Weatherlawyer wrote:


And you can do it with simple substitution and a lot less vitriol.

I never said to use vitriol, I was assuming the factory would convert
energy into matter. If you want to start with vitriol, then you would
release energy, at least to make carbon out of the hydrogen in vitriol.
You would also have to use energy to make the electrons to turn one of the
protons in the chlorine in vitriol into a neutron so the chlorine became
oxygen (you could use the extra neutrons to add mass to the hydrogens
making up the carbon, but then you would have an excess of oxygen since you
need six neutrons per six hydrogens to make one carbon and you only need
two oxygens per carbon to make a CO2 so you would have 4 extra oxygens
kicking around (I suppose you could make an ozone give the remaining oxygen
to some homeless guy on the corner (I see no need to make two oxygen
molecules and give both to a homeless guy, because I am totally against
providing a useful handout to people who for whatever reason, won't do an
honest day's work to earn their oxygen))). It's possible that you would
release energy by making CO2 from vitriol since generating electrons
probably doesn't take much energy compared to the energy released from
fusing protons, which is why I didn't propose it, since, in my scenario,
with a freezing solar system, we get to nail the hot chick with the weird
glowing eyes (unless you aren't into nailing hot chicks with weird glowing
eyes).

Let me know if you need me to post this explanation as an interpretive
dance for you.

--
Bill Asher