Episode 103
[FOCUS] Commercial Space Travel
Episode Summary: This episode is an excerpt from a past episode on Commercial Space Travel (and Green Energy)
The possibility of people who can afford to travel into space seems very exciting, at least for them. The impact on the planet is something that seems to be being overlooked.
Jenn and Olabanji came together to discuss the issues around commercial space travel with multi-fuel rocket engines
For more information on the project, and to order your copy of the Carbon Almanac (an Amazon Best-Selling book of the year!), visit thecarbonalmanac.org
Listen to the full episode: Commercial Space Travel (and green energy)
For more information on the project and to order your copy of the Carbon Almanac, visit thecarbonalmanac.org
Want to join in the conversation?
Visit thecarbonalmanac.org/podcasts and send us a voice message on this episode or any other climate-related ideas and perspectives.
Don’t Take Our Word For It, Look It Up!
You can find out more on pages 82, 91-98, 226, 232, 238 & 605 of the Carbon Almanac and on the website, you can tap the footnotes link and type in 226, 232, 238 & 605
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Featuring Carbon Almanac Contributors Jenn Swanson and Olabanji Stephen
From Langley in British Columbia, Canada, Jenn is a Minister, Coach, Writer and Community Connector, helping people help themselves.
Olabanji is a Creative Director and visual designer that helps brands gain clarity, deliver meaningful experiences and build tribes through Design & Strategy. He founded Jorney - a community designed to help people stay productive, accountable, and do their best work
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The CarbonSessions Podcast is produced and edited by Leekei Tang, Steve Heatherington and Rob Slater.
Transcript
Hi, I'm Jen.
Speaker:Hi, I'm Aji and we're not space scientist, but we're talking about
Speaker:commercial space travel, uh, just because we can't so have fun.
Speaker:What?
Speaker:You're not a rocket scientist.
Speaker:No, me neither.
Speaker:So forgive me if I mess up the English.
Speaker:I mean somehow, but.
Speaker:I think it's, I mean, as we look at the upside of commercial space
Speaker:travel, we also need to look at the downside, which is really, really down.
Speaker:It's, it's drill down.
Speaker:So, I mean, I read that the spaceship too, that is operated by Richard
Speaker:Branson's, Virgin Galactic, uh, powered by a hybrid engine that burns rubber
Speaker:and leaves behind a cloud of suits.
Speaker:Oh yeah.
Speaker:And that's crazy.
Speaker:Now a hybrid engine can use many different kinds of fuel, but they're all
Speaker:not really friendly to the environment.
Speaker:And the danger here is that too little is known about this.
Speaker:I mean, we've only flown into space.
Speaker:Not a lot of times it's not going at a commercial rate yet.
Speaker:And what the scientists fear right now is this cloud of suit and carbon
Speaker:that we're burning are going beyond the atmosphere into higher layers.
Speaker:And those places that we usually don't tamper with, and then we're
Speaker:leaving a cloud of SOO there.
Speaker:And that's really dangerous.
Speaker:Going into the stratosphere, into the Mesos Fair and which is like 51 miles
Speaker:up and then we're leaving a cloud of Soo there and we don't know what
Speaker:the effect is going to be long term.
Speaker:And so imagine we have.
Speaker:Space travel at a much commercial rate where we're moving people into
Speaker:space back and forth, and then we're leaving that much carbon footprint.
Speaker:Um, I I think it's, it's really wise to, to rethink this and find some way
Speaker:to mitigate what, what might happen.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I heard that, uh, the Virgin Galactic was, was going to offer something like
Speaker:400 space flights a year to the, the.
Speaker:Very wealthy people who can afford it.
Speaker:Uh, and, and then the other companies, there's a couple of others like SpaceX
Speaker:and Blue Origin and, and they haven't said how many flights they'll offer, but if
Speaker:they do the same amount, that that's an awful lot of, as you say, soot, clouds.
Speaker:And, and I even when you watch a rocket launch Yeah.
Speaker:On tv, um, that propellant that goes up, that's a massive cloud.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And then, and then the other thing is when they come back, when bits of them
Speaker:come back into the earth, like heat shields and whatever, I don't know what
Speaker:they are, but all the bits that fall back down through, they all burn up.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, they do.
Speaker:And so what happens with that?
Speaker:Is that contributing to the, this cloud that you're talking about?
Speaker:Um, yeah.
Speaker:I, I, I think they are.
Speaker:And um, I heard a scientist, and I'm gonna quote her, she says, I.
Speaker:We're going into space to emit poles in places where we do not emit it normally.
Speaker:Now think about it.
Speaker:We have emitted carbon here on in the atmosphere.
Speaker:I mean, pretty much everywhere we drive cars, we do all that
Speaker:stuff and we're beginning to see the, the consequence of those.
Speaker:And now we're traveling with space, traveling and emitting carbon in
Speaker:places we do not usually oit it.
Speaker:Um, and what she said was, we need to understand what exactly is going to
Speaker:happen if we increase these things.
Speaker:I mean, what is the potential damage?
Speaker:And I think that's the question that we really should ask before
Speaker:we commercial travel to space.
Speaker:What, what could we be bringing on ourselves?
Speaker:And let's think about it now because it's really early.
Speaker:We're not traveling commercially yet.
Speaker:Um, so before we do that, how about we.
Speaker:Find out what is the potential damage and what can we do, um, to, to fix those.
