Space Race
Giant Leap for Pollution"
by Katharine Gammon
1 Already, people are buying tickets to space. Companies including Spacex, Virgin Galactic and Space Adventures want to make space tourism more common.
2 The Japanese billionaire Yusaku
Maezawa spent an undisclosed sum of money with SpaceX in 2018 for a possible future private trip around the moon and back. And this June, an anonymous space lover paid $28m to fly on Blue Origin's New Shepard with Amazon billionaire Jeff] Bezos -though ater backed out due to a "scheduling conflict."
3 But this launch of a new private space industry that is cultivating tourism and popular use could come with vast environmental costs, says Eloise Marais, an associate professor of physical geography at University College London.
Marais studies the impact of fuels and industries on the atmosphere.
4 When rockets launch into space, they require a huge amount of propellants to make it out of the Earth's atmosphere.
For SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, it is kerosene, and for Nasa it is liquid hydrogen in their new Space Launch System. Those fuels emit a variety of substances into the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide, water, chlorine, and other chemicals.
5 The carbon emissions from rockets are small compared with the aircraft industry, she says. But they are increasing at nearly 5.6% a year, and Marais has been running a simulation for a decade, to figure out at what point they will compete with traditional sources we are familiar
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yuuuuur..
What evidence backs up the statement in paragraph 8 that even something that seems innocuous can be harmful?
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• Rocket emissions go into the upper atmosphere.
Water can form clouds and cause warming.
Rocket fuels include kerosene and liquid hydrogen.
It is possible to be responsible
O and do exciting work at the same time.
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The evidence that backs up the statement in paragraph 8 that even something that seems innocuous can be harmful is:
Water can form clouds and cause warming.
This suggests that while water is generally viewed as a benign substance, its presence in the upper atmosphere as a result of rocket emissions can lead to negative environmental impacts, such as warming, highlighting how something that seems innocent can have harmful consequences.
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