4 ms·
Here’s some numbers I looked up: Average co2 from a car per year: 4.6 metric tons (https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger
by geuis 8y ago
Here’s some numbers I looked up:
Average co2 from a car per year: 4.6 metric tons (https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...)
co2 output from a Falcon 9 launch: 440,000kg or 440 metric tons (https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/13082/calculate-falcon-9-co2-emissions https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/13082/calculate-fa...)
So a single launch is about 95 cars worth of exhaust a year, give or take.
There were 21 SpaceX launches last year (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_...)
The number of launches is expect to increase to 30-40 a year (previous source).
Let’s go with 35 launches per year. And remember we’re disregarding all other rockets launches in the world.
35 x 95 = 3325 cars worth of emissions per year.
It’s definitely not great. However it’s such a tiny drop in the bucket overall that it’s not even a rounding error. I think cows produce more methane per year. I’m on mobile at the moment so not gonna look up those numbers.
Rockets get terrible gas mileage.