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There is nothing to rebut. Financially and ecologically this is not worse than manufacturing products in China and shipping them all over the world, or usual

There is nothing to rebut. Financially and ecologically this is not worse than manufacturing products in China and shipping them all over the world, or usual stuff like tourism, cloud computing etc. I would argue that Starship is even more ecological than the other rockets, as it requires a cleaner fuel than Falcon (methane vs kerosene) and should be fully reusable (i.e. no tossing the rocket in the ocean and hoping it will sink). If we manage to bootstrap space manufacturing, benefits for ecology, biology and material science are also self-evident.

h0l0cube 5y ago
> There is nothing to rebut. And yet nothing in any response so far counters my claim that capital expenditure on space projects will likely increase exponentially. The only claim I made, and the one I was downvoted for. > I would argue that Starship is even more ecological than the other rockets Methalox combusts to CO2. As the burgeoning space industry scales up exponentially, so will the emissions. https://everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Rocket-Emission-Totals-1536x864.jpg https://everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Roc... > If we manage to bootstrap space manufacturing, benefits for ecology, biology and material science are also self-evident. Not 100% self-evident. Apart from how infeasible this is from the outset, once deployed at scale it would require transporting millions of tons of goods and raw materials back and forth against the gravity of the earth. Not my domain, but I'm not sure there's a combustible fuel that could have the energy density to do this and not pollute the atmosphere (happy to be corrected on this). It seems we need to find a completely new means of propulsion (or offsetting with carbon capture) before we could have a green space industry.
- thinkcontext 5y ago
  > Methalox combusts to CO2. As the burgeoning space industry scales up exponentially, so will the emissions. Methane can be manufactured to be carbon neutral. The cost is prohibitive for everyday on the ground energy use but not so for rocket launches, since fuel is such a tiny portion of the cost of a flight. Musk has mentioned the possibility of doing this.
  - practice9 5y ago
    They need to figure out ISRU for Starship methane refueling on Mars, but I don't think it will be ready for the cargo launches. Probably can expect it to be deployed before the first Mars crew launches though
  - h0l0cube 5y ago
    It's a much better outcome, but remains to be seen whether it goes beyond a talking point and can scale to meet future demand. Also, depositing GHGs like water vapor and CO2 in the upper atmosphere is a somewhat worse proposition than ground level emissions
- practice9 5y ago
  > It seems we need to find a completely new means of propulsion (or offsetting with carbon capture) before we could have a green space industry. Space elevators would be a cool solution, but they are in the realm of science fiction for now. So deploying at least some carbon capture solutions before space industry begins to scale actively is a good idea

h0l0cube 5y ago

> There is nothing to rebut. And yet nothing in any response so far counters my claim that capital expenditure on space projects will likely increase exponentially. The only claim I made, and the one I was downvoted for. > I would argue that Starship is even more ecological than the other rockets Methalox combusts to CO2. As the burgeoning space industry scales up exponentially, so will the emissions. https://everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Rocket-Emission-Totals-1536x864.jpg https://everydayastronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Roc... > If we manage to bootstrap space manufacturing, benefits for ecology, biology and material science are also self-evident. Not 100% self-evident. Apart from how infeasible this is from the outset, once deployed at scale it would require transporting millions of tons of goods and raw materials back and forth against the gravity of the earth. Not my domain, but I'm not sure there's a combustible fuel that could have the energy density to do this and not pollute the atmosphere (happy to be corrected on this). It seems we need to find a completely new means of propulsion (or offsetting with carbon capture) before we could have a green space industry.

thinkcontext 5y ago
> Methalox combusts to CO2. As the burgeoning space industry scales up exponentially, so will the emissions. Methane can be manufactured to be carbon neutral. The cost is prohibitive for everyday on the ground energy use but not so for rocket launches, since fuel is such a tiny portion of the cost of a flight. Musk has mentioned the possibility of doing this.
- practice9 5y ago
  They need to figure out ISRU for Starship methane refueling on Mars, but I don't think it will be ready for the cargo launches. Probably can expect it to be deployed before the first Mars crew launches though
- h0l0cube 5y ago
  It's a much better outcome, but remains to be seen whether it goes beyond a talking point and can scale to meet future demand. Also, depositing GHGs like water vapor and CO2 in the upper atmosphere is a somewhat worse proposition than ground level emissions
practice9 5y ago
> It seems we need to find a completely new means of propulsion (or offsetting with carbon capture) before we could have a green space industry. Space elevators would be a cool solution, but they are in the realm of science fiction for now. So deploying at least some carbon capture solutions before space industry begins to scale actively is a good idea