How Much Do Rockets Pollute? Are They Bad For Our Air?
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters cite it whenever rocket launch pollution comes up as a rebuttal to alarm, since it shows launches are small next to other sources.
What it is
Everyday Astronaut's Tim Dodd runs an hour-long, data-driven analysis of what rockets actually emit and how that compares with airliners and other industries. It breaks down exhaust by propellant type, per-passenger and total emissions, and ways launches could be cleaner.
Recommended by 6 HN commenters across 6 different months, 2020 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec systemvoltage · 2021-07 · on “Richard Branson ready for today's 'extraordinary' space flight”
Everyday Astronaut did an hour long video on "How Much Do Rockets Pollute? Are They Bad For Our Air?": [this video] I highly recommend to everyone who is concerned about this. The knee-jerk reaction needs to be toned down a little bit, we need to look at the data first.
Recommends KuiN · 2020-06 · on “SpaceX Starlink is now its own ASN and present at the Seattle Internet Exchange”
Everyday Astronaut on YouTube has a great video on the environmental impact of rockets. 55 minutes long but it's fascinating. The TL;DW is they're not as bad as you'd expect. But not zero-emissions, obviously. [this video]
Recommends danpalmer · 2021-02 · on “Elon Musk wants clean power. But Tesla's carrying Bitcoin's dirty baggage”
Great video here about this: [this video] The summary is that yes they pollute a lot for what they are, but compared to almost any other major polluting industry (travel, freight, construction, etc) it's barely anything and won't be much of a problem for a long time.
Recommends chrispeel · 2021-07 · on “Space tourism: rockets emit 100 times more CO₂ per passenger than flights”
At 37:00 of the video below, Tim Dodd concludes that SpaceX's Starship will emit 1.79 metric tons of CO2 per passenger, while a 737 will emit .33 tons. SpaceX wants to generate Starship's methane from the atmosphere, so it could be zero I found Tim's video to be more informative than the Conversation article [this video]
Recommends rwesterdahl · 2021-08 · on “Launch HN: Turion Space (YC S21) – Space debris removal and satellite servicing”
Great question and I suspect you are correct regarding the impact being small (Tim Dodd the everyday astronaut, made a great youtube video about rocket launch pollution, check that out for sure [this video] ). He concluded that even with increased launch rates, the pollution remains small compared to other industries such as the airline industry. Not the same thing, but I'd argue the impact from satellites and debris burning up is less than the rocket it took to get up there in the first place. All that being said, we at Turion Space don't want to build a sustainable future in space at the cost of polluting Earth. For the first missions, we will drag the debris down to burn up in Earth's atmosphe
Recommends manuelmoreale · 2021-09 · on “Amazon asked FCC to reject Starlink plan because it can’t compete, SpaceX says”
If you really are interested in the answer to your question about pollution this is a good video to watch [this video]
Recommends manuelmoreale · 2023-10 · on “Next year, SpaceX aims to average one launch every 2.5 days”
Relevant video that goes quite deep into the topic if you’re actually concerned about rocket pollution: [this video]
Cites systemvoltage · 2021-08 · on “SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night”
I am sorry but this is false. Toxicity and polluting aspects of Rockets is of a negligible concern, Everyday Astronaut (Youtube fame) gets this so often that he did an entire hour long video on this: [this video] > Rockets on unplanned trajectories can ruin people's day Well darn.