| ---- CO2 emissions per a Falcon 9 : 425. Emissions per human on a Falcon 9 (assuming 4) : 106 Emissions for a Starship launch: 2700 Emissions per human on a Starship launch (assuming 100) : 27 Emissions per year for America: 5,000,000,000 Emissions per year for a single American: 15 Emissions per for for a single American over an 80 year lifespan: 1200 ---- I don't know if people don't really appreciate how many people there are, overestimates rocket pollution, or just like some person reads something on the internet, somebody else repeats it, and nobody at any point bothers to see if what anybody is saying makes any sense. Rocket launches are such a nothing-burger in terms of emissions that yes sending people to Mars (assuming they stay for a while) would definitely be a net reduction in emissions. For some fun tangential data, to match the current emissions of the US, alone, you'd need to launch about 12 million Falcon 9s. Last year was the biggest year, for space, by far with a whopping global total of 178 orbital launches. So the entire global pollution impact, for that record breaking year, was equivalent to ~5,000 Americans. https://everydayastronaut.com/rocket-pollution/ https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location... |