this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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The New Space Race Is Causing New Pollution Problems | Earth’s stratosphere has never seen the amounts of emissions and waste from rockets and satellites that a booming space economy will leave behind (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I'm not sold on the argument that it's okay to do this bad thing because other things are worse. No cows are farting in the stratosphere, the article is mostly about high altitude emissions being significantly worse. None of that cloud that showed up on radar was on fire.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I agree that they have to do better. That cloud was likely a flameout that blew methane out before termination when the oxygen ran low.

I consider that these tests have to have some tolerance for failure as the finished product shouldn't result in any venting except in an accident.

The alternatives like keralox, solid fuel or hypergolics have worse emissions in actual operation and hydralox wastes vast amounts of energy refining and chilling liquid hydrogen, so getting the methalox cycle running will be a net benefit once testing is complete.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Indeed, they're all bad. If they manage to meet the design brief and have starship launching daily the 'drop in the bucket' argument will quickly lose its strength.

Those clouds were from the booster and then the ship exploding, the booster was supposed to return to the landing site and the ship was supposed to fly around to Hawaii. They were far from empty as evidenced by the clouds on the radar. Engine cut off does indeed leak fuel, you can see it on the video. Same as at startup. Spacex would have to tell us how much.

I find it very concerning since I fully expect spacex to pull it off and get these things launching as regularly as airplanes. I've soured on the hand waving it off as necessary to the Progress Of Man. It's looking more like this is all for the Progress Of One Man's Pocket Book.