, you might get a few pounds of, what, mushrooms, yeast? Why not just plant stuff here on ground that the gov pays to remain unused?

[jmcenanly]

You seem to assume that the crops will be used on Earth, rather than where they were grown.