As for explosive mining, I saw a method from an anchor on BiliBili: first dig down the ore with an silktouch pickaxe (I was lucky to find a knightmetal pickaxe with silktouch in the twilight forest), and then put it at home into a 3x3x3 cube with dynamite in the middle, Then ignite the dynamite and quickly plug the remaining gap with an ore (if you have an remote activator, you can bind the dynamite directly without reserving a gap for ignition), and get more raw ore after explosion.
As for nitrate, yes, because Steve can’t go to the toilet, nitrate can only be obtained through minerals. In reality, for a long time, explosives were obtained from mineral saltpeter (and even saltpeter war broke out). As for the industrial nitrogen fixation method, the arc method added by GT has been used for a short time in reality, but as in the game, its disadvantage is that it consumes too much energy. So that when ammonia synthesis technology was widely used, it was quickly replaced by ammonia catalytic oxidation. Although ammonia synthesis requires higher pressure and temperature, in fact, in general, the energy consumption per unit of nitric acid production is only 1/8 of that of the arc method, so it quickly replaces the arc method (incidentally, because the ammonia catalytic oxidation reaction will release a lot of heat, in order to prevent the temperature from being too high, the reactor for ammonia catalytic oxidation is a special thin bed reactor, Instead of the stirred tank reactor or fixed bed reactor in the game).