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Bummer! Widespread Space Tourism Could Destroy The Planet
Maybe we should just leave casual space travel to the billionaires
If you have been dreaming about hopping on Jeff Bezos’s penis-shaped rocket and blasting off to the stars for a bit of middle-class space tourism in the near future, you might want to think again. Preliminary studies suggest that space tourism could be bad for the planet. Like, really, really bad. That is a huge letdown for people who have been following the development of commercial space companies like Blue Origin, SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic.
Rockets put out a lot of harmful emissions when they burn their fuel to get into orbit. The emissions produced by the current generation of space rockets are more numerous and more potent than the emissions put out by commercial jetliners.
Increasing the number of annual rocket launches has the potential to increase the average temperature growth in the Arctic, reverse the progress we have made on holes in the ozone layer and produce smog around areas where frequent rocket launches take place.
Massive Environmental Effects
A typical commercial space flight has a carbon footprint 100x larger than a typical airline flight. That is bad news for anyone who was hoping to be able to…
