Companies including SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Space Adventures want to make space tourism available to the general public. And it turns out that many people are interested.
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However, in the midst of the current climate crisis on Earth, sending billionaires to outer space with rockets is not an environmentally friendly decision.
The reason is, the burning rocket goes through a large amount of propellant to take off and land. Whether it’s kerosene in SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, methane in Starship, or liquid hydrogen in NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS), it burns that material and impacts Earth’s atmosphere.
No matter what fuel is used, all launches emit a lot of heat which stirs nitrogen in the atmosphere to create the annoying oxides of nitrogen.
“Depending on where they are released at high altitudes, those nitrogen oxides can contribute to ozone formation or ozone depletion,” explains Eloise Marais, professor of physical geography at University College London.
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In the stratosphere, where ozone acts as a shield against ultraviolet radiation from the sun, that heat can eat away at ozone.
While in the troposphere closer to the ground, that heat can add to ozone. Unfortunately, there it acts more like a greenhouse gas and retains heat.
Different fuels damage the atmosphere in different ways. “[Nitrogen oksida] important, of course, but there are also solid fuels that burn and produce chlorine, “Marais said.
“Chlorine contributes to the destruction of the ozone layer and is very, very efficient at doing that.”
Hydrocarbon fuels such as kerosene and methane produce carbon dioxide, a well-known greenhouse gas, as well as black carbon, aka soot, which absorbs heat and warms Earth’s temperatures even more.
Even before the launch took place, the production of propellants was already having an impact on the environment. And each launch uses thousands of tons of propellant to achieve outer space .
So it’s conceivable that if rocket launches become more common, their impact on the environment will increase.
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Marais points out that we don’t yet know the full effect of rocket fuel on the atmosphere and the environment, because researchers are just beginning to study the topic.
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