Did Scientists Just Prove That Space Travel Will End The World? | Unveiled

Did Scientists Just Prove That Space Travel Will End The World?

Space travel has the potential to save humanity. If Earth is ever faced with destruction and becomes uninhabitable as the result of a nuclear war, asteroid impact, the sun turning into a red giant, or any other kind of disaster, humanity will have no choice but to search for other worlds to live on. However, space travel could also be the very thing that causes us to abandon Earth in the first place.

This is unveiled and today we’re answering the extraordinary question: Did Scientists Just Prove That Space Travel Will End The World?

Space is the next frontier for humanity to conquer. Given our innate sense of curiosity and passion for exploration, it seems inevitable that humans will one day begin to inhabit other celestial bodies and expand our presence to other stars. Going to space also inspires people back on Earth and provides plenty of benefits to our society. Some of the most popular technologies in the world like cell phone cameras and GPS are the result of space travel research. It has also increased our ability to forecast the weather and raised our overall knowledge of the universe.

Of course, space travel also comes with its fair share of risks. Any time a manned mission occurs there is always the chance for disaster, and the economic burden can be massive. Adjusted for inflation today, the first space shuttle cost around $49 billion dollars to research and build. Beyond these obvious concerns, though, other problems have started to become more pressing. Recently space tourism has become a reality, with many companies promising to offer a flight up into space for the right amount of money. But this rise in tourism can have potentially deadly consequences.

The potential revenue from space tourism is astronomical. Already companies have begun charging almost half a million dollars per person for a 90 minute ride into the atmosphere, with just the promise of a few minutes of weightlessness and a great view of Earth. Most of us won’t be able to afford a trip to space at those prices, but since there are already a few companies that are stepping into the scene, competition is likely to drive prices down and lead to cheaper alternatives and technologies being developed. This could even lead to breakthroughs that make space travel easier. Scientists do have serious concerns though - such as the effects on our atmosphere and ozone layer. In order to produce enough energy for something as powerful as a rocket or space shuttle, we currently require fossil fuels and lots of them. Renewable energy is essentially unlimited, but we aren’t able to harvest large amounts at a time. NASA and other space agencies have always known rockets were bad for the atmosphere, but there were so few rockets being launched that it never mattered. Now, that could be about to change.

NASA first began looking into the polluting effects that their rockets were having for the environment back in the 1990s. One of the chief concerns at the time was that of chlorine from solid rocket motors. Chlorine has its uses back on Earth, but it doesn't belong in the atmosphere and destroys the ozone layer. At the time NASA ran the tests, it was determined that there weren’t enough launches to warrant a global threat, but that they could still be locally damaging in that area. And this is where one of the problems with space tourism comes into play. Some private companies are planning to launch as many as several rockets per day in the future, and they will likely always be from the same launch pad. Virgin Galactic is among the companies that plan to one day service thousands of people every year, and doing so could build up dangerous pollutants in the atmosphere of that area. If space flights become more affordable, and therefore more popular and available to a wider audience, this could become a global problem. Each one of these 90 minute flights from a company like Virgin Galactic releases as much pollution as a 10 hour trip on an airplane. The good news is that for now, the space industry accounts for less than 1% of fuel consumption in aviation. Despite this, if we ever reach the point where these rocket launches are happening daily, it could lead to space tourism alone accounting for 6% of the Earth’s warming from black carbon emissions.

There are both known and unknown risks associated with pollution from rockets. We do know that chlorine affects our ozone layer, which is essential for protecting life on Earth from the sun’s harmful radiation. Chlorine based fuels were actually banned under the Montreal Protocol in 1989 to protect the ozone layer, but the space industry wasn’t affected by this ban at the time. Both chlorine and nitrogen oxides present clear dangers to our atmosphere, as does black carbon. Also called soot, this substance comes from burning fossil fuels. The real problem with black carbon is that it absorbs light rays and emits heat in return, which makes it a worrisome chemical for our climate. Other fossil fuel factories produce black carbon around the world, but rockets have an added danger. This is because rockets emit black carbon when they’re already high up in the atmosphere, which causes it to get stuck in the stratosphere. Studies have found that when soot is caught in the stratosphere like this, it can be up to 500 times worse for our climate than when it’s burned at surface level. In addition to heating up the planet, this could cause unforeseen problems with weather patterns on Earth and the overall chemistry of the atmosphere.

Not all of the companies use the same types of engines, however. Blue Origin, for instance, uses a liquid hydrogen and oxygen engine to launch their rockets, which doesn’t release black carbon. Regardless, it still releases harmful nitrogen oxides as a byproduct. In addition to the known dangers, scientists are worried about the unforeseen dangers that can result from increased rocket launches. For one, the size of the particles from today’s hybrid engines are much smaller and lighter than those of solid rocket motors. They’re about the size of carbon molecules, which means they’re easily trapped and could stay in the atmosphere forever. This could cause differences in atmospheric temperatures that in turn affect the amount of rainfall, wind, intensity of the polar jet stream, and winter storm patterns in unpredictable ways.

Much of the unpredictability comes from the fact that these pollutants are being released at levels we’re not used to seeing. Most of our research from fossil fuel emissions comes from burning it at the surface level, so scientists don’t know for sure what the consequences will be of releasing it straight into the atmosphere. What they are sure of is that a drastic increase in space travel could have dire consequences for the Earth in general. A study run in 2010 to explore the impact of black carbon emissions from rockets found that despite flying far less than other industries, rocket pollution could one day be comparable to airplane and jet pollution.

It’s clear that space tourism has many pros and cons. It could provide us with cheaper and more efficient methods of space travel, but it might also rapidly worsen our already challenging climate problems. The irony here is that space flight could one day save humanity if our planet becomes uninhabitable, but that space travel could also be one of the things that contributes to the destruction of our environment.

What researchers are sure about is that more studies need to be done on rocket pollution and chemicals released high in the atmosphere. World governments are aware of this problem, and could impose restrictions on space travel before it gets out of hand. In the long term, the ideal solution would be to find a rocket engine that won’t harm the environment as much as the current ones so that we can enjoy the benefits.

What’s your verdict? Is space travel and tourism worth the potential problems it could cause? Is it a necessary pursuit for knowledge, or something that we should scale back at least until we have cleaner ways of going about it? There’s a clear balance at play here and, as we learn more about the shape of our world today (and in the future) there’s an onus on the experts to get it right. Yes, we want to see the stars… but we also need to retain Earth, as well, for the sake of our species and life in general. For now, that’s why scientists think that space travel could end the world.