If by “free” you mean “very very expensive” then i agree with you. It would cost a fortune to even just attempt a pilot project proving feasability. Then we would need to send up regular replacements to the “sending the harvest down” hardware at the minimum. Just imagining the cost of a tank which can be launched into space, autonomously dock with the collector sails, then deorbit and land makes my head spin. And then doing that at scale, paying people to launch it, paying people to operate the system.
It could be free if we imagine some crazy advances in autonomous self-replicating spacecrafts. But by then we live in the post-scarcity diamond age probably.
I meant some semi permanent harvesters (which would cost a fortune to build and deploy).
Sending the harvest down could maybe happen inside plastic containers built in place, made with the abundant sunlight, some Co2 and water (not sure if there's CO2 this high though. In retrospect we'd need also some metals to print some sort of the antenna reflecting radar frequencies (for the ground stations tracking them on the approach)?
And with the hundreds of small containers (carefully balanced so they don't smash in the ground but slowly rain onto the area) maybe it'd be easier.
I don't know. I think it's hard sci-fi, achievable within our lifetimes :)
It could be free if we imagine some crazy advances in autonomous self-replicating spacecrafts. But by then we live in the post-scarcity diamond age probably.