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What about the environmental impact of Starship? If you have multiple international flights per day that will leave a very large impact.
by sschueller 6y ago
What about the environmental impact of Starship? If you have multiple international flights per day that will leave a very large impact.
- danpalmer 6y agoGreat video here about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4VHfmiwuv4&list=PLWzKfs3icbT606L4GDeUxJD-pXynjhK2v&index=12 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4VHfmiwuv4&list=PLWzKfs3icb... The summary is that yes they pollute a lot for what they are, but compared to almost any other major polluting industry (travel, freight, construction, etc) it's barely anything and won't be much of a problem for a long time.
- yepthatsreality 6y ago“it's barely anything and won't be much of a problem for a long time.” Humanity’s famous last words. Just pass the buck down the road.
- danpalmer 6y agoYeah that's true. In this case I think it's the pragmatic approach to not stifle the space industry when there's so much we could be doing (and aren't) elsewhere, but we do definitely have to sort this problem before it becomes a big one. Maybe governments legislating a sliding scale of regulation or cap here would be a good idea? Like, nothing to do now, but as the industry or any one company grows in this way, regulation or emissions caps grow in that way.
- toss1 6y agoDefinitely true!. However, in this case, I doubt that he's interested in flying Starships around earth any more than is required to fund the Mars adventure. If there is other funding, I'd bet nobody ever gets that 90min(?) ride from Texas to Australia
- ben_w 6y agoIf it flew that often today it would have an impact, but it isn’t flying multiple times per day right now, and it will only be ready to fly its main mission when it can carry a fuel synthesiser in cargo — the explicit reason for its fuel choice is because it can be synthesised from atmospheric CO2 and water using solar energy.
- cphajduk 6y agoStarship runs on Oxygen and Methane, both are renewable, both can easily be extracted from the air. Carbon neutral.
- ryder9 6y agomethane isn't carbon neutral, what are you talking about also it's much much much much worse than carbon dioxide by itself at the greenhouse effect
- 0_____0 6y ago100% carbon neutral once fusion power makes the electricity needed to do air-to-fuel conversion basically free.
- DennisP 6y agoAny renewable or nuclear energy source would make it carbon neutral. It doesn't have to be free, the fuel doesn't cost that much in the first place, so a modest percentage cost increase is fine. We know that making the methane isn't super-expensive, because we've already used the Sabatier process commercially to make methane from CO2. That used carbon-based fuels to get the CO2; to really go carbon-neutral it'd have to be biofuel, or we'd need to pull CO2 from the air using direct-air-capture machines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction#Creation_of_synthetic_natural_gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction#Creation_of_...
- cphajduk 6y agoApparently they already do this or have plans to do this with solar power: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1258308230725292032 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1258308230725292032