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NASA Space Science

It isn't Easy Being Green and Getting to LEO 322

Posted by timothy from the see-those-aren't-naturally-compatible dept.
MWTJ writes "The BBC has a story about the environmental impact of the space shuttle. One of the things that started the modern environmentalist movement were pictures of the Earth from space, so we could see the beauty of the planet as never before. We could also see environmental destruction from space. But what is the impact of the space program on our planet? The story talks about the switch to Freon-free insulation, the use of clean-burning hydrogen/LOX fuel, and other factors. What else could be done to get to space with minimal harm to the planet?"
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It isn't Easy Being Green and Getting to LEO More

It isn't Easy Being Green and Getting to LEO

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  • Not much, that's how much. (Score:4, Funny)

    by rueger ( 210566 ) * on Monday August 08, 2005 @06:01PM (#13273896) Homepage
    I mean really, how much impact could any event have that only happens once every three or four years....
    • Like a tsunami, maybe? Or a dinosaur-genociding asteriod? Presidential election...

      Even with the US Shuttle program grounded, there are still lots of other launches. Especially abroad, like in Russia and by Europe. And now with China in the space race, Japan and Korea will be shooting for the titles shortly. India, everyone else who wants to perfect ballistic missile tech, impress their citizens and neighbors, and claim some of the exploitable space beyond their skyscrapers. That's a lot of launches.
      • So pick a way that will decrease the environmental impact of many launches into space. Maybe stick them all on the same "mass transportation" system. That would probably be the space elevator [wikipedia.org]. But how many environmentalists will move on to complaining about the environmental impact of a space elevator?
      • These are not nuclear powered rockets of the Tintin variety, and the environmental impact is, in total, quite low.

        We should worry more about vinyl siding production for houses, cars, etc. Seriously, this is like optimizing the property page rendering code for blurring an image and not optimizing the blur. It'll be faster, but not by much. Hit the big-ticket pollution items before you belabor the horrors of the rarely occurring ones.

        Being "a lot of launches" doesn't mean that it contributes to the m
        • We should worry about vinyl siding production, and other wasteful petrochemical production of poisonous byproducts. And we do. We also worry about the radiation pollution from too many coal plants. Just because rocket combustion is a small-impact abuse of the atmosphere doesn't mean it's literally "negligible", that we can neglect it. "Four significant digits", 0.0001, is something like 6 million people. Until you're talking about maybe 10 or 14 significant digits, it's got a significant impact, like maybe

    • The thing is, a launch doesn't happen only every 3 or 4 years. Besides the space shuttle there are lots of military and commercial satellite launches courtesy of NASA, the US Air Force, the European Space Agency, the Russian Federal Space Agency and other new members of the club, like the People's Republic of China.

      Tons of fumes and other chemicals are expended for successful launches but it's even worse when something goes wrong and rockets fall to the ground in pieces or are lost in the ocean. For a

      • For a recent example, there was the Ariane 5 rocket that self-destructed soon after launch right over a populated area: http://www.seds.org/spaceviews/960615/pol.html [seds.org] [seds.org]

        I'm not sure how recent that is, given that later in the same undated page I see:

        Should Russia drop out of the space station project after the election, NASA has devised a backup plan to build the key core modules Russia is providing for the station.

        That seems to hint at something pre-Columbia. In any case, aside from some

    • Even if this was done every week, it would not add up to the pollution that we spew out in other sources. Coal and Oil energy generation is probably far worse.
  • Though, that won't work for manned craft, and you need to keep in mind how much power one would use operating one.
    • If you accelerated slowly from very deep, it could. And it's not that difficult to get the energy from "clean" means.

    • Re:Mass Driver (Score:2, Insightful)

      by suitepotato ( 863945 )
      Though, that won't work for manned craft, and you need to keep in mind how much power one would use operating one.

      Forget that. Taking off using a mass driver would be like using a railgun as your engine. Great, you take off but you blow a crater the size of Providence, RI in the Earth below by the time you reach orbit.
      • If it was FROM Rhode Island, then I don't see the problem.

        The thing is, you're thinking I meant having some type of mass driver on the spacecraft, right? Other way around - the spacecraft would be the bullet, as it were. No explosion, except perhaps the ice being vaporized on exit from the mouth of the rail. I've been rereading Heinlein's "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" this past weekend, so I did some reading up on mass drivers on wikipedia - check it out; interesting stuff.
  • Develop nanotech and use it to build a space elevator. Cheap, clean, safe, easy access to space!

    • Re:There's always the obvious: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Develop nanotech and use it to build a space elevator. Cheap, clean, safe, easy access to space!

      but you just know that some asshole is going to hit all the buttons, and then it'll take a month to get to orbit.
    • I knew the space elevator advocates would come out when this was posted. Let's consider the space elevator from a green and practical standpoint:

      1.) We know of no method to make the multi-kilometer long nanotubes necessary for the space elevator. We are not even close--we need a multi-order of magnitude breakthrough to make this happen.

      2.) We just aren't looking for microgram lab quantities here. We would need to scale the synthesis of these mega-nanotubes to industrial levels to generate the thousands of t
  • Maybe if they used CFC-based insulation that was stronger, like they used to, they'd have fewer explosions therefore less polutants entering the atmosphere and fewer dead astronauts? Just my vote.
  • Read "Hyperion" by Dan Simmonds to find out about the guys who fly trees through space. Most remember those books for the walking ginsu dude [chaztruog.com], not for the trees.

    What can be more green than trees in space? Just make sure they are crewed by Ents.

  • Burning Hippies! (Score:3)

    by spun ( 1352 ) * <loverevolutionary@@@yahoo...com> on Monday August 08, 2005 @06:04PM (#13273916) Journal
    It's totally environmentally friendly and it can get you really high, really fast!

  • A drop in the ocean? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phpm0nkey ( 768038 ) * on Monday August 08, 2005 @06:05PM (#13273921) Homepage
    While the effort is admirable, getting too bent out of shape over the space shuttle's emissions is a little myopic. Weighed against all of the benefits and advancements we've gleaned from the space program, I'd say the environmental impact is pretty negligible. The article itself suggests that the damage to wildlife from hydrochloric acid deposits is "minimal and manageable".

    I can't imagine that the costs of upgrading a $1.7 billion shuttle to make NASA's once-in-a-blue-moon launches more earth-friendly will be reasonable for taxpayers. Environmentalists looking for something to complain about should have no trouble finding a better outlet for their ire in corporate America than at NASA.
    • Upgrading a $1.7B shuttle to make those launches more earth-friendly led directly to the Columbia disaster. They changed the formulation of the foam for the ET.

      • Upgrading a $1.7B shuttle to make those launches more earth-friendly led directly to the Columbia disaster. They changed the formulation of the foam for the ET.

        [sigh]

        The 'enviromentally friendly' foam is only used as acreage foam. The hand sprayed and shaped foam (used for both the bipod ramp that damaged Columbia and for the PAL ramp on the recent STS-114 launch) is still the old 'unfriendly' foam. The switch to a new foam had nothing to do with accident.

    • Enviro-wackos look for the biggest, most visible target, not necessarily the best target.
    • I think the payback NASA has made for the environment outweighs any real impact that they may have negatively made with their programs.

      If you took the derivatives of all we have learned and developed from the space race I would say overall the planet is much better for it. Space flight requires all sorts of inventiveness and efficiency. These techniques and ideas spin off eventually into the consumer world to benefit everyone.

    • If the shuttle had been launched as frequently as planned during the design phase, I've heard that we wouldn't have an ozone layer left due to fuel in solid rocket boosters. So perhaps it's a good job the shuttle turned out to be a bit another governmental white elephant.

  • Preposterous (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pi_0's don't shower ( 741216 ) <ethan@isp.northw ... u ['est' in gap]> on Monday August 08, 2005 @06:05PM (#13273926) Homepage Journal
    Put this in perspective, people. There are TWO space shuttles still in service, and even though they have a CFC exemption, and it was the breaking off of a piece of that insulation that caused the Colombia disaster, they STILL use non-fluorocarbon (non-freon based) foam for insulation on the shuttles.

    As stated in the comments to the article on the bottom of the page, underground fires and about a bazillion other natural sources have more of an environmental impact than the shuttle. If anything, industries and the world's large polluters ought to learn from the efficiency of NASA wiht regard to abusing/respecting the environment.
    • Yep - the interesting thing is that they changed the design to use NON-FREON material, though the FREON based foam didn't have as large a problem with breakage. Was this a good tradeoff??

      Maybe the cost was one space shuttle??

    • Re:Preposterous (Score:4, Informative)

      by Buran ( 150348 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @06:21PM (#13274051)
      Actually, there are three:

      OV-103 Discovery
      OV-104 Atlantis
      OV-105 Endeavour

      A total of five space-ready orbiters were built. The missing two are:

      OV-102 Columbia
      OV-099 Challenger

      (I leave it to a fellow geek to tell me why Challenger's number looks wrong).

      OV-101 was Enterprise which was built for approach and landing tests only. A conversion to space-readiness was considered, but in the end was never done.

      • Re:Preposterous (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Challenger was OV-099 because it was built as a testbed before Columbia and Enterprise. It was upgraded to a full orbiter after the success of Columbia's first missions

    • Re:Preposterous (Score:3, Informative)

      by DerekLyons ( 302214 )

      Put this in perspective, people. There are TWO space shuttles still in service, and even though they have a CFC exemption, and it was the breaking off of a piece of that insulation that caused the Colombia disaster, they STILL use non-fluorocarbon (non-freon based) foam for insulation on the shuttles.

      [sigh]

      The 'enviromentally friendly' foam is only used as acreage foam. The hand sprayed and shaped foam (used for both the bipod ramp that damaged Columbia and for the PAL ramp on the recent STS-114 launch)

      • The NASA document [google.com] on the subject is somewhat unclear, but it looks to me like they've been phasing out all of the CFC-11 foam, and it's unclear to me as to whether the old hand-poured foam was ever Freon-based.

        • Re:Preposterous (Score:3, Informative)

          by ChadN ( 21033 )
          The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) report talks about the switch to non-Freon based foam. For those interested in the details, please see CAIB report Volume VI, pages 29-30 (transcripts of interviews discussing the exact issue of the foam formulation and switchover from CFC to HCFC). Also pages 180-181.

          Volume I also talks briefly about this issue (describing with pictures which areas of foam on the shuttle tank are what formulation) on pages 51 and 129.

          In specific answer to your comment, the
  • "clean-burning hydrogen/LOX fuel" reminds me of the energy industry salivating over the New Hydrogen Economy. Because the easiest, cheapest way to mass-produce hydrogen is through, yep, fossil fuels...

    So is the hydrogen/LOX fuel commercially produced in an environmentally friendly manner? How about the new insulation?
    • Hydrogen gas is a byproduct of oil refining. Last I heard, the demand for hydrogen gas was not up to the quantity produced as a side effect of making gasoline. So the environmental costs are actually just for capturing it, cleaning it, transporting it, and chilling it, not the original step. (Also, the higher-yield process that would be used to mass-produce it is more environmentally friendly than refining and combusting it.)

      The cleaning is needed because some of what gets refined out of the oil is sulfer,

  • For crying out loud (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 08, 2005 @06:08PM (#13273950)
    We do a shuttle launch once every, what, four months even under the optimal conditions that never happen? And the city of Houston, Texas alone is pumping out how much greenhouse gas every day just from the cars alone?

    Why is it we never actually care about the environment except at times that it's stupid to do so? Oh noes, think what nuclear power could do to the environment under extreme and unlikely circumstances that can be totally avoided with a modicum of competent regulation! We'd better avoid that and stick with the huge belching coal plants built in the 1970s and grandfathered in from the time before emission controls, that's sooo much more ecologically friendly.
  • Hard to believe this is merely a coincidence, but last month's Aerospace America [aiaa.org] cover story was on a very similar topic.

    PDF of the article: http://www.aiaa.org/aerospace/images/articleimages /pdf/AA_July05_SIE.pdf [aiaa.org]

  • Start by going into space. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @06:09PM (#13273955)
    > What else could be done to get to space with minimal harm to the planet?

    1) Get to space.

    As long as you're stuck on this step, you're going to have to have an entire planet's worth of heavy industries, energy generation, and resource extraction being performed on the surface of said planet.

    Arguing about the "greenness" of space exploration is like someone having a heart attack deciding not to call an ambulance because being a passenger in a vehicle that's going faster than the posted speed limits in city streets is a health hazard.

    • It would be better for both parties involved: people and Earth. It's nuts to still be here on this dirtball deathtrap (just ask any dinosaur). Meanwhile the planet itself doesn't really mind much about large meteor impacts that happen from time to time, Bruce Willis not withstanding. Given time the biosphere recovers even though individual species care quite a bit.

  • What's your timescale? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by delibes ( 303485 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @06:09PM (#13273958)
    If you want to reduce the impact of placing objects into orbit, then reduce the energy demands of getting up there.

    A space elevator (always popular on /.) would be about the cheapest way up in theory provided you write of the energy cost of building the damn thing over a long lifetime.

    Still, I think the posts and articles about the environmental impact of the Shuttle are mostly crap. Cars that do 40mpg instead of 20mpg on an urban-cycle would have much more positive impact on the environment. Using the heat from power station cooling systems to heat offices/factories in local areas would do more. Recycling your plastic, glass bottles, cans, and paper would do more.

    Nasty as the perchlorate SRBs are, they're worth the inconvenience if NASA can use them to build (say) a 100 ton heavy launcher to replace the Shuttle.

  • Um yeah, (Score:5, Insightful)

    by boomgopher ( 627124 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @06:09PM (#13273960) Journal
    and then as has happened in other fields - Western bleeding hearts set out to save the world via job-killing regulations at home, and then other countries (who could give a rat's ass about the environment) eat our lunch with cheaper products/services, ala China.

    The path to hell is paved with good intentions..

    • The path to hell is paved with good intentions.. ...and it's evil that treads it. What's the point in getting to space if we can't figure out how to sustain life support indefinitely once we get out there?
  • I don't think we need worry about the environmental impact of a few shuttles once in a while.

    But we'd better sort out something a bit 'greener' before we are all blasting off for 2 weeks holiday on the sea of tranquility

  • Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)

    by N8F8 ( 4562 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @06:10PM (#13273967)
    Sure it makes sense to worry about such things if you are making 100K+ cars, but a few space vehicles that already have to deal with some serious mechaqnical stresses? Dumb.

  • pay no attention to the man behind the curtain (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @06:13PM (#13273992)
    Professor George Fraser, director of Leicester University's Space Research Centre says this exhaust gas, made from the combination of hydrogen and oxygen, consists of water vapour and as such does not harm the atmosphere, making the use of Nasa's main shuttle engines fairly environmentally safe.

    I'm sorry, but this is the same argument used with why we need to be driving hydrogen cars, and it irritates the shit out of me.

    Skipping over the solid rocket boosters as cheerfully as the article summary did- perhaps Professor Fraser would care to explain to us where all the hydrogen and oxygen came from?

    If you do the math in terms of the energy produced, and realize that both distillation-by-refridgeration and electrolysis are hugely inefficient, you start to realize the amount of energy required to make all that hydrogen and oxygen is incredible. Chemical methods involve pretty toxic chemicals, so you're not getting out of it that way. Guess how most of our (United States) electricity is supplied? That's right- coal. Which generates huge amounts of carbon soot, carbon dioxide, and radioactive particulate.

    I noticed that they also skipped quite nicely over hydrazine [wikipedia.org], used in the thrusters...

    • Hydrazine is only used in the Orbital Maneuvering System and Reaction Control System thrusters which are used only in space, so the impact of those is reduced. (The RCS can, however, activate lower than normal if the orbiter's aerodynamic control surfaces prove insufficient to control the vehicle, as was the case at the end of STS-107. This is controlled by the vehicle's computers, which automatically activate any systems needed to keep on course.)
    • and don't forget that you don't just get 'wator vapor' when you burn shit at 3000 deg. F.

      Heellloo nitrogen combustion in the exhaust stream!

      That said, it really isn't a big deal currently (due mostly to low launch numbers) and we are moving away from the toxic fuels... which brings me tooooo:

      I love space etc etc. NASA fucked up (ha, there's a new one) when they decided to continue to use the SRBs for the next gen launcher. Probably costs as much to transport them from Utah to Florida than it would to fuel u
    • Connect electrolisis up to Hoover dam. Where's the pollution? Connect electrolisis up to solar panels. Where's the pollution? Connect electrolisis up to wind turbines. Where's the pollution? Just because you can burn coal to make hydrogen doesn't mean you should.
      • Dams *do* cause greenhouse gas emissions. Dams are poorly oxygenated, unlike the rivers that they cut a chunk out of. Organic matter that washes into them decays anoxically, producing methane instead of CO2. Methane is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2. In fact, many dams are believed to contribute more to the greenhouse effect than an equivalent coal-burning power plant would.

        Your other two options are way overpriced. Not that I don't wish it were the case that they weren't... but they currently ar
        • At the Earth's surface an average of 1000 watts of solar energy fills every square meter of space. The average US style house rarely uses more than 10 kilowatts of power even at peak demand. In total, the Earth receives every day a total of 18,000 terawatts of power. The total amount of energy used today globally is no more than 9 terawatts.

          Unfortunately, it is impossible to capture all of the solar energy that falls on Earth and convert it to power. Today, the best solar cells that you can purchase are
          • That won't happen with coal. We've got 100 years of coal in the US alone given current consumption. Then there's methane hydrates, bitumen, and other untapped fossil resources. Even if oil were to suddenly dissapear, there's plenty of energy to prevent a crunch.

            I wouldn't expect cheap oil again, but I wouldn't expect anything radical.
            • Unfortunately, unless there's a massive breakthrough in battery or fuel cell technology, it will be cheaper to run automobiles on oil even if the prices triple or quadruple. Thankfully, even in the US, governments are demanding that car emissions be reduced to zero within the next 20 years.
  • A hot air ballon.
  • Space technology is advanced engineering with applications in sustainable technology. Never mind the fact that a lot of our knowledge about environmental impact comes from satellite observations.

    However it is generally acknowledged that the organisational imperatives of NASA are too conservative to disseminate or even use the new technology to reduce its environmental impact.

    However there is plenty of hope that the competitions that are open to speculative developers will both find disruptive technologies f

  • Go for Maximum Efficiency (Score:5, Interesting)

    by VernonNemitz ( 581327 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @06:16PM (#13274020) Journal
    Electromagnetic launchers [sandia.gov] are practical NOW. "Just accelerate the space cargo in a vacuum tube until escape velocity is achieved, while climbing a high mountain." Only one key technology has been needed, and it got invented just a couple years ago. At the END of that vacuum tube, a means is needed to keep the atmosphere from rushing in while still letting the cargo exit. The plasma valve [bnl.gov] is the answer to that problem.
    • I highly agree that electromagnetic launchers would be damn useful. I also think that most people are thinking of using them in the wrong way. Let me explain:

      Due to high acceleration, electromagnetic launchers are probably not the best choice for launching humans or delicate equipment. Rockets are likely to be cheaper for this for the time being. In order to have a launcher which would be useful for human launches, the launcher would have to be very long, and thus very expensive. However, a launcher wh

  • Go nuclear (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Elgreco1 ( 714955 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @06:20PM (#13274046) Homepage
    http://www.nuclearspace.com/a_liberty_ship.htm [nuclearspace.com] It is simple, no nuclear materials comes out of the exausts. All you do is super heat some material to rediculous levels and your done. Any activity has a negative impact, but then the biggest human contibutor to radioactivity in the atmosphear is burning coal. As for accidents, you need about 1000 accidents to release as much nuclear materails as those above ground attomic tests. Oh, and make them BIG ...
  • Using tether snatch would allow us to conserve the energy used to get to orbit rather than blow it all as heat on re-entry.

    Some of the work on high-tensile fiber is headed there now.

  • Large clouds at liftoff are mostly water steam (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Buran ( 150348 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @06:28PM (#13274106)
    There is a sound suppression system built into the launch pad which is designed to prevent the infrastructure from being damaged from the sound waves generated beginning six seconds before liftoff when the orbiter's main engines ignite and run up to full thrust.

    Watch launch footage carefully and you will be able to see that the clouds mentioned begin to appear at that point. While some of them are deflected exhaust from the aluminum perchlorate fuel used for the solid rocket boosters, most of the big clouds are actually water steam.

    This can be confirmed by looking at footage of liquid-fuelled rocket launches. Liquid fuel doesn't produce those big visible trails the way solid fuel does -- the clouds are visible only at first and the rocket itself has no trail as long as it has no solid boosters. (The shuttle does indeed lose its trail after SRB separation, as do Deltas and Titans and others).
  • The latest issue of IEEE spectrum featurs the space elevator.

    Being more environmentally friendly than conventional rockets wasn't even mentioned as a space elevator advantage. And yes - we do now have the technology in place to build it, for less than the cost of a shuttle replacement.

    All we need is somebody in power to sign off on the program and put this into high gear.

  • Environmental Impact of the BBC is Greater! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The BBC itself probably impacts the environment to a greater degree than the Shuttle. Think of all the fossil energy used to generate the power needed to watch TV and radio while they are on, to generate those signals, the environmental impact of the staff, the transport requirements for the staff, etc.
  • Well, obviously, since we're throwing stuff into outer space, we need to be putting back the same amount of matter that we're throwing away. I suggest we start harvesting minerals from the Moon and Mars to replace the materials we've permanently removed from Earth.

    It's just like logging, so I'm sure all the environmentalists will agree with me on this one.
  • Wasn't the space program all about spinning off technology into everyday, terrestrial realms? If so, if there's been any spinoff more beneficial than the technology to mass-produce lightweight, carbon-fiber parts for our land vehicles - oh - wait - I guess out huge enormous land vehicles weight more now than they ever did.

    Well, at least I've got my Tang and my pen that can write upside-down.
  • Why oh why does this remind me of Wandaba style [advfilms.com]?

  • Would that be the Freon-free insulation ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SengirV ( 203400 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @06:48PM (#13274245)
    ... that was directly resposible for killing the Columbia Astronauts and nearly killed the present set? Yep, gotta love putting the astronauts in sever risk to get rid of a couple pounds of freon. Stupidity reigns supreme when you deal with environmentalist.

    • Well, as there were chunks of foam breaking loose on basically *every* *other* STS mission before STS-114, including the ones the less enviromental-friendly foam was used, how exactly do you link the freon-free foam to the loss of Columbia?

      • Because the number of tiles damaged since the switch went up by 1000% From an average of 30 tiles damaged per trip up to an average of 300. Absolutes are amazing - If you find a tiny piece of foam missing in older flights, you can claim that there is no differencem since it happened back then as well. I perfer to dig deeper.
  • I am sure I am going to be one of a chorus of people saying this, but why bother?

    Space flight is so rare compared to airplane, automobiles, steel plants, etc. as to be almost insignificant.

    Wouldn't it be better to worry about things that actually effect the enviornment?
  • That comment about environmental destruction was really funny. I almost spit up my lunch from laughing.

    The shuttle doesn't have the ability to monitor ground effects the way satellites do and the woman is the pilot. They're orbiting the earth every couple of hours or so.

    Her comment wasn't scientific in any way, it was political and based on junk science.

    If it were scientific, she would have commented on land reclamation, creation from various dredging operations and erosion control. Did she truly explain th
  • What else could be done to get to space with minimal harm to the planet?
    Blow it all off and start building Orions [unmuseum.org].
  • Ok, we can't do it today, but our planning direction needs to be towards making sure everything that goes up does not come back down.

    What we really need to find is the minimal long term cost track to establishing independently viable industrial societies off this planet.

    The environmental cost to the only environment which actually matters, the earth's biosphere, of keeping returning space travellers alive for the rest of their days on earth will at some point exceed the cost to the earth of keeping them ali
  • From the "fine" "article":

    Discovery Commander Eileen Collins spoke last Thursday of the environmental destruction visible on Earth, likening the atmosphere to "an eggshell on an egg, it's so very thin".

    Huh? Is this chick for real? Scientists have been studying the atmosphere for decades, and yet have a _very_ small understanding of the dynamics of our Earth and especially it's atmosphere. I live in central Florida, if Earth Scientists knew more, I would not have been beat up by THREE MAJOR hurricanes

  • Project Orion (Score:3, Informative)

    by Zoyd ( 13778 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @09:53PM (#13275412)
    What else could be done to get to space with minimal harm to the planet?

    Orion.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion [wikipedia.org]

  • The basic idea with the shuttle is right (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Z00L00K ( 682162 ) on Tuesday August 09, 2005 @03:17AM (#13276662) Homepage Journal
    but it seems to be time for a new generation of shuttles using modern light-weight materials. It could acutally be useful to have two different shuttles, one light-weight for small transports and personnel and one heavy-weight for the big things.

    As I see it, the part that has the most impact on the environment and as well is the most critical part today are the solid fuel boosters.

    One feature that could be used for the light shuttle is to have a launch vehicle that carries and accelerates the shuttle to a speed and altitude where the rockets can work best. By using ordinary jet engines for the first step you wouldn't need to carry the oxygen for the first stage, which is a major weight contribution.

    This will of course require several different design issues to be solved, but since Burt Rutan [scaled.com] has done this (on a sub-orbital scale) it isn't impossible.

    If the carrier would be able to go supersonic before the release of the shuttle it would be even better, but then there are a lot of issues to take into account like interfering shock waves occuring at separation. A lot of fun for those guys that like extreme calculations! :->

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