Inventory Counts Air Pollution Cost of Space Launches and Re-Entries 22
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A new global inventory has catalogued air pollution from space activities from 2020 to 2022. The inventory includes time, position and pollution from 446 launchers as they ascended and the tracks of re-entries as objects are heated to extreme temperatures and break up or burn up in the upper atmosphere. It catalogues the pollution from 63,000 tons of rocket propellants used in 2022 and from 3,622 objects, including rocket parts and satellites, that re-entered the atmosphere between 2020 and 2023, amounting to about 12,000 tons. [...]
Types of launch pollutants depend on the propellent but can include particles of soot and aluminum oxides as well as nitrogen oxides, chlorine and water vapour and carbon dioxide. Extreme heat on re-entry causes atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen to combine to form more nitrogen oxides and also produces tiny metal-oxide particles as the objects break and burn up. Soot emitted high in the atmosphere can persist for several years, with a resulting climate warming impact that is up to 500 times greater than the same amount of soot from aviation or ground-level sources. Aluminum oxide particles, nitrogen oxides and chloride can consume the ozone in the stratosphere that protects us from the sun's ultraviolet radiation. These can remain in the atmosphere for decades. Dr Connor Barker, of the UCL team, said: "Many rocket manufacturers and space agencies keep this information tightly controlled. We had to be creative about the different sources we consulted, from launch live streams on YouTube to online databases maintained by space enthusiasts in their spare time."
Types of launch pollutants depend on the propellent but can include particles of soot and aluminum oxides as well as nitrogen oxides, chlorine and water vapour and carbon dioxide. Extreme heat on re-entry causes atmospheric oxygen and nitrogen to combine to form more nitrogen oxides and also produces tiny metal-oxide particles as the objects break and burn up. Soot emitted high in the atmosphere can persist for several years, with a resulting climate warming impact that is up to 500 times greater than the same amount of soot from aviation or ground-level sources. Aluminum oxide particles, nitrogen oxides and chloride can consume the ozone in the stratosphere that protects us from the sun's ultraviolet radiation. These can remain in the atmosphere for decades. Dr Connor Barker, of the UCL team, said: "Many rocket manufacturers and space agencies keep this information tightly controlled. We had to be creative about the different sources we consulted, from launch live streams on YouTube to online databases maintained by space enthusiasts in their spare time."
Global inventory? (Score:1)
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Here's how to use your general knowledge: Take these two common English words (one adjective and one noun), combine them in the obvious way, and you can determine the meaning of the phrase.
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If you'd bother to read two dozen words of TFS past the phrase in question, you'd find this:
The inventory includes time, position and pollution from 446 launchers
Once again, use the ordinary meaning of those words to determine what kind of inventory they are talking about.
A step foward for the discussion (Score:2)
Measuring pollution from mainly government funded rocket launches is progress.
Exempting the largest polluters on the planet, federal governments in the largest countries, from any real regulatory discussion on pollution has been a mistake.
Governments such as the US federal one are the biggest consumers on the planet and produce immense amounts of pollution and should be the first required to make changes to meet any new pollution lowering commitments. State and local governments next and then 10 years late
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My fish Freddy's bowl is a globe shape. Must an inventory of the fish bowl.
bowl
rocks
plant
dihydrogen monoxide
Freddy
I had no idea that Freddy was doing Space Launches and Re-entries. Thank god someone is tracking this.
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An 'inventory' can be the act of taking stock of what you have. So a Global Inventory is cataloging all launches and reentries globally.
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A bit of a trend I've noticed is how ever since progressives discovered Elon Musk doesn't share their politics, all of a sudden they soured on the idea of spaceflight and electric cars. I suppose that's no longer what progress looks like to them. Especially Bernie who has repeatedly endorsed the idea of getting rid of spaceflight outright, even seizing it from the private sector to "feed starving children" (his words.)
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So then why is Three Mile Island being started back up?
Hint: There is profit to be made.
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That's because you're talking about Greens. Greens are not environmentalists. They are the people who killed the environmentalist movement from inside.
You mean DOUBLE COUNTED. (Score:1)
THe quantities are ALREADY assayed.
What's being done is the pseudo-envronmental wonks are now totting it up on the front end AND the back end.
Scale matters (Score:5, Informative)
So, we're using 63,000 tons of rocket fuel per year. How does that compare to the ~73,000 tons of fuel that a *single* large container ship would use in a year?
We have a few hundred rocket launches per year. But there are thousands of container ships. And tens of thousands of aircraft. And billions of cars.
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Exactly. And it doesn't really matter if we save the world from pollution if we can't stop an asteroid hitting Earth, so developing rocket technology is environmental friendly.
Small compared to space dust (Score:3)
12,000 tons of satellites and debris (mostly rocket parts) over 3 years.
NASA says over 100 tons of space dust enters the atmosphere every day. That's over 100,000 tons in that time.
And? (Score:2)