Rockets are a marvel to behold. Even as more are being launched into the atmosphere these past few years than ever before. But considering the amounts that are being shot up into the atmosphere isn’t that a bad thing? Aren’t we just emitting so much pollution up there? Well I’ve done some research on the topic to find out what is what.
Will SpaceX pollute Mars? While rocket launching these days is insignificant in terms of emissions, the introduction of the falcon heavy from SpaceX and the number of launches Musk plans to do is cause for concern. We can quickly be in danger if the situation continues and we’re not being careful.
But to truly understand why this can be a growing concern, it’s important to know about the impact that rocket launches have on the environment. Below I’ll be discussing what goes on in a rocket launch chemical wise and why it’s not that big of a deal currently.
What Kind of Pollution & Severity Does A Rocket Emit Normally?
To understand how much pollution comes out, it’s important to know what is being emitted in the first place. After all when you see videos of any kind of rocket being launched out, there is always a big billow of smoke coming out of it. That can’t be good for the planet right?
Not to mention what’s with NASA – the organization that monitors our atmosphere – as well as minds like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos talking about and taking steps towards protecting the environment while also launching rockets all the time? Isn’t that hypocritical of them?
Well not exactly, on both accounts
Rockets produce a handful of emissions as the fuel for rockets are a mixture of various fuels. You’ve got carbon dioxide along with water vapor, carbon soot, carbon monoxide (which often becomes carbon dioxide as well), NOx, chlorine, alumina and sulfuric compounds. Rockets will have varying degrees of these chemicals when lifting off, however they can have other chemicals beyond these too. I won’t mention them because the traces of other gasses outside of these are insignificant compared to those I just mentioned.
Based on those gases alone, the EPA considers nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and carbon monoxides/dioxides as harmful to our atmosphere. As such, chlorine, alumina and nitrogen oxides have been heavily monitored and restricted in how much can be used at a time.
Beyond that, other chemicals mentioned contribute to greenhouse gases or act as them, absorbing heat and being trapped within the atmosphere. Every one of these chemicals are harmful to the environment – no doubt about that.
However, there are some factors to consider about all this:
- First, the industry has made leaps and bounds in this industry in terms of fuel.
- Second, the frequency of rockets being launched isn’t as problematic despite the chemicals being harmful.
- Finally, SpaceX does have some alternatives they’re being mindful of when launching rockets.
Let’s look at these factors more closely.
Industry’s Fuel Emissions in Perspective
Despite technology advancing so much, the only feasible way to launch something into space is still a rocket ship. Many experts know this and have been looking into various ways to make cleaner rocket fuel. There has been some progress in this as many rockets today are propelled by liquid hydrogen fuel which produces ‘clean’ water vapour exhaust. The only rub is the production of hydrogen itself causes significant carbon emissions.
All that said, this is referring more to the rocket ships that have been launched in the past. Elon Musk has found another solution to fuelling his rocket ships which I’ll talk about later.
Furthermore, not every rocket ship is using all of those ingredients that were mentioned before. Depending on the rocket that’s being launched, some will use as little as 0 metric tonnes of CO2 to upwards of 2700 tonnes. The factors that determine this are size, what sort of fuel it uses and also if the rocket is using rocket boosters or not.
How Often Rockets Are Launched
While some of those emissions are staggering, experts say the rockets being launched make a small impact on the overall environmental impact compared to world emissions. I have to agree with this. In 2019 there were 102 launches and in 2020 94 have been launched at this point.
The amount of emissions isn’t so bad when you compare that to the emissions that a Boeing 747 emits over a long flight. For comparison a 530 km trip from this plane would release a little over 33 tonnes of CO2. Even if those numbers are quite low – especially when you compare it to a rocket that’s emitting almost 2700 tonnes of CO2 per lift-off – Boeing 747s are a common airplane used in air travel these days. Not to mention this is per flight as well. If a Boeing 747 takes off two long flights per day every day, you’re looking at one plane alone emitting roughly 23,500 tonnes of CO2 per year.
Another angle to look at this is that currently experts are comfortable with saying the emissions that rockets emit per year is a very small number. In fact it’s less than 1%. While it’s not zero, the amount is negligible when you compare it to flights but also to emissions in agriculture (which is 24%) and energy production (which is 25%). This can start to be a growing concern if organizations or other billionaires are planning to launch their own space companies and begin firing more rockets up into the atmosphere. It’s from this angle where people are concerned about Elon Musk’s plan since he is planning on launching more rockets. However, it’s not as big of a concern when you consider the steps that Musk is taking.
SpaceX’s Fuel Recycling Plan
The final factor to consider in all this is that a lot of the traditional fuel for rockets doesn’t even apply to SpaceX’s own rockets. As Elon Musk explained at a conference in 2019, his rocket’s emissions are staggering low. In fact, the rockets are the greenest rockets you can imagine.
The reason for that is that the Starships that Elon Musk created is using a fuel production plan that is different from other rockets.
While the Starship will be run on methane and oxidizer, one of the reasons SpaceX chose those as fuel is that this is in a large supply on both Mars and Earth. There is an even larger amount on Earth allowing the spacecraft to never have to make any methane either – thus allowing it to extract methane from the planet itself.
Why methane is such a big deal though is that it and the oxygen it needs to be fueled can only come from the rocket collecting water and carbon dioxide along with those gases.
Going into more detail, the fueling process entails splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen through a process called electrolysis. It’s a process that requires a lot of energy to perform which Musk covered by making the Starship solar powered. After its been split, the hydrogen will be added to the carbon dioxide that the ship will also be collecting in order to run a process called the Sabatier Process. This chemical combination is what’ll make methane and water too. The final step of the process is liquifying methane and oxygen gas into proper fuel the ship can use.
Explaining this whole process is critical since one concern people have with Musk’s plan is the fact he plans to launch these as a common way of travelling. Based off that process, these rockets should be emitting next to nothing in terms of emissions. Even as the fuel gets burned and gets released as water and CO2, these Starships clearly use these as ways of refueling.
In theory these ships can continue to release these chemicals while other ships will collect that and continue to use them as fuel repeatedly. In other words, SpaceX has created a carbon-neutral propulsion system that has no impact on the environment. The only rub is that these rockets mentioned aren’t the SpaceX Falcon Heavy’s – SpaceX’s latest rockets that Musk is planning to launch more of.
Will Elon Musk Pollute The Planet Much?
Another aspect of environmental concern for SpaceX is where the latest rockets come into play – the SpaceX Falcon Heavy. These rockets use boosters which means they emit a lot of different chemicals into the air. In comparison, the 27 engines create a thrust equal to 18 Boeing 747 aircrafts.
Once these rockets are launched into orbit, the world’s heaviest rocket will have burned 400 metric tons of kerosene and emit more CO2 than what an average car would make in two centuries.
That amount is staggering to our atmosphere, especially as Musk is planning to send more of these rockets into space. It gets even worse when Musk is also competing with other companies who have launched space programs of their own – such as Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson. With these new players involved, it’s to be expected that the barely 100 or so rocket launches in a year will sky rocket into the 1,000s per year.
What’s worse is that not everyone is planning on producing fuel in the way Musk described in his fueling production plan in 2019. He clearly isn’t when it comes to the Falcon Heavy as it requires different fuel.
However that doesn’t mean that Musk isn’t thinking about it at all.
When looking back at spacecraft production over the years, they’ve emitted all kinds of different chemicals of course. But that was how the industry functioned at the time. The big concern was always performance and cost.
Those two concerns are somewhat lessened now thanks to Musk and others getting into this industry making it possible for start-ups to sprout up and begin working in this new and growing industry..
Now the focus is more on the environment which Musk is helping out in areas that he can. One was in the fuel production plan he has with some of his smaller rockets emitting no emissions at all with that plan implemented. He’s also making efforts in developing the methane-powered Raptor engine which is built around burning the greenhouse gas while refueling on Mars.
Other space programs are coming up with other environmentally friendly ways as well to use liquid hydrogen or launch lightweight rockets that can be launched several times
This has led to a lot of innovation since some of the chemicals and materials that rockets use for launch are somewhat necessary. For example soot that rockets leave were used in rockets that have rocket boosters. Soot -also called black carbon – stems from the use of kerosene to fuel rockets. The problem with soot is that it has a huge impact on the environment as it gets trapped in the higher layers of the atmosphere. If more rockets are launched then this will contribute more to greenhouse gases.
Thankfully companies have been working around that. Not only striving to be carbon-neutral by using some of Elon Musk’s ideas of methane extraction, but also looking for ways to cut down on soot produced. One example is Orbex, a British rocket maker who has produced rockets for the US that have reduced CO2 and aren’t running on any kerosene – and therefore soot.
Why this is so important is that in order for people to be interested in space travel, environmental considerations are going to be on people’s minds. Therefore Musk and others would be more considerate about climate and how they plan to build rockets in the future. At least in theory.
Are There Other Environmental Concerns?
Outside of the pollution that rockets emit, there is one other concern that’s worth looking at – the amount of space debris. Even though the gases rockets emit isn’t a growing problem, the amount of objects floating outside of space is immense. Right now there are over 150 million objects that are floating outside of the atmosphere. All of these things need tracking to ensure that a spacecraft doesn’t collide into them.
While that might not be as big of a problem with a big spacecraft, smaller things like Elon Musk launching a car into space can be an issue. For example, any impact or degradation that occurs to the car near Mars can result in pollution on the planet.
What’s worse is this problem will be a larger concern as Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk plan to launch more things in the air. Over the next seven years, Musk plans to launch 12,000 more satellites for its Starlink internet constellation. On top of that, the space industry before that will be launching more satellites overall. This year it’s launched 443 satellites, three times more than what was launched a decade earlier.
This is on top of the rockets being launched into space and detaching parts of the rocket to float in space. It’s not a huge concern now since launches are happening in the hundreds, but with launches rapidly increasing this will be a larger problem soon.
Another concern for the future is whether or not the rockets that are being launched in the future are thoroughly cleaned. While the launch of a vehicle into space is pretty cool, another thing to ask is whether the car was built in a perfectly clean room.
The reason why that’s a concern is bacteria from Earth could in theory be spread through the solar system. Especially if the car collided with something else – which it did. This is a concern at a time where scientists are making plans to search for life on neighboring planets like Mars and Jupiter’s moon Europa.
If scientists were to check those areas and find microorganisms there or bacteria, this could be a sign that life is there and that we’re not alone. It can mean a whole lot of different things from that the place could be habitable and more.
Because of that possibility, it’s a concern that we’re doing so many launches. If rockets aren’t cleaned well enough, bacteria and other microorganisms can persist and could possibly land on Mars. What’s worse is we wouldn’t even know if it came from Earth or if it was on Mars naturally.
This time we’re lucky that the vehicle is heading towards the asteroid belt rather than Mars, but we might not be fortunate next time. We could make poor judgement calls because we’re more focused on launching things into space now more than ever before.
Final Thoughts
No matter how you look at it rockets will be creating pollution in some way. This can be in the form of debris floating through space or from the rocket fuel it makes and leaves behind in the atmosphere. The good news is that companies and rocket makers are aware of these concerns and are taking steps where they can in mitigating the damage. At this point, this is all that we could hope for.