3x as powerful also means, 3 times the emissions from 3x fuel consumption. Meanwhile, car drivers are bullied into saving fuel and emissions because, uh, the environment.
Now not all road transportation is consumers, but as you can see it is completely appropriate to have focus on road transportation emissions. A tiny efficiency increase there can offset emissions by as much as completely eliminating all human space programs. And we do rely on space programs for real stuff. It’s not all silly rich boy games.
If you find a way to launch rockets without chemical propulsion, please share it with the world. Until then, I’m going to be happy to hear we continue to make strides into the final frontier.
Also, nobody is stopping you from buying and burning as much fuel as you like. You have to pay for each gallon of course, but there are no monthly quotas at the pump.
There are some interesting efforts in this direction. Not “without” propellants but with much less. There’s Spinlaunch, the company developing a kind of catapult that gets small rockets high into the atmosphere. And there are efforts to launch smaller rockets from the wings of high altitude planes.
We should not be “happy” with the current state of things. Anyone who’s played Kerbal Space Program knows what a lousy deal it is launching chemical rockets off the ground. A tiny bit more payload and you need more fuel, more fuel adds more weight and you need more more fuel…
Rocketry is currently a tiny proportion of emissions so I’m not worried about it. But neither am I complacent about current technology.
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3x as powerful also means, 3 times the emissions from 3x fuel consumption. Meanwhile, car drivers are bullied into saving fuel and emissions because, uh, the environment.
Road transport: 25-30% of global emissions
Aviation: 2-3% of global emissions
Space programs: 0.1% of global emissions
Now not all road transportation is consumers, but as you can see it is completely appropriate to have focus on road transportation emissions. A tiny efficiency increase there can offset emissions by as much as completely eliminating all human space programs. And we do rely on space programs for real stuff. It’s not all silly rich boy games.
If you find a way to launch rockets without chemical propulsion, please share it with the world. Until then, I’m going to be happy to hear we continue to make strides into the final frontier.
Also, nobody is stopping you from buying and burning as much fuel as you like. You have to pay for each gallon of course, but there are no monthly quotas at the pump.
There are some interesting efforts in this direction. Not “without” propellants but with much less. There’s Spinlaunch, the company developing a kind of catapult that gets small rockets high into the atmosphere. And there are efforts to launch smaller rockets from the wings of high altitude planes.
We should not be “happy” with the current state of things. Anyone who’s played Kerbal Space Program knows what a lousy deal it is launching chemical rockets off the ground. A tiny bit more payload and you need more fuel, more fuel adds more weight and you need more more fuel…
Rocketry is currently a tiny proportion of emissions so I’m not worried about it. But neither am I complacent about current technology.