The sky is exactly where you need to look for hydrogen. We need to push to industrialize space to provide greater access to the absolutely massive quantities of materials available there.
Industrializing space is a massive task. Before we can do that we need at the very least something like a space elevator, a trillion dollar project that we don't even have the material science to accomplish yet. Before we can even start we need somewhere on the equator that is politically and geologically stable enough to make people consider investing a trillion dollars into a project that will take decades to have any chance at a return on investment.
Thinking about it all wrong. Build what you need in space, utilizing resources in space. Send the finalized products back down via drop pod, if they're really needed earthside.
To do that you first need to get a whole bunch of stuff up into space. Way more then we have managed to get into space so far. Our little space stations are not going to cut it if you want to produce industrial amounts of materials. Building all the machines you need to make a space mining operation (for example) in space is a great idea, if you have space infrastructure already in place to build highly sophisticated automated robots. But currently we can't build so much as a screwdriver in space, so we first need to get it up there.
You know what's never, ever getting built? Space elevator.
Because sunlight is free, thus commie.
I see. We obviously must construct additional pylons!
Physics is not the problem, we know it can be done. It is an engineering and economics problem at this point.
"We have no known materials that could possibly stand up to the forces involved and no idea how to, or if, they can be made" is quite the engineering problem!
Hey if you got any khadarin crystals lying around you better pony up!
We have a few experimental materials that might work. Boron nitride nanotubes are one possible candidate for a material that might have the tensile strength to make a space elevator cable. As I said, material science is not quite there, but we are hopeful that in the next decade or so we will have something that would work.
This is the thing about space elevators. Read any article about why they are possible and it's 90% of the article saying why they are so cool and 10% hand waving away all the practical problems without any practical solutions!
You could build a space escalator to get to low orbit on the moon!
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