Rocketry: How much Fuel to get us to Space?

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Rocketry: How much Fuel to get us to Space?

January 12, 2009 on 6:49 pm | In Physics, Solar System |

The US space shuttle program is finally winding down. To date, there have been 123 total launches (122 of which were successful, the lone exception being Challenger). I got asked a bizarre question last week: is NASA considering any alternatives to the fuel it uses to get into space, and how environmentally friendly is it?

The big problem with launching things into space is that it requires a lot of energy. But the good news is that we launch things pretty rarely, so it’s conceivable that you driving your car all year long is just as bad for the environment as launching a shuttle to the ISS. Let’s find out which is worse:

Let’s start with the cars. A typical American drives somewhere around 12,000 miles per year. At about 30 miles per gallon, that means the typical American car owner burns through 400 gallons of gasoline every year. That’s not so terrible, is it? Let’s even be generous, and assume that there’s no carbon monoxide, no nitrous oxides, and no ozone produced (although this is unrealistically generous). Even at that, a gallon of gasoline contains about 6 pounds of carbon in it, meaning that over the year, the typical American car released four tonnes of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere. This is just a drop in the bucket, considering that as a nation, America releases over one billion tonnes of Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere every year. Can we see the effects of this on our planet?

I’d say it’s pretty noticeable. But what about the shuttle? Its uses a combination of three fuels. The first is a solid fuel for the solid rocket boosters, which are the white-colored rockets. The total amount of fuel used in these is 1,000 tonnes per launch. It’s a particularly noxious fuel as well, Ammonium Perchlorate Composite Propellant. So no, it is not environmentally friendly, especially considering that one of the major exhaust products is hydrogen chloride, which you chemistry buffs will know creates hydrochloric acid when it mixes with water!

So of the 1,000 tonnes of solid rocket fuel, about 1/3 of that becomes HCl, or roughly 340 tonnes of hydrochloric acid. Now, see that rust-colored external tank? That’s full of liquid hydrogen fuel: completely environmentally friendly! You burn it and it just becomes water: hooray for some good environmental consciousness on NASA’s part! The third fuel-burning stage is for the shuttle’s main engines:

But the fuel on the shuttle itself is so insignificant compared to the 340 tonnes of stage one that it isn’t even worth including here. So let’s be honest about this: if NASA managed to get rid of the solid rocket boosters altogether and replace them with hydrogen fuel, they would have saved a total, over the last 28 years, of 42,000 tonnes of pollutants in the atmosphere. On the other hand, American cars, of which there are about 125 million on the road in any year, have emitted about 14 billion tonnes of your favorite greenhouse gas (Carbon Dioxide) into the atmosphere over that time. NASA’s contribution vs. the automobile’s contribution? 0.0003% for NASA. Meanwhile, the auto industry is responsible for about 50% of the greenhouse gas emission for the entire country. Solution?

Hydrogen powered cars, anyone? It’s still not completely green, since it takes energy to make the hydrogen cells, but it’s a whole lot closer than using rocket fuel, or even than using gasoline. And so yes, while NASA emits a lot of pollutants to launch rockets and shuttles, it’s a tiny, tiny amount compared to the damage we do every day.

And I’d rather think about what I can do to help the planet, realistically, than to yell at NASA for the small harm that they’re doing. What do you think?

51 Comments »

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Awesome Ethan! You must be reading my mind. Only an hour ago I got into it in the comment boxes in one of my UT articles about SpaceX… I didn’t take kindly to the accusation that rockets cause huge amounts of environmental damage

Here it is: http://www.universetoday.com/2009/01/11/spacex-falcon-9-now-vertical-at-cape-canaveral-gallery/ - you’ll enjoy the comment section, please post a link to your article, I think it will be “case closed” when you do

In fact, would it be OK to link to this in the article itself? Addendums like this make me feel all happy when annoying commenters feel the need to share their limited views

Cheers, Ian

Comment by Ian O'Neill — January 12, 2009 #
Ian, of course! I will post a comment over on your UT article, and of course, you’re always welcome to link to my site if you find something relevant!

Glad I could help out setting the record straight!

Comment by ethan — January 12, 2009 #
I don’t think you should ignore the greenhouse contribution of the hydrogen in the main fuel tank. NASA has to get that hydrogen somewhere and the production of the hydrogen probably releases CO2.

Still, I’m sure that your conclusion is right that launches happen so infrequently that they are a tiny contributor to CO2 and other pollutants.

Comment by Scott — January 13, 2009 #
Scott,
As Far As I Know, the hydrogen in the main fuel tank burns cleanly into water. While it is conceivable that more water vapor in certain parts of the atmosphere could have an effect as a greenhouse gas, more likely than not, the water’s going to condense into raindrops and fall into the oceans.

So I’m not worried about the greenhouse gases from the fuel tank.

Comment by ethan — January 13, 2009 #
I think the question was where does the Hydrogen come from? It’s all fine an dandy if they use hydroelectric power for electrolysis, but what if it’s electricity from a coal powered plant.

Still utterly insignificant in comparison, but the not quite as stupid as made out to be.

Also the SpaceX rockets do use a carbonbased fuel, don’t they? Still insignificant, but some impact of course.

But as I said on UT: do what Obama tells you to do, and adjust your tyre pressure. Or get a real car. It’s been a coupla years since I saw the numbers, but supposedly getting the same fuel efficience as the EU average in the US should completely remove your need for importing Middle Eastern oil.

Comment by Sili — January 13, 2009 #
Doh! I was just working on a blog post on this very subject. I’ll try to rework it with a different twist. A reader of mine and I had gotten into a debate on the environmental aspects of human space travel. I think Scott and Sili are right that we need to look at more than the emissions from the launch itself and look at the energy consumed by NASA and its contractors that support launches. That’s a lot of energy, for example to keep the liquid hydrogen and oxygen cold, not to mention for manufacturing, transport, office buildings, etc. I’d like to see NASA facilities become greener with using renewable energy.

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Interesting, but you need to examine the entire carbon footprint of NASA and the related aerospace industry. From air conditioning, to water usage, to the ways personnel get to work. Then you can have a full carbon picture.

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