Billionaires are racing to space—and the climate is paying the price, writes jeffreykluger
is just a blip. Since 2020, Virgin has carried only a single crew of space tourists, SpaceX has carried two, and Blue Origin has carried five, just since last July. But that slow start belies big plans.
Of all of the pollutants the rockets release, it is the black soot that causes the greatest concern. Conventional airplanes and other vehicles create plenty of heat trapping soot of their own, but not nearly as high in the sky as rockets do. When expelled into the upper atmosphere—at altitudes of 50 km or more—black soot is 500 times more efficient at causing warming than it is when emitted by, say, a commercial airliner flying at a mere 11,000 m .
The private rocket companies push back at this, especially Bezos’s Blue Origin, which uses liquid hydrogen and oxygen as its fuel and thus produces less-damaging exhaust. “New Shepard’s engine is fueled by highly efficient and clean liquid oxygen and hydrogen. During flight, the only byproduct of New Shepard’s engine combustion is water vapor with no carbon emissions,” said a company spokesperson in an email to TIME. Water vapor, however, does have a greenhouse gas impact.
Even at the 2019 rate of launches, the researchers predict an increase in ozone loss of 8.5 parts per billion, or 10% of the ozone recovery achieved by the Montreal accords, by the end of this decade. Add the billionaire rocketeers into the mix, and the loss jumps to 13 parts per billion—or 16% of what was recovered by Montreal.
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