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Billionaires Claiming Climate Leadership Should Not Promote Space Tourism

36 points by betolink 5y ago

rohanphadte 5y ago
> Space tourism raises important moral questions. Should self-professed climate leaders walk the climate talk? > A paper published in Geophysical Research Letters suggests that black carbon or soot deposited in the stratosphere from the launch of 1,000 private rockets could increase polar surface temperatures by 1°C. > By some accounts, the image of Earth from Apollo 8 in 1968 led to the first Earth Day. But this is 2021, when the effects of the climate crisis are grimly visible. There is quite a moral dilemma for those elite pushing the boundaries of space + climate change.
- aeternum 5y ago
  Making these flights carbon neutral would only require a small amount of sequestration. It would likely be inconsequential if added to the cost of a ticket. Virgin Galactic's per-seat carbon footprint is equivalent to a long-haul economy airline seat. No moral dilemma but it makes good click-bait.
maxrev17 5y ago
Billionaire + climate leadership is an oxymoron!
randompwd 5y ago
Everybody everywhere should ignore anyone that publishes content on forbes.com/sites Another more sensible declaration.
cjlars 5y ago
Doesn't Blue Origin use liquid hydrogen and oxygen for the launches? I get that upstream fuel generation here is often CO2 heavy, but wouldn't it be fairly straightforward to go zero emissions for the full lifecycle of these launches?
avmich 5y ago
Blue Origin uses oxygen and hydrogen in New Shepards's engines, which are way more climate-friendly than even airplane's kerosene, not to mention hybrid engine of Virgin Galactic's SS2. Branson, having developed a working SS2, should now address issues of pollution produced by the chosen engine type. Switching to something greener is urgently needed. Space tourism can be beneficial to climate, in some indirect ways. Robust orbital payload industry could help with controlling global effects of current crisis.
- xadhominemx 5y ago
  > Switching to something greener is urgently needed. Why? Each flight produces an amount of carbon that could be removed from the atmosphere by about $20 of carbon offsets or $1000 worth of carbon capture. Finding a greener fuel would be a really bad allocation of engineering resources.
  - azornathogron 5y ago
    > removed from the atmosphere by about $20 of carbon offsets or $1000 worth of carbon capture. Carbon offsets don't remove carbon, right? Otherwise they would be equivalent to carbon capture and given how cheap they are everyone would be hailing them as an incredible solution to our CO2 emission problem. Offsets are just an agreement to emit less. Less than... well, that's kind of arbitrary I suppose, which makes the whole thing a little fishy IMHO. Anyway, I agree with your conclusion. I like the idea of billionaire space tourists paying the carbon capture cost to cover their trip though. Doesn't seem like it would cost enough for them to notice.
    - xadhominemx 5y ago
      Carbon offsets store the CO2 in plant matter that will eventually decay if not maintained. Carbon capture pumps it into the ground, where it is stored permanently - so it’s a matter of your timeframe. Personally, I prefer carbon offsets as carbon capture is likely to get much more efficient over the next 100 years (lifetime of a tree), so it’s better to pay for it later.
jjk166 5y ago
Bezos' New Shepard is fueled by liquid Hydrogen and Oxygen, it only emits water, no CO2, no soot. Branson's SpaceShipTwo does release carbon, it burns approximately 3 tons of HTPB (basically rubber) per flight. The CO2 emissions from such a flight are roughly equivalent to 3500 miles of driving per paying passenger. That $250,000 ticket leads to as much CO2 entering the atmosphere as $60 of coal. At current rates, the cost to sequester that much carbon is $210, approximately 0.8% of the ticket price. If every single billionaire on Earth each took a flight on SpaceShipTwo, it would release as much CO2 as 13 flights over the North Atlantic, of which there are normally 2500 per day. Odds are the environmental cost of getting those billionaires to Mojave would dwarf the cost of their rocket flights.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
  Odds are that a single climate conference dwarfs all the billionaire funded space missions for the next 50 years.
- melling 5y ago
  There are 100,000 commercial flights a day. What’s going on is the “hypocrisy engine in action“. “Well they can’t believe in climate change if they …” Simply watch Fox News for a few hours. It’s pure formula
persedes 5y ago
What surprisingly bugged me more than the potential climate impact was not feeling the same kind of excitement after seeing passengers in space during Virgin Galactics flight. Dunno, but I've always felt some deeper sense of wonder when seeing astronauts fly to space or onboard the ISS. The vision to start a company like that aside, space tourists just had to shell out enough cash to go up there. This alone might be an exciting thought for us as a species, but it imho isn't what space travel should be about. It's hard to find any purpose in just shooting rich people to space.
- aerospace_guy 5y ago
  When commercial airplanes started out, people said the same thing about it being for rich people only. That's how these expensive things start. One day, the cost of these flights will be much lower, to the point where you and I can afford them. Hopefully that day is during our lifetime.
  - persedes 5y ago
    true, but with airplanes they can at least take you from A to B, so they serve at least some purpose. Interesting point though, airships come to mind that essentially were just floating cafes / restaurants.
  - JohnFen 5y ago
    > One day, the cost of these flights will be much lower, to the point where you and I can afford them. My fear is that this will happen without solving the environmental harm this will bring.
reedx8 5y ago
The longterm survivability of this planet, including environmental health, depends on our species becoming space faring. The focus of our attention should instead be on rebuilding our infrastructure based on renewable energy, replacing fossil fuel companies, and transitioning to more dense living in urban areas to mitigate urban sprawl. Not space tourism or elite "billionaires" -- completely unhelpful. Unfortunately, few people understand this.
commandlinefan 5y ago
Contrary view: the only realistically sustainable way to address climate change is to colonize other planets and offload population, which starts with space travel.
- Nevermark 5y ago
  I like the positivity, but the clean energy needed to set up 90% of the population off Earth with a quality life, won't be available any time soon. Clearly, the right short term solution is to freeze people.
- rm445 5y ago
  We're at the bottom of a deep gravity well. The vast majority of us are never getting out of the well - unless you're talking about after a population collapse. Thankfully, we're based on replicators - we could colonize the galaxy by sending out only small numbers. But barring some very far-future tech, each fertile world is going to carry a large immobile population, and we're going to have to learn not to trash planets.
- clydethefrog 5y ago
  I never get this thought pattern - how would humanity be able to colonize other planets that are not liveable if we cannot even sustain living on our own?

36 points by betolink 5y ago

> Space tourism raises important moral questions. Should self-professed climate leaders walk the climate talk? > A paper published in Geophysical Research Letters suggests that black carbon or soot deposited in the stratosphere from the launch of 1,000 private rockets could increase polar surface temperatures by 1°C. > By some accounts, the image of Earth from Apollo 8 in 1968 led to the first Earth Day. But this is 2021, when the effects of the climate crisis are grimly visible. There is quite a moral dilemma for those elite pushing the boundaries of space + climate change.

aeternum 5y ago
Making these flights carbon neutral would only require a small amount of sequestration. It would likely be inconsequential if added to the cost of a ticket. Virgin Galactic's per-seat carbon footprint is equivalent to a long-haul economy airline seat. No moral dilemma but it makes good click-bait.

maxrev17 5y ago

Billionaire + climate leadership is an oxymoron!

randompwd 5y ago

Everybody everywhere should ignore anyone that publishes content on forbes.com/sites Another more sensible declaration.

cjlars 5y ago

Doesn't Blue Origin use liquid hydrogen and oxygen for the launches? I get that upstream fuel generation here is often CO2 heavy, but wouldn't it be fairly straightforward to go zero emissions for the full lifecycle of these launches?

avmich 5y ago

Blue Origin uses oxygen and hydrogen in New Shepards's engines, which are way more climate-friendly than even airplane's kerosene, not to mention hybrid engine of Virgin Galactic's SS2. Branson, having developed a working SS2, should now address issues of pollution produced by the chosen engine type. Switching to something greener is urgently needed. Space tourism can be beneficial to climate, in some indirect ways. Robust orbital payload industry could help with controlling global effects of current crisis.

xadhominemx 5y ago
> Switching to something greener is urgently needed. Why? Each flight produces an amount of carbon that could be removed from the atmosphere by about $20 of carbon offsets or $1000 worth of carbon capture. Finding a greener fuel would be a really bad allocation of engineering resources.
- azornathogron 5y ago
  > removed from the atmosphere by about $20 of carbon offsets or $1000 worth of carbon capture. Carbon offsets don't remove carbon, right? Otherwise they would be equivalent to carbon capture and given how cheap they are everyone would be hailing them as an incredible solution to our CO2 emission problem. Offsets are just an agreement to emit less. Less than... well, that's kind of arbitrary I suppose, which makes the whole thing a little fishy IMHO. Anyway, I agree with your conclusion. I like the idea of billionaire space tourists paying the carbon capture cost to cover their trip though. Doesn't seem like it would cost enough for them to notice.
  - xadhominemx 5y ago
    Carbon offsets store the CO2 in plant matter that will eventually decay if not maintained. Carbon capture pumps it into the ground, where it is stored permanently - so it’s a matter of your timeframe. Personally, I prefer carbon offsets as carbon capture is likely to get much more efficient over the next 100 years (lifetime of a tree), so it’s better to pay for it later.

jjk166 5y ago

Bezos' New Shepard is fueled by liquid Hydrogen and Oxygen, it only emits water, no CO2, no soot. Branson's SpaceShipTwo does release carbon, it burns approximately 3 tons of HTPB (basically rubber) per flight. The CO2 emissions from such a flight are roughly equivalent to 3500 miles of driving per paying passenger. That $250,000 ticket leads to as much CO2 entering the atmosphere as $60 of coal. At current rates, the cost to sequester that much carbon is $210, approximately 0.8% of the ticket price. If every single billionaire on Earth each took a flight on SpaceShipTwo, it would release as much CO2 as 13 flights over the North Atlantic, of which there are normally 2500 per day. Odds are the environmental cost of getting those billionaires to Mojave would dwarf the cost of their rocket flights.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
Odds are that a single climate conference dwarfs all the billionaire funded space missions for the next 50 years.
melling 5y ago
There are 100,000 commercial flights a day. What’s going on is the “hypocrisy engine in action“. “Well they can’t believe in climate change if they …” Simply watch Fox News for a few hours. It’s pure formula

persedes 5y ago

What surprisingly bugged me more than the potential climate impact was not feeling the same kind of excitement after seeing passengers in space during Virgin Galactics flight. Dunno, but I've always felt some deeper sense of wonder when seeing astronauts fly to space or onboard the ISS. The vision to start a company like that aside, space tourists just had to shell out enough cash to go up there. This alone might be an exciting thought for us as a species, but it imho isn't what space travel should be about. It's hard to find any purpose in just shooting rich people to space.

aerospace_guy 5y ago
When commercial airplanes started out, people said the same thing about it being for rich people only. That's how these expensive things start. One day, the cost of these flights will be much lower, to the point where you and I can afford them. Hopefully that day is during our lifetime.
- persedes 5y ago
  true, but with airplanes they can at least take you from A to B, so they serve at least some purpose. Interesting point though, airships come to mind that essentially were just floating cafes / restaurants.
- JohnFen 5y ago
  > One day, the cost of these flights will be much lower, to the point where you and I can afford them. My fear is that this will happen without solving the environmental harm this will bring.

reedx8 5y ago

The longterm survivability of this planet, including environmental health, depends on our species becoming space faring. The focus of our attention should instead be on rebuilding our infrastructure based on renewable energy, replacing fossil fuel companies, and transitioning to more dense living in urban areas to mitigate urban sprawl. Not space tourism or elite "billionaires" -- completely unhelpful. Unfortunately, few people understand this.

commandlinefan 5y ago

Contrary view: the only realistically sustainable way to address climate change is to colonize other planets and offload population, which starts with space travel.

Nevermark 5y ago
I like the positivity, but the clean energy needed to set up 90% of the population off Earth with a quality life, won't be available any time soon. Clearly, the right short term solution is to freeze people.
rm445 5y ago
We're at the bottom of a deep gravity well. The vast majority of us are never getting out of the well - unless you're talking about after a population collapse. Thankfully, we're based on replicators - we could colonize the galaxy by sending out only small numbers. But barring some very far-future tech, each fertile world is going to carry a large immobile population, and we're going to have to learn not to trash planets.
clydethefrog 5y ago
I never get this thought pattern - how would humanity be able to colonize other planets that are not liveable if we cannot even sustain living on our own?