The Query: What is the carbon footprint of space tourism?
The Response: If 2012 is the year that commercial space flight takes off, it’s also the year that we need to start worrying about the climate impact of space flight.
But, like space, our knowledge of the subject is largely void, since there’s relatively little private activity in space. However, a 2010 study of the topic in the journal Geophysical Research Letters presented a grim picture: the authors found that 1,000 private launches a year into space could, over a decade, have the same climate change impacts of the entire commercial aircraft fleet.
The analysis turned on private space flight companies’ use of “hybrid” rocket engines, which ignite synthetic hydrocarbon with nitrous oxide and emit more black carbon than the kerosene-oxygen rocket fuel used by traditional space propulsion systems. So it’s a “carbon footprint,” but not in the way we’ve come to expect.
via Txchnologist
February 1, 2012
