> 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
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This is silly, but also begs the sillier question why we aren't bioengineering plants to produce rocket fuel
For now and the near future there are no ways of doing that part otherwise than by using living plants or fungi, possibly with genome modifications.
The part with capturing solar light and splitting water and reducing carbon dioxide to a very simple carbon compound can be done with artificial means much more efficiently than in plants, so there is little doubt that this will become commonly used in the near future.
Ethylene or methane are good for fuel or for making plastic, but when a slightly more complex organic substance were made, e.g. glycine or glycerol, that could be used to feed a culture of fungi, which could be used to make human food, especially if genetically-modified to make higher quality proteins.