Comment by kulahan

> You seem to be quite keen to keep making the false dichotomy that a project can be either "economically viable with fossil fuel inputs" or "just for fun", but that is obviously not true for research projects.

Buddy, they literally built a factory that does not work without one of the dirtiest technologies we can build (batteries), which are still incredibly primitive in general, and which like… 9 industries are banking on a magical breakthrough in the next ten years. It’s definitely for funsies.

It’s almost exclusively true for research projects. 99.9% of them, including this, are purely for funsies. Nobody is gonna build a million of these. Nobody is going to rely on these. Maybe some nation will build a couple as a fun project, but if you’re trying to reduce your reliance on other nations (why?? The whole point of the global economy is not to produce everything at home, it’s to trade what you’ve got for what you need, and we already have more than enough supplies to grow enough food for all with plenty of surplus) for a very specific fertilizer input, a factory with variable inputs and outputs that you don’t actively control is a fun project at best and worthless at worst.

Of all the green energies, wind is by far the most baffling to try and expand. Solar at least predictably gets a Sun for half of every day, clouds notwithstanding, and people don’t generally farm at night.