Chinese astronauts make rocket fuel and oxygen in space

> This is a similar reaction to photosynthesis in plants, which produces glucose instead of rocket fuel.

This is silly, but also begs the sillier question why we aren't bioengineering plants to produce rocket fuel

Why aren't we engineering plants to produce automotive fuel? We ought to at least be able to do diesel.

Biodiesal is already a thing. Also, we (the US) already blend a portion (about 10%) of corn-derived ethanol to our gasoline. There are problems with it though, one of which is that overall, it probably has a higher carbon footprint (fertilizer, harvesting, processing, etc.) than just not using it.

It's my understanding that corn produces the most (edible) calories per square metre of any of our farmed plants

edit: Looked it up - Rice has the highest number of calories per square metre of farmland, just that it requires marshy/swamp land to grow.

There are many varietals of rice. Most do not grow in marsh land. Farmers often do flood the fields at the beginning of a rice growing season in order to drown out any competing plants. Flooding is not necessary though. Rice will grow with normal irrigation.