Soot in Space

It turns out that one of the concerns is soot from space flight.

According to a paper in press in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), the problem with such launches is with the black carbon soot emitted by rocket engines.  That soot, deposited in the stratosphere, could have a significant effect on the atmosphere should space tourism and other applications of commercial suborbital vehicles generate significant demand for flights.  One model, assuming 1,000 suborbital flights a year from a single spaceport, found that the resulting soot could cool the latitude band around the spaceport by 0.7°C while warming Antarctica by 0.8°C.  “The response of the climate system to a relatively small input of black carbon is surprising,” one of the study’s authors, Michael Mills of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said in the AGU statement.

This via Jeff Faust and The Space Review

There are, of course, a lot of questions to be asked and answered, based on this study, but these are questions that need to be asked.  Perhaps, to preserve the human race we will stop going into space.  Maybe for decades or maybe for ever.  Without overhead imagery, wars may become more likely.  Without overhead imagery, crop predictions may become less accurate.

This could pose an interesting issue for us.  First we will have to do more analysis.  Then, we may have to make tradeoffs.  Good luck to us.

Regards  —  Cliff