March 30, 2016 • 31 mins
Do rocket launches have a significant environmental impact? And if our future has a lot more space travel in store, what does that mean for us?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome tough Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says burning out
his views up here alone. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm
(00:23):
Joe Mccormickin today, we're gonna be talking about rockets. And
if you know us and you know this show, you
know we love rockets. So there is not a chance
in heck that we are here to bash rockets today.
But since we sometimes talk about environmental impact on the show,
and since rockets seem, by their very nature to involve
(00:44):
an awful lot of burning and emitting of substances, we
thought it might be worth asking what exactly is the
environmental impact of a rocket launch and what can we
do about that impact. Yeah, now, assuming of course that
the environmental impact would be bad enough that we would
need to do something. And when you first start looking
(01:05):
around at the problem, you might think, oh, this isn't
that big a deal, until you start thinking, wait a minute,
We're heading to a future where we're really stressing how space.
Getting into space is getting easier and easier. Things like
reusable rockets, the private space industry. So this is actually
something that we should think about now before it does
become the next huge environmental problem. Right, and we can
(01:27):
get into more of the details of that later. But Lauren,
did you say that this was actually a listener request?
I'm pretty sure it was, and I unfortunately didn't write
down the name of the lovely human who sent it in,
So I am so sorry, lovely human. Thank you for
listening and for suggesting, and this is your episode congratulations.
Now we should also point out that no less an
(01:48):
authority than Sir Richard Branson tells us we have nothing
to worry about. Well, whatever he tells us, we'll just
take that's an objective, biased opinion, very short episode. Not
it all related to the fact that he is overseeing
Virgin Galactic space tourism industry. But what does he actually say?
He actually says, and this this is something that could
(02:11):
also be true. But you know, you still have to
think about the implications here that the actual carbon dioxide
emissions so CEO two, specifically from a rocket launch are less,
at least for our Virgin Galactic style rocket launch, which
is a little different from other ones because that would
use a larger plane that would then launch a spacecraft
(02:33):
from the plane while the plane is already in air.
But he says the total CEO two emissions would be
less than a round trip flight from New York to London,
normal flight, not space flights. So like, if you were
to get on a plane and fly to London and
then party in London for a week, and then get
back on a plane and fly back to New York,
the CEO two emissions from those two flights would be
(02:55):
greater than a virgin galactic rocket flight. Oh, then there's
no big deal. Let's have all the space launches. I mean,
I'm just going to trade off all those trips to
London I take with trips to space, and and I'm
like reducing my carbon footprint right, not so fast, slick, Okay,
So we should look at what some scientists have actually
(03:15):
found on the subject of the environmental impact of rocket launches,
and we should preface this by saying, of course, not
all rockets are the same. So yeah, yeah, there are
lots of different combinations of combustants out there, and of
course they therefore all produce different emissions in different quantities.
And so rather than like go through each type exhaustively,
we're going to talk about some of the wide ranging
(03:37):
effects that are seen. Right, you have to go through
every type of solid fuel, liquid fuel rocket, it would
it would be in its own series, and that would
get really really tedious, chemically tedious after a short while. Though,
then again, think of the pluses. I mean, just think
about how much we love trying to pronounce really long
names of chemicals. I've got one coming up pretty soon. Yeah,
(03:59):
oh man, you're in for a treat those lovers of
tetra flora hydro clocks of blocks of do Yeah, pretty sure.
That's what Mary Poppins says to make penguins dance for her.
But go ahead, okay, Well, one of the big ones.
I'm sure you guys encountered this. It seems to be
one of the most prevalent objections to the environmental impact
(04:20):
of rockets is the depletion of stratospheric ozone. So you
guys remember back in the eighties the chlorofluora carbon's controversy. Yeah,
aosol cans in particular, uh, were they were a source
for CFC's or chloro flora carbons, which if they were
to get into the stratospheric level of the atmosphere could
(04:42):
end up depleting the ozone layer, creating these holes in
the ozone layer. And ozone, as I'm sure most of
you out there are aware, is really important for us
because it absorbs ultra violet radiation. It decreases the amount
of UV radiation that we receive here on Earth. Without
that protective layer, we would be in far greater danger.
We'd be much greater risk of developing things like skin
(05:04):
cancer and other types of sun damage. Yeah, and so
rocket engines typically eject gases, and these gases come well,
not typically rocket engines always, yes, it's part of the gig.
Maybe not all space flight propellants, but but rocket rocket
engines ejected gases, and these gases can eject propellants that
(05:26):
form chemical reactions with molecules of ozone. And that's not
good because we need those molecules of ozone to be
not reacted with, to stay how they are, to hang
out they're more or less unchanged. That would be ideal,
And of course that is not what's been happening since
at least the nine seventies when we started looking at it. Yeah,
So there was a two thousand nine article in the
(05:48):
journal astro Politics the International Journal of Space Politics and Policy,
which that sounds like a good journal. I've never really
checked it out before, but I'm sure there's lots of
good talk about space law in its politics. I'm wondering
how you would fill a buster in space very quietly
in space, no one can hear you fill a buster.
(06:10):
But anyway. The article is called limits on the Space
launch Market related to Stratospheric ozone Depletion, and the authors
note that both solid rocket motors or sr M s
and liquid rocket engines l r E s both produce
emissions that have been shown to directly deplete global ozone,
and they calculate that ozone depletion UH is going to
(06:31):
be a function of payload, launch rate, and relative mix
of SRM and l r E rocket emission. So it
depends on what type you're using and what your your
payload and number of launches are. But at the time
of publication they estimated that rocket launches depleted the ozone
layer by about zero point zero three percent per year,
(06:52):
which at the time they say, okay, that's pretty much negligible,
but we'll we'll come back to that in a bit. Well,
let's let's talk about a little a bit more right now,
because it turns out that uh, that the that direct
um injection of chemicals that can react with with ozone,
that's not the only thing we have to worry about
(07:13):
that could actually affect the ozone layer. Right. Those are
the reactive gases that react with the ozone layer, but
they're also you can talk about emissions of particulate matter, right,
and aluminum oxide and soot are two of those particulates
that people have started to look at and say, this
could actually really compound that problem because they are chemically
(07:34):
reactive surfaces, meaning that the actual particles can be uh
kind of a home for other chemicals to react with ozone.
So they're not directly depleting the ozone. Rather, they are
acting as sort of a a a laboratory of sorts
for these chemical reactions to happen. It's just these are
suspended in the air as a result of being ejected
(07:56):
from the rocket as it's going through the stratosphere. So
um uh. Specifically, it says here this was from an article.
As reading, it says, the chemical reactions in question are
pretty nasty and involved the emission of gas molecules referred
to as radicals. Uh and that isn't In the nineteen eighties,
radical means awesome kind of mean. Um. It's a single
(08:17):
radical molecule in the strasphere can destroy as many as
ten thousand ozone molecules. So aluminum oxide and soot provide
the opportunity for more of this ozone killing stuff to
get into the stratosphere, and they can. They can also
in general contribute to climate change. Yeah, and now let's
talk about aluminum oxide for a second, one of the
two particulates. One of the things about alluinum oxides, besides
(08:39):
the fact that it can serve as this are um,
this launching point for chemical reactions, it's also reflective, so
it can actually reflect light that is heading towards Earth
back into space. It can, but it also does absorb
light on the infrared spectrum. So therefore it seems likely
that it could contribute to atmospheric warming and therefore to
(09:00):
climate change in the long run. It's it's one of
those like more it's it's a bigger question mark than
the soot issue. The issue is a little bit more,
uh sure, in terms of it's gonna mess and stuff up.
I guess we could say it's not all in terms
of black and silver. Let be the soot aluminium all right, anyway,
let me talk about soot for a second. So the
stuff that makes soot black is called black carbon, and
(09:22):
generally speaking, most scientists say putting black carbon directly into
the stratosphere is what we would typically say, it is
a bad thing. You don't want to do it. Uh,
it doesn't stay in the stratosphere for as long as
carbon dioxide would. Carbon dioxide can stay up for for decades,
hundreds of years even, but black carbon would only stay
(09:43):
up there for maybe five to ten years. Uh, it's
stay it's it tends to get washed out of the
lower levels of the atmosphere because precipitation will just knock
it down the air. But in the stratosphere you don't
have that to to contend with UM And according to
Popular Science, they sited to study that said black carbon
absorbs one hundred thousand times as much energy as carbon
(10:05):
dioxide emitted by rockets. So that tells you that it's
it's a power player in the in the potential for
making a climate change worse. UM. So rockets produce about
a thousand times more black carbon per unit of fuel
compared to normal aircraft. Plus rockets are traveling through the stratosphere,
(10:28):
so it's a direct injection of this stuff into the
left layer. You absolutely do not want it to go
into now, according to computer models, so these are simulations.
Obviously we don't have a ton of data about this,
but according to computer models, ring shaped cloud of black
carbon would form around the area of a launch site
where a rocket has come up. Uh. That cloud of
(10:50):
black carbon would actually have both a warming and a
cooling effect. The it would create a shade in a
certain region that would immediately start to cool it, but
it would also help trap heat, so would have warming
in certain areas and cooling and others, and it could
be pretty dramatic. We're talking of a magnitude of five degrees,
although I must add popular science and neglected to say
whether those were celsius or fahrenheit. Wait, should we either
(11:13):
assume that they're being correct and snobby and just assuming
celsius or should we assume that they're being slack and
assuming fahrenheit Joe, It's called popular science, so on worldwide
standards we can go with seals. But at any rate
that I mean five degrees is that's enormous. Like it
(11:34):
sounds like it's nothing, right, especially if you live someplace
that has a fairly dramatic switch from winter to summer,
where you've got, you know, a big range of temperatures.
Five degrees sounds like, oh, well that's nothing. No, it
is huge. Uh, when most of the climate change models
we talk about end up being well, this could be
an increase of maybe one point three degrees, and everyone
(11:55):
freaks out. This is five degrees. So in it it's
much shorter term. So it's not like something that would
last forever. If we got to a point where we
were seeing these effects, we could say we're gonna put
the hold on space launches and change things up, because
if we continue to do this will just keep the problem,
(12:16):
it will perpetuate it. Right. Also, I should add that
the model they were using was assuming a thousand launches
per year, which is an order of magnitude larger than
what we're seeing right now. It's usually about a hundred
per year. Yeah, that that would be that would be
a busy year. A hundred would be a busy year.
We'll talk more about that in a little bit, but yeah,
(12:37):
a thousand launches a year is is way more than
what we do right now. However, remember we're talking about
a future where space tourism is presumably going to be
a thing, where we reusable rockets are bringing the cost
of getting into space down. And once you start removing
those barriers, then obviously there are a lot of reasons
to try and get out into space, from science to
(12:58):
tourism to all sorts of surveillance, all kinds of reasons. Um,
it's not unreasonable to suspect that in the future we
would see around a thousand launches a year. I mean,
that's an enormous amount, but it could happen. In fact,
one company uh X core x c o R wants
(13:20):
to ramp up like when they hit full speed. They
want to be having four launches per day. Now, even
assuming that that's just work days like business days, and
removing all the popular holidays. In the United States, this
year has two hundred fifty of those days. Two fifty
times four is one thousand. So there you go. There's
(13:41):
your thousand, um uh And and it's important to keep
in mind here that the effects on the atmosphere aren't
the only effects that we're potentially looking at. No, there
are multiple reasons you might not want to be a
frog that lives near a launch site. Yeah, I generally
don't want to be a frog. I have to say.
I'm mean, I don't know they're they're real cute, but
(14:03):
I find that a narrow minded lattitude is making me think.
Wasn't there a picture of a rocket launching with a
frog hanging off of it like desperately? Yeah, this this
episode goes out to you are amphibian friend and at
any rate, but no that there are legitimately documented negative
environmental effects on the ground surrounding rocket launch site, right,
(14:25):
which is not a big surprise. You see these these
rockets taking off. Obviously massive amounts of gas are admitted
right there at ground level. Most of that, however, is
not a huge deal for the immediate area. In fact,
one of the most dangerous chemicals associated with rocket launches
wasn't really part of a rocket launch at all. It's
(14:46):
kind of a secondary chemical that was used in order
to clean rocket engines, especially after tests, So this wasn't
necessarily for a full launch. It might be a test situation,
but it would those tests would typic. We take place
at launch facilities like Kennedy Space Center. So one of
the byproducts that was particularly dangerous has tri chlora ethylene
(15:10):
or TCE. I think I got that right on the
first try. I'll never get it right again, so I'm
going to stick with t CE at any rate. That
was used to clean the engines and remove hydrocarbon deposits,
So it was in order to to clean out an
engine so that you could use it again if you
were in a testing phase. But TC, it turns out,
is a very toxic chemical. It's carcinogenic and worse than that.
(15:34):
If you put it in the ground, it can bind
with soil and sand and stay chemically active for a
really long time. It's possible for it to get into groundwater,
although not likely because it's actually more dense than water,
so it tends to sink down. But there are a
lot of geologic processes that could push it back up
into uh the atmosphere, where that would really be a problem.
(15:58):
I should also point out that the places where the
deposits are people don't draw their water from the groundwater
in those places, but it's still could have a really
bad impact on wildlife in the environment. So also water
doesn't really stay put yeah, yeah, you can't. I mean,
you know, water. Water is like me, baby, It goes
(16:19):
where it wants to at any rate. So I was
looking at Joe the whole time of that, and he's
just just shaking his head. So keep in mind that.
Uh so before this, when the space race first started,
right all the way up until after the Apollo thirteen mission,
there was no such thing as the Environmental Protection Agency
here in the United States. There was no governing body
(16:42):
that created the policies and laws that would uh guide
organizations like I don't know, NASA to dispose of harmful
chemicals in a responsible way. No, the e P as
a creature the Nixon administration. That's true. Yeah, Nixon formed
it in December nineteen seven, and so all the launches
that happened before that, there was no such governing body.
(17:04):
So NASA did what made sense. It was cheap. They
dug a hole and they dumped the TC in it.
This seems like a good place for this. Oddly enough,
not such a good place. So yeah, now NASA is
currently cleaning that soil and has been for quite some time.
I should shouldn't. It's not like they just started. They've
(17:27):
been doing it. Year over year. They they're always allotting
a certain number of millions of dollars toward that effort.
But from why I understand, we're still looking at some
decades of cleaning ahead of us. It's not like it's
going to be um uh taking care of overnight. I mean,
more than two fifty contaminated sites were identified as being
(17:50):
places where TC is is found at least in some
measurable amount. Now, NASA actually strikes me as fairly environmentally
conscientious as far as government and organizations go, So I
would imagine they're doing a better job these days. Absolutely. Yeah,
they have cut way back on using TC. They still
use it in small amounts, but they also follow very
(18:11):
strict rules about how to dispose of it. But they're
using a lot of other alternatives that are chemically they
react in similar ways to TC, but they don't have
that carcinogenic factor. They're not toxic the way TC is.
So so the hope is that future launches will have
less of an environmentally dangerous effect on the ground around
(18:35):
the launch site due to these sorts of chemicals. But
but this is this is a byproduct. Of course, some
contaminants are released by some launch combustions themselves that affect
the ground side around the launch. Solid booster rockets, which
are what the Space Shuttle used for part of their
launch sequence, combust aluminum and ammonium perclorates and release aluminum particles,
(18:57):
which which have that effect on the atmosphere is discussed of.
But they also released hydrochloric acid, like two thirty tons
of hydrochloric acid per flight. That sounds like a lot.
It's not a little bit um and you know it's
it's water soluble, which means that when it does fall
to the ground, it contaminates the local water supply. NASA
found reduced numbers of plants species near launch sites partially
(19:20):
due to this stuff, and it can make bodies of
water too acidic for fish to survive in. See. This
makes me think of the again of the eighties because
acid rain was something that you heard about all the time.
There is a song that Tim Burton sung about it
in a fern Gully, The Last Rainforest. Yeah. Actually Tim Curry,
Tim Curry, Tim Curry, we were talking about Tim Burton
(19:41):
right before the show. I knew exactly who you're talking about,
Tim Tim Curry. Tim Curry was the villain of full
so I assume he was in favor of Acid Raine. Yeah, yeah,
he was pretty excited. Recalled. Just before the song, he
says something like toxic sludge mother's milk, and then he
just goes into this song and it only gets creepier
from there. That was that That was a really good
impersonation of what was the character's name, Smog. I think
(20:10):
so my references are all over the place today, Smog.
That's the dragon from the hop anyway, Okay, I'm fine,
al right at any rate, So scale here get back. Yeah.
We talked a little bit already about the fact that
that in the grand scheme of things, we aren't launching
that many rockets today. Right, It's not like we're going
(20:31):
crazy and there's a launch every single day of the week, like,
not like what people are planning for the future. So
where are we, like, how many rockets are going up?
Say a couple of years ago. Well, I found one
article on space flight now dot com that, if it's correct,
they said that I had the greatest number of space
(20:54):
launches of any year since nineteen and that number was two,
So that's not a whole lot. In they said there
were eighty one attempted space launches, and as we mentioned earlier,
the different types of emissions and their effects don't necessarily
compare across the board. But just for a sense of scale,
let's look at airplanes. I found one blog post that
(21:15):
crunched some numbers from an industry report compiled by the
Air Transport Action Group, and it estimated that there were
a little more than a hundred thousand conventional air flights
every day around the world. That's a lot, that's a
hundred about a hundred thousand every day. And if that
number is correct, even if every rocket launch had the
(21:36):
impact of ten thousand commercial air flights, our current rate
of space launches wouldn't come close to rivaling the air
travel industry. Right, And that's not the only cars heavy
industry coal burning, So so it is um worth keeping
scale in mind. Rockets aren't really a big problem today,
comparatively speaking, it's a it's a drop in the pollution bucket. Yeah,
(22:00):
but remember this is a future focused podcast, and as
you said before, space tourism might pick up on top
of that, mining asteroids, harvesting helium from the Moon, servicing
networks of space station satellites, extraterrestrial colonies in the future.
We hope there are going to be a lot of
space launches. So if that is the case, we really
(22:21):
would need to find some kind of solution to the
problem of space launch emissions and it's and it's byproducts. Yes,
So do we have any such alternatives even in just
planning stages. Yes. NASA has one type of fuel they're
calling alice, which is short for aluminum ice, and they
conducted a project with grad students at Perdu and Penn
(22:43):
State with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to
create this this more environmentally friendly propellant from nanoscale aluminum
powder and water ice wow uh and d. During combustion,
it produces just hydrogen gas and aluminum ox it so
not that bad uh. Part part of the idea here
is that it could be manufactured on other water ice
(23:06):
bearing places in space like the Moon or Mars or asteroids.
And the aluminum nano particles are really the key here
because they combusted lower temperatures than other fuels, like seven
hundred degrees celsius rather than the standard two thousand um.
They also conbusted faster than larger particles because of their
increased surface area. So it's like a like a twitch
(23:26):
gamer who turns their sensitivity levels all the way up. Uh,
you're giving the researchers better control over the combustion and
therefore over the rockets thrust. Uh. They did a proof
of concept test in two thousand nine and successfully launched
a small rocket with alice, a nine ft a K
a about three meter rocket that they launched about one
thousand three ft a k four hundred meters into the atmosphere,
(23:50):
which is a really short distance. Granted it's not even
about of the troposphere, but if production could be scaled up,
the researchers involved really thought that alice could could one
day replace traditional rocket fuel. And I haven't seen a
whole lot of buzz about this one since that test
in two thousand nine. We will be on the lookout.
And one is another one that is definitely still being
(24:10):
researched is mixtures based on paraffin wax. Yeah, yeah, it's
it's a type of hydrocarbon wax that's commonly used for
all sorts of things here on Earth, not related to rockets,
like like it's used in candles, it's used in food storage,
it's used in sculpting, and researchers specifically at Stanford are
looking into how they can put it into hybrid rockets,
(24:33):
which are so called because they incorporate both liquid and
solid combustion components, generally an oxidizer that's stored as a
liquid and then becomes a gas when they shoot it
out to do the explosions. Now, I would ask, though,
is paraffin wax that that's essentially a petroleum product, right,
so that would be a hydrocarbon. Yeah, yeah, I mean yes,
(24:54):
it's absolutely a hydrocarbon. It is going to be releasing
c O two into the atmosphere. It's therefore going to
be part part of this CO two problem of global warming,
but maybe not as bad as a regular rocket. But
it's it's just it's most of the uh combinations that
they're using in it's only it's only releasing water, vapor
(25:14):
and c O two and so you know, no hydrochloric acid. Yeah,
there are other some of the other emissions are eliminated. Yeah,
I'm sorry. All this talk about paraffin wax just has
to be flashing back to Stephen King's it has that
played a very important part in Oh what was it?
What the paraffin wax. That's what the main character was
(25:36):
using to or actually his little brother was using to
make a little paper boat which he floats in the storm.
We all flowed down here, Tim Curry high. This is
not the first episode of Forward Thinking where we referred
(25:56):
extensively to Tim Curry. It's almost there were huge nerds
and really like Tim Curry. Um, Okay, Lauren, please continue. Okay. So,
uh so, hybrid rockets are really cool because they can
make launches safer, like less prone to catastrophic failure than
either purely liquid or or solid fuel rockets, which you know,
not having any more challenger disasters would be really cool. Yeah. Um.
(26:21):
And so these researchers at Stanford have been working on
a paraffin based fuel since two thousand one, and tests
in collaboration with NASA up through or so as was
the most recent that I've seen, but I think they're
still working on it suggest that with further refinement, hybrid
paraffin rockets could be not just cleaner and safer than
today's rockets, but more efficient a k a cheaper as well.
(26:42):
Ah Well, I mean we've always got an eye towards
the bottom line and the dollar sign when it comes
to rocket launches, and of course as that dollar sign
comes down, we see more rocket launches, making this question
even more important for us to answer. Well, and hypothetically,
if it's more efficient, it's producing less of this byproduct
as in CEO two, and therefore is having less of
(27:03):
an environmental impact. Yeah, so I think, um, overall, I
am optimistic because one, I think we're still pretty far
out from having a thousand of these launches per year,
and I think we're going to have some more time
to refine our approaches and and make sure that the
technologies we use are the most environmentally conscious that we
(27:26):
can come up with that also are makes sense from
a cost perspective. Plus, guys, we're totally going to have
space elevators. Yeah, that's the thing I was about to
bring up. I mean, all of this is played out
on the assumption that we're going to continue to use
propellant based rockets to get to space, which I think
actually is probably a fairly safe assumption. But I think
(27:47):
that we have for years, right, but we have in
the past looked at alternative means of getting to space,
and we we don't want to entirely rule those out
because if somebody could actually get one working on a
regular basis in a in a few easible way, that
would be a wonderful alternative to rockets. Sure. Uh. And also,
I mean we it's it's it's important to point out
(28:08):
that the virgin galactic approach, this idea of launching a
spacecraft from something that's already flying, that could obviously you
have reduced the the need for actual rocket fuel because
you aren't already at a higher altitude um and you're
already traveling at a decent velocity, although nowhere close to
escape velocity. I think that is another potential. Clearly that's
(28:33):
not gonna work for every kind of spacecraft that we
want to get out into space. And also, we keep
hoping that we'll get to a level of sophistication where
we can get enough stuff into space where we can
then continually build stuff out in space already and so
it's already out beyond the Earth's atmosphere and that's not
(28:56):
a problem at all. That however, again we're talking twenty
to forty years easy for that kind of stuff, because
you still have to get the stuff up there initially,
at least the baseline of whatever you're going to use,
and then at that point you you probably need to
be like mining some asteroids for extra materials, that kind
of thing, And eventually you're gonna probably want to switch
(29:17):
out your personnels. That's gonna involve people going down and
coming back up. But but if you're able to do
a lot of that work in space itself, you reduce
the need for the number of launches on Earth. So
there are a lot of interesting factors that could potentially
be at play in the future. I've got an idea,
what's that We're gonna pair this problem with our recent
(29:39):
episode on mega tall buildings and just build a building
that goes to space, none of this space elevator stuff.
You can take the stairs. Yeah, I think. I think
we talked about that in our Space Elevator's episode. Actually,
we talked about the the idea of building a building
so tall that you would be essentially in space. Didn't
(29:59):
some do you actually proposed that, like some Russian guy
a hundred years ago? Had I want to say, yes,
I I it's tickling my memory, but it's been just
long enough that I don't. I can't pull that information up,
you know. I hate to be a naysayer but I
think that's probably not possible. I'm pretty confident that you
are correct in that assessment. Well, this was a lot
(30:21):
of fun to look into because it was one of
those things that before we started researching it we honestly
didn't know, like, well, is there is there a measurable
environmental impact? Um, it appears that there there is, And
you could argue it's negligible, and I probably wouldn't argue
against it right now, But then, keeping in mind this
ramping up process, we will likely see it won't be
(30:44):
negligible forever. So it's good to think about it now
before we are forced to think about it in the future.
But guys, please let us know what you think. Let
us know if you have any suggestions for future episodes.
We love hearing from you. Make sure you send that
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(31:04):
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(31:28):
on this topic in the future. Of technology. Visit forward
thinking dot Com, brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome tough Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks at the future and says burning out
his views up here alone. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm
(00:23):
Joe Mccormickin today, we're gonna be talking about rockets. And
if you know us and you know this show, you
know we love rockets. So there is not a chance
in heck that we are here to bash rockets today.
But since we sometimes talk about environmental impact on the show,
and since rockets seem, by their very nature to involve
(00:44):
an awful lot of burning and emitting of substances, we
thought it might be worth asking what exactly is the
environmental impact of a rocket launch and what can we
do about that impact. Yeah, now, assuming of course that
the environmental impact would be bad enough that we would
need to do something. And when you first start looking
(01:05):
around at the problem, you might think, oh, this isn't
that big a deal, until you start thinking, wait a minute,
We're heading to a future where we're really stressing how space.
Getting into space is getting easier and easier. Things like
reusable rockets, the private space industry. So this is actually
something that we should think about now before it does
become the next huge environmental problem. Right, and we can
(01:27):
get into more of the details of that later. But Lauren,
did you say that this was actually a listener request?
I'm pretty sure it was, and I unfortunately didn't write
down the name of the lovely human who sent it in,
So I am so sorry, lovely human. Thank you for
listening and for suggesting, and this is your episode congratulations.
Now we should also point out that no less an
(01:48):
authority than Sir Richard Branson tells us we have nothing
to worry about. Well, whatever he tells us, we'll just
take that's an objective, biased opinion, very short episode. Not
it all related to the fact that he is overseeing
Virgin Galactic space tourism industry. But what does he actually say?
He actually says, and this this is something that could
(02:11):
also be true. But you know, you still have to
think about the implications here that the actual carbon dioxide
emissions so CEO two, specifically from a rocket launch are less,
at least for our Virgin Galactic style rocket launch, which
is a little different from other ones because that would
use a larger plane that would then launch a spacecraft
(02:33):
from the plane while the plane is already in air.
But he says the total CEO two emissions would be
less than a round trip flight from New York to London,
normal flight, not space flights. So like, if you were
to get on a plane and fly to London and
then party in London for a week, and then get
back on a plane and fly back to New York,
the CEO two emissions from those two flights would be
(02:55):
greater than a virgin galactic rocket flight. Oh, then there's
no big deal. Let's have all the space launches. I mean,
I'm just going to trade off all those trips to
London I take with trips to space, and and I'm
like reducing my carbon footprint right, not so fast, slick, Okay,
So we should look at what some scientists have actually
(03:15):
found on the subject of the environmental impact of rocket launches,
and we should preface this by saying, of course, not
all rockets are the same. So yeah, yeah, there are
lots of different combinations of combustants out there, and of
course they therefore all produce different emissions in different quantities.
And so rather than like go through each type exhaustively,
we're going to talk about some of the wide ranging
(03:37):
effects that are seen. Right, you have to go through
every type of solid fuel, liquid fuel rocket, it would
it would be in its own series, and that would
get really really tedious, chemically tedious after a short while. Though,
then again, think of the pluses. I mean, just think
about how much we love trying to pronounce really long
names of chemicals. I've got one coming up pretty soon. Yeah,
(03:59):
oh man, you're in for a treat those lovers of
tetra flora hydro clocks of blocks of do Yeah, pretty sure.
That's what Mary Poppins says to make penguins dance for her.
But go ahead, okay, Well, one of the big ones.
I'm sure you guys encountered this. It seems to be
one of the most prevalent objections to the environmental impact
(04:20):
of rockets is the depletion of stratospheric ozone. So you
guys remember back in the eighties the chlorofluora carbon's controversy. Yeah,
aosol cans in particular, uh, were they were a source
for CFC's or chloro flora carbons, which if they were
to get into the stratospheric level of the atmosphere could
(04:42):
end up depleting the ozone layer, creating these holes in
the ozone layer. And ozone, as I'm sure most of
you out there are aware, is really important for us
because it absorbs ultra violet radiation. It decreases the amount
of UV radiation that we receive here on Earth. Without
that protective layer, we would be in far greater danger.
We'd be much greater risk of developing things like skin
(05:04):
cancer and other types of sun damage. Yeah, and so
rocket engines typically eject gases, and these gases come well,
not typically rocket engines always, yes, it's part of the gig.
Maybe not all space flight propellants, but but rocket rocket
engines ejected gases, and these gases can eject propellants that
(05:26):
form chemical reactions with molecules of ozone. And that's not
good because we need those molecules of ozone to be
not reacted with, to stay how they are, to hang
out they're more or less unchanged. That would be ideal,
And of course that is not what's been happening since
at least the nine seventies when we started looking at it. Yeah,
So there was a two thousand nine article in the
(05:48):
journal astro Politics the International Journal of Space Politics and Policy,
which that sounds like a good journal. I've never really
checked it out before, but I'm sure there's lots of
good talk about space law in its politics. I'm wondering
how you would fill a buster in space very quietly
in space, no one can hear you fill a buster.
(06:10):
But anyway. The article is called limits on the Space
launch Market related to Stratospheric ozone Depletion, and the authors
note that both solid rocket motors or sr M s
and liquid rocket engines l r E s both produce
emissions that have been shown to directly deplete global ozone,
and they calculate that ozone depletion UH is going to
(06:31):
be a function of payload, launch rate, and relative mix
of SRM and l r E rocket emission. So it
depends on what type you're using and what your your
payload and number of launches are. But at the time
of publication they estimated that rocket launches depleted the ozone
layer by about zero point zero three percent per year,
(06:52):
which at the time they say, okay, that's pretty much negligible,
but we'll we'll come back to that in a bit. Well,
let's let's talk about a little a bit more right now,
because it turns out that uh, that the that direct
um injection of chemicals that can react with with ozone,
that's not the only thing we have to worry about
(07:13):
that could actually affect the ozone layer. Right. Those are
the reactive gases that react with the ozone layer, but
they're also you can talk about emissions of particulate matter, right,
and aluminum oxide and soot are two of those particulates
that people have started to look at and say, this
could actually really compound that problem because they are chemically
(07:34):
reactive surfaces, meaning that the actual particles can be uh
kind of a home for other chemicals to react with ozone.
So they're not directly depleting the ozone. Rather, they are
acting as sort of a a a laboratory of sorts
for these chemical reactions to happen. It's just these are
suspended in the air as a result of being ejected
(07:56):
from the rocket as it's going through the stratosphere. So
um uh. Specifically, it says here this was from an article.
As reading, it says, the chemical reactions in question are
pretty nasty and involved the emission of gas molecules referred
to as radicals. Uh and that isn't In the nineteen eighties,
radical means awesome kind of mean. Um. It's a single
(08:17):
radical molecule in the strasphere can destroy as many as
ten thousand ozone molecules. So aluminum oxide and soot provide
the opportunity for more of this ozone killing stuff to
get into the stratosphere, and they can. They can also
in general contribute to climate change. Yeah, and now let's
talk about aluminum oxide for a second, one of the
two particulates. One of the things about alluinum oxides, besides
(08:39):
the fact that it can serve as this are um,
this launching point for chemical reactions, it's also reflective, so
it can actually reflect light that is heading towards Earth
back into space. It can, but it also does absorb
light on the infrared spectrum. So therefore it seems likely
that it could contribute to atmospheric warming and therefore to
(09:00):
climate change in the long run. It's it's one of
those like more it's it's a bigger question mark than
the soot issue. The issue is a little bit more,
uh sure, in terms of it's gonna mess and stuff up.
I guess we could say it's not all in terms
of black and silver. Let be the soot aluminium all right, anyway,
let me talk about soot for a second. So the
stuff that makes soot black is called black carbon, and
(09:22):
generally speaking, most scientists say putting black carbon directly into
the stratosphere is what we would typically say, it is
a bad thing. You don't want to do it. Uh,
it doesn't stay in the stratosphere for as long as
carbon dioxide would. Carbon dioxide can stay up for for decades,
hundreds of years even, but black carbon would only stay
(09:43):
up there for maybe five to ten years. Uh, it's
stay it's it tends to get washed out of the
lower levels of the atmosphere because precipitation will just knock
it down the air. But in the stratosphere you don't
have that to to contend with UM And according to
Popular Science, they sited to study that said black carbon
absorbs one hundred thousand times as much energy as carbon
(10:05):
dioxide emitted by rockets. So that tells you that it's
it's a power player in the in the potential for
making a climate change worse. UM. So rockets produce about
a thousand times more black carbon per unit of fuel
compared to normal aircraft. Plus rockets are traveling through the stratosphere,
(10:28):
so it's a direct injection of this stuff into the
left layer. You absolutely do not want it to go
into now, according to computer models, so these are simulations.
Obviously we don't have a ton of data about this,
but according to computer models, ring shaped cloud of black
carbon would form around the area of a launch site
where a rocket has come up. Uh. That cloud of
(10:50):
black carbon would actually have both a warming and a
cooling effect. The it would create a shade in a
certain region that would immediately start to cool it, but
it would also help trap heat, so would have warming
in certain areas and cooling and others, and it could
be pretty dramatic. We're talking of a magnitude of five degrees,
although I must add popular science and neglected to say
whether those were celsius or fahrenheit. Wait, should we either
(11:13):
assume that they're being correct and snobby and just assuming
celsius or should we assume that they're being slack and
assuming fahrenheit Joe, It's called popular science, so on worldwide
standards we can go with seals. But at any rate
that I mean five degrees is that's enormous. Like it
(11:34):
sounds like it's nothing, right, especially if you live someplace
that has a fairly dramatic switch from winter to summer,
where you've got, you know, a big range of temperatures.
Five degrees sounds like, oh, well that's nothing. No, it
is huge. Uh, when most of the climate change models
we talk about end up being well, this could be
an increase of maybe one point three degrees, and everyone
(11:55):
freaks out. This is five degrees. So in it it's
much shorter term. So it's not like something that would
last forever. If we got to a point where we
were seeing these effects, we could say we're gonna put
the hold on space launches and change things up, because
if we continue to do this will just keep the problem,
(12:16):
it will perpetuate it. Right. Also, I should add that
the model they were using was assuming a thousand launches
per year, which is an order of magnitude larger than
what we're seeing right now. It's usually about a hundred
per year. Yeah, that that would be that would be
a busy year. A hundred would be a busy year.
We'll talk more about that in a little bit, but yeah,
(12:37):
a thousand launches a year is is way more than
what we do right now. However, remember we're talking about
a future where space tourism is presumably going to be
a thing, where we reusable rockets are bringing the cost
of getting into space down. And once you start removing
those barriers, then obviously there are a lot of reasons
to try and get out into space, from science to
(12:58):
tourism to all sorts of surveillance, all kinds of reasons. Um,
it's not unreasonable to suspect that in the future we
would see around a thousand launches a year. I mean,
that's an enormous amount, but it could happen. In fact,
one company uh X core x c o R wants
(13:20):
to ramp up like when they hit full speed. They
want to be having four launches per day. Now, even
assuming that that's just work days like business days, and
removing all the popular holidays. In the United States, this
year has two hundred fifty of those days. Two fifty
times four is one thousand. So there you go. There's
(13:41):
your thousand, um uh And and it's important to keep
in mind here that the effects on the atmosphere aren't
the only effects that we're potentially looking at. No, there
are multiple reasons you might not want to be a
frog that lives near a launch site. Yeah, I generally
don't want to be a frog. I have to say.
I'm mean, I don't know they're they're real cute, but
(14:03):
I find that a narrow minded lattitude is making me think.
Wasn't there a picture of a rocket launching with a
frog hanging off of it like desperately? Yeah, this this
episode goes out to you are amphibian friend and at
any rate, but no that there are legitimately documented negative
environmental effects on the ground surrounding rocket launch site, right,
(14:25):
which is not a big surprise. You see these these
rockets taking off. Obviously massive amounts of gas are admitted
right there at ground level. Most of that, however, is
not a huge deal for the immediate area. In fact,
one of the most dangerous chemicals associated with rocket launches
wasn't really part of a rocket launch at all. It's
(14:46):
kind of a secondary chemical that was used in order
to clean rocket engines, especially after tests, So this wasn't
necessarily for a full launch. It might be a test situation,
but it would those tests would typic. We take place
at launch facilities like Kennedy Space Center. So one of
the byproducts that was particularly dangerous has tri chlora ethylene
(15:10):
or TCE. I think I got that right on the
first try. I'll never get it right again, so I'm
going to stick with t CE at any rate. That
was used to clean the engines and remove hydrocarbon deposits,
So it was in order to to clean out an
engine so that you could use it again if you
were in a testing phase. But TC, it turns out,
is a very toxic chemical. It's carcinogenic and worse than that.
(15:34):
If you put it in the ground, it can bind
with soil and sand and stay chemically active for a
really long time. It's possible for it to get into groundwater,
although not likely because it's actually more dense than water,
so it tends to sink down. But there are a
lot of geologic processes that could push it back up
into uh the atmosphere, where that would really be a problem.
(15:58):
I should also point out that the places where the
deposits are people don't draw their water from the groundwater
in those places, but it's still could have a really
bad impact on wildlife in the environment. So also water
doesn't really stay put yeah, yeah, you can't. I mean,
you know, water. Water is like me, baby, It goes
(16:19):
where it wants to at any rate. So I was
looking at Joe the whole time of that, and he's
just just shaking his head. So keep in mind that.
Uh so before this, when the space race first started,
right all the way up until after the Apollo thirteen mission,
there was no such thing as the Environmental Protection Agency
here in the United States. There was no governing body
(16:42):
that created the policies and laws that would uh guide
organizations like I don't know, NASA to dispose of harmful
chemicals in a responsible way. No, the e P as
a creature the Nixon administration. That's true. Yeah, Nixon formed
it in December nineteen seven, and so all the launches
that happened before that, there was no such governing body.
(17:04):
So NASA did what made sense. It was cheap. They
dug a hole and they dumped the TC in it.
This seems like a good place for this. Oddly enough,
not such a good place. So yeah, now NASA is
currently cleaning that soil and has been for quite some time.
I should shouldn't. It's not like they just started. They've
(17:27):
been doing it. Year over year. They they're always allotting
a certain number of millions of dollars toward that effort.
But from why I understand, we're still looking at some
decades of cleaning ahead of us. It's not like it's
going to be um uh taking care of overnight. I mean,
more than two fifty contaminated sites were identified as being
(17:50):
places where TC is is found at least in some
measurable amount. Now, NASA actually strikes me as fairly environmentally
conscientious as far as government and organizations go, So I
would imagine they're doing a better job these days. Absolutely. Yeah,
they have cut way back on using TC. They still
use it in small amounts, but they also follow very
(18:11):
strict rules about how to dispose of it. But they're
using a lot of other alternatives that are chemically they
react in similar ways to TC, but they don't have
that carcinogenic factor. They're not toxic the way TC is.
So so the hope is that future launches will have
less of an environmentally dangerous effect on the ground around
(18:35):
the launch site due to these sorts of chemicals. But
but this is this is a byproduct. Of course, some
contaminants are released by some launch combustions themselves that affect
the ground side around the launch. Solid booster rockets, which
are what the Space Shuttle used for part of their
launch sequence, combust aluminum and ammonium perclorates and release aluminum particles,
(18:57):
which which have that effect on the atmosphere is discussed of.
But they also released hydrochloric acid, like two thirty tons
of hydrochloric acid per flight. That sounds like a lot.
It's not a little bit um and you know it's
it's water soluble, which means that when it does fall
to the ground, it contaminates the local water supply. NASA
found reduced numbers of plants species near launch sites partially
(19:20):
due to this stuff, and it can make bodies of
water too acidic for fish to survive in. See. This
makes me think of the again of the eighties because
acid rain was something that you heard about all the time.
There is a song that Tim Burton sung about it
in a fern Gully, The Last Rainforest. Yeah. Actually Tim Curry,
Tim Curry, Tim Curry, we were talking about Tim Burton
(19:41):
right before the show. I knew exactly who you're talking about,
Tim Tim Curry. Tim Curry was the villain of full
so I assume he was in favor of Acid Raine. Yeah, yeah,
he was pretty excited. Recalled. Just before the song, he
says something like toxic sludge mother's milk, and then he
just goes into this song and it only gets creepier
from there. That was that That was a really good
impersonation of what was the character's name, Smog. I think
(20:10):
so my references are all over the place today, Smog.
That's the dragon from the hop anyway, Okay, I'm fine,
al right at any rate, So scale here get back. Yeah.
We talked a little bit already about the fact that
that in the grand scheme of things, we aren't launching
that many rockets today. Right, It's not like we're going
(20:31):
crazy and there's a launch every single day of the week, like,
not like what people are planning for the future. So
where are we, like, how many rockets are going up?
Say a couple of years ago. Well, I found one
article on space flight now dot com that, if it's correct,
they said that I had the greatest number of space
(20:54):
launches of any year since nineteen and that number was two,
So that's not a whole lot. In they said there
were eighty one attempted space launches, and as we mentioned earlier,
the different types of emissions and their effects don't necessarily
compare across the board. But just for a sense of scale,
let's look at airplanes. I found one blog post that
(21:15):
crunched some numbers from an industry report compiled by the
Air Transport Action Group, and it estimated that there were
a little more than a hundred thousand conventional air flights
every day around the world. That's a lot, that's a
hundred about a hundred thousand every day. And if that
number is correct, even if every rocket launch had the
(21:36):
impact of ten thousand commercial air flights, our current rate
of space launches wouldn't come close to rivaling the air
travel industry. Right, And that's not the only cars heavy
industry coal burning, So so it is um worth keeping
scale in mind. Rockets aren't really a big problem today,
comparatively speaking, it's a it's a drop in the pollution bucket. Yeah,
(22:00):
but remember this is a future focused podcast, and as
you said before, space tourism might pick up on top
of that, mining asteroids, harvesting helium from the Moon, servicing
networks of space station satellites, extraterrestrial colonies in the future.
We hope there are going to be a lot of
space launches. So if that is the case, we really
(22:21):
would need to find some kind of solution to the
problem of space launch emissions and it's and it's byproducts. Yes,
So do we have any such alternatives even in just
planning stages. Yes. NASA has one type of fuel they're
calling alice, which is short for aluminum ice, and they
conducted a project with grad students at Perdu and Penn
(22:43):
State with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to
create this this more environmentally friendly propellant from nanoscale aluminum
powder and water ice wow uh and d. During combustion,
it produces just hydrogen gas and aluminum ox it so
not that bad uh. Part part of the idea here
is that it could be manufactured on other water ice
(23:06):
bearing places in space like the Moon or Mars or asteroids.
And the aluminum nano particles are really the key here
because they combusted lower temperatures than other fuels, like seven
hundred degrees celsius rather than the standard two thousand um.
They also conbusted faster than larger particles because of their
increased surface area. So it's like a like a twitch
(23:26):
gamer who turns their sensitivity levels all the way up. Uh,
you're giving the researchers better control over the combustion and
therefore over the rockets thrust. Uh. They did a proof
of concept test in two thousand nine and successfully launched
a small rocket with alice, a nine ft a K
a about three meter rocket that they launched about one
thousand three ft a k four hundred meters into the atmosphere,
(23:50):
which is a really short distance. Granted it's not even
about of the troposphere, but if production could be scaled up,
the researchers involved really thought that alice could could one
day replace traditional rocket fuel. And I haven't seen a
whole lot of buzz about this one since that test
in two thousand nine. We will be on the lookout.
And one is another one that is definitely still being
(24:10):
researched is mixtures based on paraffin wax. Yeah, yeah, it's
it's a type of hydrocarbon wax that's commonly used for
all sorts of things here on Earth, not related to rockets,
like like it's used in candles, it's used in food storage,
it's used in sculpting, and researchers specifically at Stanford are
looking into how they can put it into hybrid rockets,
(24:33):
which are so called because they incorporate both liquid and
solid combustion components, generally an oxidizer that's stored as a
liquid and then becomes a gas when they shoot it
out to do the explosions. Now, I would ask, though,
is paraffin wax that that's essentially a petroleum product, right,
so that would be a hydrocarbon. Yeah, yeah, I mean yes,
(24:54):
it's absolutely a hydrocarbon. It is going to be releasing
c O two into the atmosphere. It's therefore going to
be part part of this CO two problem of global warming,
but maybe not as bad as a regular rocket. But
it's it's just it's most of the uh combinations that
they're using in it's only it's only releasing water, vapor
(25:14):
and c O two and so you know, no hydrochloric acid. Yeah,
there are other some of the other emissions are eliminated. Yeah,
I'm sorry. All this talk about paraffin wax just has
to be flashing back to Stephen King's it has that
played a very important part in Oh what was it?
What the paraffin wax. That's what the main character was
(25:36):
using to or actually his little brother was using to
make a little paper boat which he floats in the storm.
We all flowed down here, Tim Curry high. This is
not the first episode of Forward Thinking where we referred
(25:56):
extensively to Tim Curry. It's almost there were huge nerds
and really like Tim Curry. Um, Okay, Lauren, please continue. Okay. So,
uh so, hybrid rockets are really cool because they can
make launches safer, like less prone to catastrophic failure than
either purely liquid or or solid fuel rockets, which you know,
not having any more challenger disasters would be really cool. Yeah. Um.
(26:21):
And so these researchers at Stanford have been working on
a paraffin based fuel since two thousand one, and tests
in collaboration with NASA up through or so as was
the most recent that I've seen, but I think they're
still working on it suggest that with further refinement, hybrid
paraffin rockets could be not just cleaner and safer than
today's rockets, but more efficient a k a cheaper as well.
(26:42):
Ah Well, I mean we've always got an eye towards
the bottom line and the dollar sign when it comes
to rocket launches, and of course as that dollar sign
comes down, we see more rocket launches, making this question
even more important for us to answer. Well, and hypothetically,
if it's more efficient, it's producing less of this byproduct
as in CEO two, and therefore is having less of
(27:03):
an environmental impact. Yeah, so I think, um, overall, I
am optimistic because one, I think we're still pretty far
out from having a thousand of these launches per year,
and I think we're going to have some more time
to refine our approaches and and make sure that the
technologies we use are the most environmentally conscious that we
(27:26):
can come up with that also are makes sense from
a cost perspective. Plus, guys, we're totally going to have
space elevators. Yeah, that's the thing I was about to
bring up. I mean, all of this is played out
on the assumption that we're going to continue to use
propellant based rockets to get to space, which I think
actually is probably a fairly safe assumption. But I think
(27:47):
that we have for years, right, but we have in
the past looked at alternative means of getting to space,
and we we don't want to entirely rule those out
because if somebody could actually get one working on a
regular basis in a in a few easible way, that
would be a wonderful alternative to rockets. Sure. Uh. And also,
I mean we it's it's it's important to point out
(28:08):
that the virgin galactic approach, this idea of launching a
spacecraft from something that's already flying, that could obviously you
have reduced the the need for actual rocket fuel because
you aren't already at a higher altitude um and you're
already traveling at a decent velocity, although nowhere close to
escape velocity. I think that is another potential. Clearly that's
(28:33):
not gonna work for every kind of spacecraft that we
want to get out into space. And also, we keep
hoping that we'll get to a level of sophistication where
we can get enough stuff into space where we can
then continually build stuff out in space already and so
it's already out beyond the Earth's atmosphere and that's not
(28:56):
a problem at all. That however, again we're talking twenty
to forty years easy for that kind of stuff, because
you still have to get the stuff up there initially,
at least the baseline of whatever you're going to use,
and then at that point you you probably need to
be like mining some asteroids for extra materials, that kind
of thing, And eventually you're gonna probably want to switch
(29:17):
out your personnels. That's gonna involve people going down and
coming back up. But but if you're able to do
a lot of that work in space itself, you reduce
the need for the number of launches on Earth. So
there are a lot of interesting factors that could potentially
be at play in the future. I've got an idea,
what's that We're gonna pair this problem with our recent
(29:39):
episode on mega tall buildings and just build a building
that goes to space, none of this space elevator stuff.
You can take the stairs. Yeah, I think. I think
we talked about that in our Space Elevator's episode. Actually,
we talked about the the idea of building a building
so tall that you would be essentially in space. Didn't
(29:59):
some do you actually proposed that, like some Russian guy
a hundred years ago? Had I want to say, yes,
I I it's tickling my memory, but it's been just
long enough that I don't. I can't pull that information up,
you know. I hate to be a naysayer but I
think that's probably not possible. I'm pretty confident that you
are correct in that assessment. Well, this was a lot
(30:21):
of fun to look into because it was one of
those things that before we started researching it we honestly
didn't know, like, well, is there is there a measurable
environmental impact? Um, it appears that there there is, And
you could argue it's negligible, and I probably wouldn't argue
against it right now, But then, keeping in mind this
ramping up process, we will likely see it won't be
(30:44):
negligible forever. So it's good to think about it now
before we are forced to think about it in the future.
But guys, please let us know what you think. Let
us know if you have any suggestions for future episodes.
We love hearing from you. Make sure you send that
message either to our email address, which is f W
(31:04):
Thinking at how Stuff Works dot com, or you can
drop us a line on Twitter or Facebook. At Twitter,
we are f W Thinking. On Facebook, you can just
search f W Thinking our account will pop up. You
can leave us a message there. We love hearing from you, guys,
and we'll talk to you again really soon for more
(31:28):
on this topic in the future. Of technology. Visit forward
thinking dot Com, brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places,
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Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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