Don’t Worry Just Yet

Don’t Worry Just Yet


The British science journal, Nature, posted an article entitled, “Space tourism to accelerate climate change,” On October 22, 2010, at the URL

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101022/full/news.2010.558.html

They cited some preliminary research suggesting that a thousand commercial space launches, particularly those such as Virgin Galactic that burn a rubber-like propellant, might put soot in the upper atmosphere and cause significant global warming.

I have a little historical note. Roughly thirty-five years ago, there were environmental concerns about hundreds or even thousands of flights by the Space Shuttle fleet. Ammonium perchlorate in the solid rocket boosters put a sizable amount of chlorine ions into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere during each launch. However, the number of flights never went into even dozens per year. Considering that history, I suggest that it's premature to worry about the Rutan-Branson space plane. When, and if, they achieve a hundred flights per year, there will be real empirical data about soot retention times in the atmosphere, soot lifetime in the high-UV superoxide environment of the stratosphere, and the amount of any potential could maybe might climatic impacts.

Still, it was good to admit that soot is a major warming agent. Soot is a pollutant. Soot damages health of people exposed. It can be removed from exhausts much more easily than carbon dioxide. Indeed, the investments to reduce soot emissions often involve better combustion processes that reduce fuel use enough to ... be profitable.

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