Space travel has environmental costs. For research, it might be worth it. Is it okay to send Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and other wealthy tourists into orbit? That's debatable right!! Companies including SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and Space Adventures want to make space tourism more common. And shockingly people are also interested. Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa spent an undisclosed sum of money to SpaceX in 2018 for a private trip around the moon and back.
The trip is pencilled in for 2023, although the Starship rocket still needs to prove that they are reliably take off and land without exploding. With the Earth in the middle of a climate crisis, sending billionaires to space in rockets might not be the most eco-friendly decision. Rockets burn through an exorbitant number of propellants to take off and land Whether it's the methane in the Starship, or the liquid hydrogen in NASA's massive new Space Launch System (SLS), burning that material impacts the Earth's atmosphere.
No matter which fuel is used, all launches emit a lot of heat that agitates nitrogen in the atmosphere to create disruptive nitrogen oxides, explained by an associate professor of physical geography at University College London. She studies the impact of fuels and industries on the atmosphere. She said – "Depending on where they're released in altitude, those nitrogen oxides can either contribute to the formation of ozone or depletion of ozone,".
In the stratosphere, where ozone acts as a shield against ultraviolet radiation from the sun, that heat can eat away at the ozone. In the troposphere closer to the ground, that heat can add ozone. Unfortunately, there it acts more like a greenhouse gas and retains heat. Different fuels damage the atmosphere in different ways. For Example – Nitrogen oxide is important, sure, but there are also solid fuels that are burnt and those produce chlorine. And chlorine contributes to the destruction of the ozone layer and it's very, very efficient at doing that."
– Hydrocarbon fuels like kerosene and methane produce carbon dioxide, an infamous greenhouse gas, as well as black carbon, that absorbs heat and further warms the Earth. Before launches even happen, the production of propellants takes its toll on the environment.
– Methane may be obtained through fracking or other means of extraction, which come with a host of issues, and the procurement of super-cold hydrogen can produce greenhouse gas, depending on the method used. Each launch uses thousands of tons of propellants to reach space. Actually, that sounds bad, but there are only a handful of launches that reach the upper atmosphere or go into space every week.
Throw a dart at a calendar and you're more likely to land on a day that doesn't have a launch than one that does. If rocket launches become more common, their effect on the environment will grow. The professor pointed out that we don't know the full effects of rocket fuels on the atmosphere and environment yet, as researchers have just started to study the topic. It also takes a lot of steel and aluminium to build a rocket. For every ton of steel produced, 1.9 tons of carbon dioxide is ejected. That number increases to 11.5 tons for aluminium.
An empty Starship is made of about 200 tons of steel alloy. That doesn't include the rocket, which weighs an estimated 300 additional tons. It's a steep price to pay in the name of science, but at least there are some benefits. Everyday items that we take for granted, such as phone cameras, wireless headphones, cat scans, LASIK, and home insulation, trace their origins to spaceflight.
Space programs have taught us so much about our universe and planet, including important information on weather patterns and the effects of climate change. But imagine a future where you can book a flight to space like a trip to Disney World. If rockets were blasting off constantly, the negative effects would pile up. "Before we decide what how space tourism looks like, we should be doing these kinds of studies to see what the impact on the environment is."
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