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The technology advancements from the development of space are very significant and have big impacts for everyone back on the surface. I haven't looked into it,

The technology advancements from the development of space are very significant and have big impacts for everyone back on the surface. I haven't looked into it, but I'd guess those from yachts and the like are far less substantial. > launches are pretty terrible, environmentally speaking Individual launches are quite bad when compared to things like a single car. But on a macro scale, my understanding is that they are a rounding error on a rounding error. I've heard the statistic that each orbital launch is the equivalent to the emissions of the cars of a few hundred people. There are currently about 100 orbital launches per year across the world. So even if we increased the number of launches by 100-fold (which would be absolutely bonkers -- feasible, but bonkers), it would a very small fraction of all non-commercial auto emissions in the US alone, for example. Of course, this is only looking at greenhouse gas emissions, which I think is the most pressing issue. I'm less familiar with broader potential environmental issues with launches, so perhaps I'm missing something important there. Edit: Fix a math error and cleaned up the comment in general.

JohnFen 5y ago
> The technology advancements from the development of space are very significant and have big impacts for everyone back on the surface. This is true, and I'm not arguing that there's no value in space exploration. I'm arguing that making going into space something that is common is a highly questionable goal, and isn't necessary in order to get the technological advancements that come with learning how to operate in space. And, more to the point of the topic at hand, there is no value to sending business executives into space at all. > I've heard the statistic that each orbital launch is the equivalent to the emissions of the cars of a few hundred people. That may be -- but an orbital launch can't carry anywhere near as many people as a few hundred cars, even if there's one driver per car. The proper way to measure this isn't to compare # of launches with # of cars, but the amount of pollution and fuel use per a standard unit mass of payload. And cars (as well as airplanes) are actually good examples of why the increase in space launches concerns me. Both planes and cars are very harsh on the environment. But that wasn't a real issue until using them became possible to untold millions of people.

JohnFen 5y ago

> The technology advancements from the development of space are very significant and have big impacts for everyone back on the surface. This is true, and I'm not arguing that there's no value in space exploration. I'm arguing that making going into space something that is common is a highly questionable goal, and isn't necessary in order to get the technological advancements that come with learning how to operate in space. And, more to the point of the topic at hand, there is no value to sending business executives into space at all. > I've heard the statistic that each orbital launch is the equivalent to the emissions of the cars of a few hundred people. That may be -- but an orbital launch can't carry anywhere near as many people as a few hundred cars, even if there's one driver per car. The proper way to measure this isn't to compare # of launches with # of cars, but the amount of pollution and fuel use per a standard unit mass of payload. And cars (as well as airplanes) are actually good examples of why the increase in space launches concerns me. Both planes and cars are very harsh on the environment. But that wasn't a real issue until using them became possible to untold millions of people.