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Re:The Economic Viability of Mars Colonization (1998) by ElBarto on Thursday October 11, 2018 @04:59PM (#18196992)
Note that converting sunlight to electricity (what the 30% figure is about) is also quite different from using sunlight to convert CO2 to glucose (what the 6% figure is about).

Apparently the first stage of photosynthesis effectively does convert sunlight to electricity and does that with 90% efficiency, which is far beyond what our technology can achieve.

Source: https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2014/12/03/...

Re:The Economic Viability of Mars Colonization (1998) by claytonius on Friday October 12, 2018 @12:58AM (#18199325)
It's also important to consider that photosynthesis only captures photons in a very narrow spectrum relative to the total spectral output of the sun.