How much did SpaceX's Starship Flight 7 explosion pollute the atmosphere?

[Admin]

The rapid unscheduled disassembly of SpaceX's Starship mega rocket may have released significant amounts of harmful air-pollution into the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere.

How much did SpaceX's Starship Flight 7 explosion pollute the atmosphere? : Read more

 

[jmurtari]

How about some serious SPACE news and not scare mongering. Perhaps this writer should work for an environmentalist journal? Think about what might have been said when the first cars and the internal combustion engine were developed -- we might be riding horses today.

The pollutants could thwart the recovery of the planet's ozone layer, worsening the damage caused by ozone-depleting substances used in aerosol sprays and refrigerators in the past. The air pollution from incinerated satellites could also change how much heat the Earth's atmosphere retains, leading to possibly serious consequences on the planet's climate.

 

[jordiheguilor]

"When aluminum burns at high temperatures during a satellite re-entry, it produces aluminum oxides, or alumina, a white powdery substance known for its potential to damage ozone and change the reflectiveness of Earth's atmosphere."
So on the one hand alumina damages the ozone layer, on the other it will reflect more heat back into space. It may end up being a wash.

 

[ultimatewizz]

The rapid unscheduled disassembly of SpaceX's Starship mega rocket may have released significant amounts of harmful air-pollution into the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere.

How much did SpaceX's Starship Flight 7 explosion pollute the atmosphere? : Read more

With all the stuff coming back through the atmosphere what makes you use the term significant? Compared to what?

 

[DBKelly]

How about some serious SPACE news and not scare mongering. Perhaps this writer should work for an environmentalist journal? Think about what might have been said when the first cars and the internal combustion engine were developed -- we might be riding horses today.

The pollutants could thwart the recovery of the planet's ozone layer, worsening the damage caused by ozone-depleting substances used in aerosol sprays and refrigerators in the past. The air pollution from incinerated satellites could also change how much heat the Earth's atmosphere retains, leading to possibly serious consequences on the planet's climate.

I agree, Space.com has problems with Elon.

 

[DBKelly]

The rapid unscheduled disassembly of SpaceX's Starship mega rocket may have released significant amounts of harmful air-pollution into the upper layers of Earth's atmosphere.

How much did SpaceX's Starship Flight 7 explosion pollute the atmosphere? : Read more

Has this site turned into a propaganda rag now, of all the very large objects burning up in the atmosphere such as the Chinese space station, Russian MIr, and you write this article, sounds like you hate Elon Musk, the savior of humanity.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

So, the basic answer to the headline question is "We don't know."

And, while there is some reason to consider the effects of large numbers of satellites burning up completely in the atmosphere, it seems oddly inappropriate to focus such an article on the unintentional destruction of a singe spacecraft that is intended to be reusable and is made of stainless steel instead of aluminum and uses methane instead kerosene for fuel.

In my opinion objective journalists would have titled this article "Should we be worried about the effects of large numbers of satellite burning up in Earth's upper atmosphere." And any mention of the StarShip RUD would have been more to the effect that it isn't the planned occurrence, and isn't as worrisome as routine reentries that are planned in advance and expected to be repeated in large numbers with more worrisome materials.

Space.com, your political biases are showing.

 

[m4n8tpr8b]

All the commenters protesting bias but not reading the article properly show their own bias.

Scare mongering? This is reporting on actual work by an actual scientist, and you want to suppress it.

Compared to what? Read the article: "the amount of metallic air pollution potentially produced in the accident equals that generated by one third of meteorite material that burns up in Earth's atmosphere every year".

Space.com does not seem to have any problems with Elon, almost all of their articles on SpaceX are uncritical, even celebratory. You just want to suppress any criticism.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

I reread the article and my own critical comment, and stand by my comment.

Part of the problem is, as I already posted, the headline. It clearly uses a "click bait" approach - using the explosion of the StarShip mainly to introduce the topic, which seems to be more related to other space vehicles doing routine reentries.

We can all agree that StarShips should not explode in the atmosphere - even Elon. Nobody wants that to be happening routinely.

But, there is further ambiguity that probably results from the media author - not the scientist. And it seems to be intentionally misleading.

The second paragraph only says that the scientist estimate that the explosion released "45.5 metric tons of metal oxides and 40 metric tons of nitrogen oxides". The next paragraph quotes the scientist as saying "The amount of metallic air pollution potentially produced in the accident equals that generated by one third of meteorite material that burns up in Earth's atmosphere every year." Note that these paragraphs are speaking of total metals, not the aluminum content. There is no comparison of the amount of aluminum released by the StarShip explosion to the amount of aluminum that enters Earth's atmosphere annually.

The article does say, a couple of paragraphs later, "Fortunately, the Starship upper stage is made of stainless steel and not aluminum like satellites and upper stages of many other rockets including SpaceX's Falcon 9. The incineration of aluminum is what worries many scientists."

But, the article never says what amount of aluminum oxide was released by the StarShip explosion compared to naturally occurring meteors. On careful reading, one might conclude zero alumina was released by StarShip because it was built with stainless steel. But, what sticks in the mind is the "one third of meteorite material" for all metals.

That is a rhetorical trick, much used by lawyers, politicians, biased journalists and others with agendas they are trying to sell. It is called "misdirection" instead of "lying" because it tends to make people think they heard something you did not actually say but want them to believe. Their defense when caught is "I didn't say that!"

So, as an objective scientist, I want to know how much alumina the StarShip explosion put into the atmosphere, and how that compares with the natural annual input of alumina from meteors. Since that is the issue the article is worried about, that is that information it should have provided, considering the headline it has, making the StarShip explosion appear to be the main subject.

Similarly, the amount of nitrogen oxides produced by the explosion should have been compared to the amount produce naturally by meteors. That was sort of addressed by the statement "The amount of nitrogen oxides produced during re-entries is also nearing that generated by natural space rocks." But, again, is this more misdirection? That statement appears to be referring to all of spacecraft reentering the atmosphere, not the StarShip explosion.

In fact, the article really doesn't even address whether the amount of nitrogen oxides produced by the planned, intact reentry of a StarShip is any different from what was generated due to the explosion. Again, the article seemingly relates the creation of the nitrogen oxides to the explosion, tending to make it read like the nitrogen oxides were carried by the StarShip. But, in fact, it was all made from the oxygen and nitrogen that was already in the upper atmosphere - and doesn't even address how that compares to the amount that would have been created by the reentry of the intact StarShip.

So, what is really accomplished by this article in the way of properly informing the readership about potentially important issues? Not much. It raises the issues, but really does not put them into properly useable perspectives. It does explicitly mention SpaceX and StarShip in that context, without putting them into perspective with the other launchers who also contribute.

I challenge the authors and editors of Space.com to provide an objective, fact-based and well referenced article on the subject with a headline of "Launch and Reentry Effects on Earth's Upper Atmosphere In Perspective". Maybe if they read the articles from other sources, such as https://phys.org/space-news/ , they can get a better feel for the desired journalistic approach. And look for potentially positive effects to the same degree as the potentially negative effects. Just mentioning the possibility of a positive effect and then dwelling on the negative effects is a common human tendency, but it is not objective.

Is alumina building up in the ionosphere and thermosphere? Is ozone declining, and by what percent per year or percent per unit weight of alumina? Does the alumina change the reflectivity of the upper atmosphere? What effect does this have on global surface temperatures?

 

[Homer10]

Everything has consequences. One thing always leads to another. (INXS).

 

[Wolfshadw]

Ummm... wasn't that The Fixx?

-Wolf sends

 

[m4n8tpr8b]

I repeat that contrary to the claims of Elon Musk fans in this thread, Space.com (and not just Space.com - practically all space media) is mostly uncritical, even celebratory of SpaceX and Elon Musk. Looking at it objectively, there is a dearth of criticism when there could be more, much more.

First of all, there should be a lot of discussion of Musk gaining a government position where he can eliminate government oversight of his private for-profit companies, but there isn't any.

Second, even NASA is keeping mum about this because they are trapped in a sunk cost fallacy trap with the HLS (and afraid of getting abuse from SpaceX fans and Elon himself), but there are several serious issues with the Starship program which aren't being discussed:

• NASA defined three benchmarks for the HLS program (reaching orbit, in-orbit rocket-to-rocket refueling, and uncrewed lunar landing), none of which have been achieved in seven launches, and we are already years behind schedule.
• Starship development is supposed to follow the "move fast & break things" philosophy, but it has now taken longer & cost more than the Saturn V programme, while Vulcan-Centaur, New Glenn & Ariane-6 all reached orbit in the meantime. If achieving NASA's three benchmarks (the second and third of which require technologies not shown even in principle) will progress in the same fashion, Artemis III won't happen before 2035.
• There were some major bad decisions which experts warned about in advance to no avail and already necessitated on-going re-engineering. There was the launch pad deluge system. Then there were the overly optimistic assumptions about engine performance and the excessive mass (resulting from bad material choices, themselves the result of bad assumptions about the necessity of heat tiles), which together meant that lifting capacity was a fraction of what was intended, necessitating the Block 2 design with enlarged upper & lower stage. (These decisions were almost certainly made by Elon personally, because I can't imagine even a freshman rocket scientist making the heat shield mistake.) The upper stage that blew up on launch 7 was Block 2, while the captured Superheavy was still Block 1. It's too early to tell how much time & money will be needed to make Block 2 work and what lifting capacity it will have.
• While laymen may be wowed by videos of Mechazilla chopsticks capturing Superheavy, from the viewpoint of reusability, what experts would be curious about (and thus what specialist news should be asking questions about) is the state of the vehicle & launch tower after the capture - the amount of structural, thermal & burn damage. We do know that after the first capture, both the tower & rocket had extensive burn damage, and that a single engine from the first booster could be re-used. This is far from encouraging, meaning more delays & cost overruns at the least and much more limited re-use than Falcon 9 at the worst.
• It also remains to be seen how the choice to make the Raptor engines extremely high-performance, on the edge of what is technically possible, squares with the reliability requirement for reusability. This is a very complex engine with preburners, multiple recirculations & high pressures, and difficult maintenance access in the Raptor 3 version - lots of failure points on a relatively small engine to be used in large numbers.
• Another essential feature not talked about is crew safety in case of rocket failure (lower or upper stage), given that the crew compartment is integral with the upper stage.
• Starship has a fundamental design misalignment which laymen don't seem to grasp when comparing it to other large rockets: it's the mission profile. Saturn V or SLS gives its payload a great delta-v, delivering it directly to a translunar or solar orbit, at which point reusability makes little sense (the top speed of the SLS core stage was 6x that of Superheavy, it would cost too much fuel or heat tiles to make it lose the resulting 36x kinetic energy while staying intact). Starship is a celebrated lower earth orbit launcher that needs in-space refueling to go any further. Due to lifting capacity limitations & boil-off, the last calculations I saw indicated the need for 20 launches for a single mission to the Moon, and that was before the need for the enlarged Block 2 design transpired. This greatly increases cost, time, noise & air pollution and chances for mission failure compared to a singe launch. (And before you attempt whataboutism, yes, New Glenn also needs in-space refueling to go to the Moon, same problem although I don't yet know the magnitude.)
• NASA's benchmarks do not even include what I see as the most critical part of the HLS mission profile: reflight from the lunar surface. This is a massive rocket landing on powerful jets which will throw up rocks & dust from the lunar surface, endangering the integrity of the main engines. The Apollo Lunar Modules could not have this issue as they had separate descent & ascent stages. When SpaceX won the HLS contract, they talked about using the RCS thrusters for landing, but did not bring that up again since, and good thing they didn't as this is an embarrassingly stupid idea: in the vacuum of space, it doesn't matter if the thrusters are higher up, the exhaust jet will still hit the surface full-force (and someone probably also did the math of the needed thrust & the design complications if you want to avoid thermal damage to the side of the rocket and managed to convince Elon). (And yes, Blue Origin also deserves this criticism as they also want to use the same engines for reflight in their own lunar lander, but at least it would be a smaller and less top-heavy vehicle, and they could probably protect the thrusters somewhat with telescopic legs.)

Third, in the above I hinted at cases of Elon interfering in the work of his engineers, but this is all the result of something more fundamental: a bad company culture. Note that while the senior engineers behind the Falcon 9 development left the company, SpaceX hired a lot of freshmen from college & H1B visa holders, both groups who will shut up & do what they are told. This is not a culture where possible mistakes are discussed with proper openness, in fact it's worse than Boeing's company culture immediately before the cabin door blowout. This would deserve a lot of discussion in specialist media, but I don't see any.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

m4n8tpr8b seems to have a lot of insider info. But, this is the Internet, where everyone "is an expert" and not necessarily credible. How does he know what the cultures are inside SpaceX and Boeing at various times, for instance? And how does he somehow know the actual designs of the Blue Origin and SpaceX lunar landers, other than the "artists depictions" we have all been seeing and thinking won't work? Is he a member of the NASA team evaluating these contractors? Is he a member of a competing team to SpaceX? Or is he a retired, armchair engineer with an opinion?

Whoever he is, he is obviously not a fan of Musk, and seems to be assuming that anybody who points out inappropriate criticism of SpaceX is a fan of Musk. Seems biased to me. And, I am no fan of Musk.

I am impressed with the firsts that SpaceX keeps producing, and am somewhat suspicious of those who try to misrepresent them. For instance. detractors love to point out that StarShip has not yet "achieved orbit", while Blue Origin did. But, StarShip did achieve successful launch first, and multiple times. I was just intentionally put on a trajectory that would not make a complete orbit, because the development step was to explore heat shield design and reentry parameters, including terminal flip for soft landing. Reignition of the upper stage in space was not the first goal, although that has been done, now, too. So, the idea that the development of StarShip substantially lags the development of New Glenn completely misses the point that StarShip is being developed to be a reusable upper stage, while New Glenn's upper stage is a once-and-done craft.

And, the SpaceX SuperHeavy first stage had already succeeded in soft landings, and even a catch in the launch tower, before New Glenn even launched the first time. And that New Glenn first stage failed to stick its landing on its barge, which is something that SpaceX has done 400 times already, albeit all but twice with a different rocket.

That doesn't mean that I am being a detractor of Blue Origin, though. I am just trying to be realistic about where the various development processes currently stand and are headed. I am actually rooting for the success of all of them, including Sierra Space and its Dream Chaser, along with ULA's Vulcan launch vehicle.

Anyway, the technical criticisms m4n8tpr8b just posted are worthy of discussion, and I am sure that they are being discussed with NASA in the loop. I expect that NASA is not going to assign crew to land on the Moon in a SpaceX or Blue Origin lander that has not previously demonstrated landing and re-ascent and rendezvous capabilities robotically.

And, I am not a fan of politically imposed timelines for technological developments. Politicians have no idea what is possible and impossible, much less how fast problems can be resolved. But, politicians at least used to hold the purse strings, although they could not (and still cannot) maintain a consensus about even whether to do or not to do something from one Presidential election to the next. Those are the reasons we have not been back to the Moon for 50 years, and the only reasons we are now "in a hurry".

I do support the goal of establishing a long-duration human presence on the Moon, but I don't care if the Chinese do it first. And I do think that we need to develop the infrastructure to do it without littering the surface and the space between with spent once-and-done equipment, even if it takes longer to develop the necessary capabilities.

We seem to be at a technological inflection point, where
(1) reusability is taking over from one-shot equipment, based on economics, and
(2) funding is being supplied in greater quantity by commercial interests than NASA and purely scientific interests.
We even have non-government astronauts with non-government space suits with EVA capabilities. And soon may have non-government space stations doing non-government activities, as well as housing government tenants, who at this point are even debating internally if they want to be full-time off-earth tenants.

So, let's just leave the pro/con Musk BS out of both the Space.com articles and the forum banter, and discuss the actual pros and cons of the various approaches.

 

[Philly]

With all the stuff coming back through the atmosphere what makes you use the term significant? Compared to what?

Exactly what I was thinking. I would of loved a comparison to what is going to happen when they de-orbit the ISS. I always have issues with the words and phrases like: could, should, have the potential, etc.

I also wonder if it would of just been better to let it fall back to the earth in 1 or large pieces rather then blowing it up like they did. Just a though, I don't know the answer.