Space tourists could speed up global warming

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

Environmentalists have already raised concerns about the carbon footprint of proposed space tourism flights, such as that planned by British billionaire Richard Branson, but according to new research the controversial flights could have an even more immediate impact on the world's climate.

A new study, accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, predicts that soot emitted by rockets in the upper atmosphere would lead to significant disruption to the world's climatic system resulting in a net increase in temperatures.

The report, which was funded by NASA and The Aerospace Corporation, assumes that the nascent space tourism industry makes good on plans to carry out up to 1,000 suborbital rocket flights a years by the end of the decade.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/26/space-tourists-speed-global-warming

[ananda]

1. Too many people have WAY too much money...

... and way too LITTLE intelligence.

[DainBramaged]

2. I truly believe our climate is changing

but this isn't going to do squat. maybe if they put pollution devices on new cars sold to the third world we'd be better off.

[qazplm]

3. global warming is real

but come on, even 1000 rocket flights cannot be enough to accelerate it significantly. Particularly not compared to the billions of tons of emissions we spew out on a regular basis.

[Posteritatis]

5. It's flashy and new, and so people find it easier to emote about. (nt)

[L.Torsalo]

12. The components of rocket fuel

are a bit more noxious than auto exhaust.

[LisaM]

4. I posted on this a couple of years ago

I think it's a legitimate concern.

[MX96391]

6. Ridiculuous

Spaceflight is a good thing and will have virtually no impact on global warming.

[caraher]

7. Here's a better article

Apparently one issue is the fuels proposed for space tourism - they plan to burn rubber or kerosene.

From New Scientist:

The 1000 annual launches would belch out about 600 tonnes of soot, or black carbon – less than today's output from airplanes and other sources. But plane soot occurs at low enough altitudes for rain to wash it out of the atmosphere in just days or weeks. Rockets expel the stuff at altitudes three times as high – in the stratosphere more than 40 kilometres above sea level. There, well above the weather, it can remain for up to 10 years.

<snip>

Mills admits there is still uncertainty about the study's findings. He notes in particular that the team lacked data on how much black carbon would be emitted per flight by space tourism vehicles. The team assumed that Virgin Galactic's rubber-burning engine would emit 60 grams of black carbon per kilogram of fuel burned.

However, the team did not have access to measurements of black carbon emissions from Virgin Galactic's engines, or those of other space tourism companies, which plan to burn other types of fuel, such as kerosene.

Lacking emission measurements from rubber-burning rockets, the researchers extrapolated from data on kerosene-burning rockets. These suggested soot emissions of 20 to 40 grams of black carbon per kilogram. Rubber is expected to burn less cleanly, but it is not clear by how much – the 60 grams is an educated guess.

A critic of the work says the soot emission estimates are far too large for modern kerosene-burning engines. Based on the New Scientist piece there's some question regarding whether the actual amount of soot used in the model is right, but what's interesting to me is that they were able to find an effect at all - and the fact that they did suggests it would be wise to know at what level of emission there perhaps needs to be regulation.

[petronius]

9. Good link, thanks! I'll check out the GRL paper when it is available, but I'm

wondering if they ran the model for a range of soot outputs. Even if they kept the same engine assumption, performing the analysis with a lower number of flights would be an analogue for more flights and cleaner engines.

It will also be interesting to check out their citations - I'm not familiar with it, but there must be some literature already on the impacts of existing space programs...

[One_Life_To_Give]

11. Compared to SR-71 Flights over Russia

We ran alot of Spy missions at close to those altitudes. Wouldn't we have already been seeing the effect?

[Kolesar]

8. Space tourists could speed up depletion of the Earth's resources

And snowmobilers

[FLPanhandle]

10. I guess that's safer than saying "People having children could speed up global warming"

However, that would piss too many folks off.