As space travel is included in the future of humanity, rocket launches will become more frequent, and Musk is planning to send us to colonize Mars with 1,000 rockets.
But before that, we may have overlooked a problem:
Can space travel bring harm to the planet?
Travel site Champion Traveler The results of a new analysis indicate that the answer to this question is yes.
▲ Image from: Theguardian
Our research found that the SpaceX Falcon rocket’s once-to-space carbon footprint is equivalent to 395 transatlantic flights, nearly a year’s carbon emissions of 73 cars.
The team’s researchers conducted a detailed analysis of the data:
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 will burn 29,600 gallons (112,184 Kg) of highly refined kerosene, which will cost 3.0 thousand for every kilogram of kerosene burned.The carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere, so the Falcon 9 is launched once, which is equivalent to about 336,552 kilograms of carbon dioxide.
▲ Falcon 9 will put 60 Starlink satellites into orbit
They believe that this will bring an inevitable impact to the Earth’s climate crisis in the future and become a major force in aggravating global climate change.
Although the number of rockets launched from the Earth is not enough to see specific hazards, these emissions are only a small fraction of the annual carbon dioxide emissions of humans, but the problem needs to be pre-processed, especially NASA, Virgin Galactic Space agencies such as Blue Origin and SpaceX are developing space travel, and many start-ups are rushing into this circuit.
Although it seems that space travel is still Billionaire’s “games”, but in the futureThe experience will no longer be limited to the super rich, but will become more normal.
From Virgin Galactic alone, they have now earned at least 600 space passengers and It is expected that by 2023, passengers will be sent off every 32 hours on average, and there will be more than one “space travel” every other day.
▲Image from: Commondreams
As rocket launches become more common, one thing people need to think about is how these vehicles can affect the Earth’s atmosphere on a large scale. A company like SpaceX,It is now necessary to consider the impact of its rocket launch on the environment.
There is currently no good solution. If you want to start with the source of carbon emissions, the difficulty is that there is no alternative fuel for carbon emissions.
But this does not mean that it will stop rocket launches or space travel, but the surprisingly high carbon emissions in the report may motivate us to use more innovations to cope with the endless crisis under technological development.