Briefs: Ozone and rocket exhausts; CO2: rockets vs airliners

A paper on ozone damage from rocket flights is in the news today:
/-- Will Rocket Launches Deplete the Ozone? - Universe Today
/-- Rocket traffic: Will it damage the atmosphere? - Los Angeles Times

I haven't seen the paper but from the descriptions in the news articles and from the fact that it is published in a journal called Astropolitics, it seems to deal more with the need for a regulatory regime for the time when rocket traffic grows by some orders of magnitude above current levels. The paper apparently takes for granted a certain amount of damage per flight, regardless of the type of propellants.
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By chance Rob Coppinger has a posting today about an ongoing ESA study on space tourism and the environment that concludes, based on preliminary evidence, "that suborbital passengers have a smaller carbon footprint than those that travel on airliners": ESA space tourism environmental impact study goes on - Hyperbola.

Posted 04/02/09 | 12:56:55 by TopSpacer | Filed under: Propulsion

Comments

This is stupid.
CO2 yaaaah....ok

Posted by CO2 scam at 04/03/09 08:18:37

Mostly likely because space tourism vehicles are not point to point, spend more time in thinner atmosphere, and are not loaded down with cargo, baggage and food and beverage service. They will be very small, light vehicle that will carry a handful of people 60 miles up and then take them right back down to where they started. This is like comparing apples and walnuts.

Posted by D. Messier at 04/06/09 00:02:16

Hi Doug,

"like comparing apples and walnuts."

Well, firstly, the Spacepolitics article is about ozone while the ESA study is about CO2. So I wasn't claiming there was a direct comparison; just noting that there happen to be two rocket/atmosphere items on the same day, one with negative implications and the second much less so.

Secondly, suborbital space tourism has the potential eventually to involve far more flights, perhaps several per day worldwide, than orbital flights. So their exhaust is bound to become an issue long before it will with orbital (as I understand it, the Spacepolitics paper is talking about a time when orbital flight rates are 100 times that of today.) Their total exhausts per year might very well exceed that of orbital, particularly for that released within the stratosphere (~10-50km).

Thirdly, if the Spacepolitics paper treats all propellants as having equal ozone effects, that seems like treating a whole produce market range of fruits and nuts the same. I'd like to see some data that proves that to be the case.

- Clark

Posted by TopSpacer at 04/06/09 01:07:39

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