Space tourism more harmful to environment than air travel?

[Vahe231991]

A news article regarding the effects of spaceflight on the environment that you may find mind-blowing:
https://www.dunfermlinepress.com/news/national/20235929.space-tourism-may-greater-impact-climate-aviation-industry---study/

The results of this study by a coalition of researchers from UCL, the University of Cambridge and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) indicate that rocket launches may have a more detrimental effect upon stratospheric ozone than air travel.

[freddo411]

A news article regarding the effects of spaceflight on the environment that you may find mind-blowing:
https://www.dunfermlinepress.com/news/national/20235929.space-tourism-may-greater-impact-climate-aviation-industry---study/

The results of this study by a coalition of researchers from UCL, the University of Cambridge and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) indicate that rocket launches may have a more detrimental effect upon stratospheric ozone than air travel.

Agenda article. 

[DanClemmensen]

A news article regarding the effects of spaceflight on the environment that you may find mind-blowing:
https://www.dunfermlinepress.com/news/national/20235929.space-tourism-may-greater-impact-climate-aviation-industry---study/

The article jumps back and forth among several studies, making it hard to focus on the effects. At least three separate effects are mentioned: stratospheric soot from liquid fuel, stratospheric pollution from SRBs, and pollution from re-entering heat shields.  The two effects are stratospheric ozone destruction and global warming. The comparisons given are hard to evaluate, but I think the "worse that airlines" compares contribution to global warming of soot produced by each. But soot is not the major contributor by airlines to global warming. CO₂ is worse: much worse when integrated over time.

If I were more interested in this I would try to go find the actual scientific papers. I would not recommend trying to read this article.

[electricdawn]

I think Everyday Astronaut (Tim Dodd) has a video about this.

I mean, just think about how many airplanes fly every day, and then think how many rocket launches are happening every day.

Even if one rocket launches every day, and even if it would be something like SLS (pretty much the worst case with SRB's and being so large), it would be by far outclassed by the several thousands of airplanes flying 24 hours a day vs. a few minutes for the rocket. Space Tourism as it is right now, doesn't even factor into this.

I haven't read the article yet, but I think even a future version of Space Tourism with much higher launch numbers would not make much difference.

[edzieba]

As usual, articles that report on papers without actually linking to the papers (or providing the DOI. Or providing the name of the paper and its authors) are likely to have vanishingly little resemblance to what the paper presents, and similarly little utility, and can be dismissed and the paper sought out instead.

The actual paper is here: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021EF002612 , and an interesting read. Unfortunately whilst they model Kerolox, hypergol, hydrolox, and solid emissions, they do not model methalox emissions (likely due to lack of existing models, which is likely due to the lack of data on actual methalox launches, given that there haven't been any)

One of the more interesting aspects is that creation of NOx (and other chemical species, but that's one of greatest impact) by re-entry plasma has a measurable effect on Ozone today, far more than would be expected from the mass alone due to it being created directly in the upper atmosphere rather than transported there from the surface like other NOx sources.

[JayWee]

Methalox emissions were modelled in the SS EIA.
https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2022-06/AppendixG_ExhaustPlumeCalculations.pdf