Since the dawn of powered flight mankind has broken unimaginable barriers in our journey to the Final Frontier. To put it in perspective, it only took 66 years from the flight of the Wright brothers to the launch of the legendary Saturn V that took Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon. That was essentially less than a lifetime. But in our race to space we failed to fully appreciate the potential damages such endeavors inflicted on our ecosystems.
It is safe to say that with the advent of reusable rocket technology, the emphasis on colonizing Mars and the Moon in the near future and plans to park many satellites in orbit to aid in global infrastructure concerns, we are going to see a massive increase in rocket exhaust. Modern conventional rockets use many fuel and oxidizer combinations that are not environmentally-friendly and unfortunately add to the global pollution issue. For example, Space X rockets tend to burn through 400 metric tonnes of kerosene in their initial boost phase to low-Earth orbit. That operation alone produces more CO2 in a few minutes than an average car would in more than 200 years. The result is soot in the upper atmosphere.
To address this issue, we must encourage the use of liquid hydrogen and oxygen as substitutes for rocket propellants. NASA is already known for this and the result of the chemical reactions between those two fuel sources is simply water vapor which coalesces into sizable clouds and even makes it rain locally. Simply put, the exhaust stays in the global system in a safe and reusable way. The technological issues involved in the maintenace of such elements is complex and expensive, but scientists and engineers have overcome more vexing problems in the past. All we need is proper awareness and ample funding.
After all, what is the point of going to other planets to reduce pollution and overcrowding on ours if on our way to new worlds we leave our old one more polluted?
