It isn't Easy Being Green and Getting to LEO

MWTJ writes "The BBC has a story about the environmental impact of the space shuttle. One of the things that started the modern environmentalist movement were pictures of the Earth from space, so we could see the beauty of the planet as never before. We could also see environmental destruction from space. But what is the impact of the space program on our planet? The story talks about the switch to Freon-free insulation, the use of clean-burning hydrogen/LOX fuel, and other factors. What else could be done to get to space with minimal harm to the planet?"

Comments

Re:Preposterous

[Buran]

Actually, there are three:

OV-103 Discovery
OV-104 Atlantis
OV-105 Endeavour

A total of five space-ready orbiters were built. The missing two are:

OV-102 Columbia
OV-099 Challenger

(I leave it to a fellow geek to tell me why Challenger's number looks wrong).

OV-101 was Enterprise which was built for approach and landing tests only. A conversion to space-readiness was considered, but in the end was never done.

Re:Preposterous

[Buran]

Not really. Enterprise doesn't have a real tile system, never had real engines, and so on. Some parts were removed by the CAIB for their investigation.

Enterprise, after being displayed at the 1984 Paris Air Show, and other places, and being used for miscellaneous tests, was put into storage in Washington, D.C.

Only recently was room available to place it on public display, and that only because a new building was built to house it and other items.

Re:Right-skewed "Logic"

[fmaxwell]

Yeah, let's kill millions of people every year, mostly children, by banning mostly harmless DDT!

What utter stupidity! The EPA's ban on DDT has caused ZERO deaths. By 1972 malaria had been eradicated from the US, so there was no need to spray with DDT (or any insecticide) for malaria control. When there have been some small outbreaks since 1972, they have been eradicated by other, more effective, insecticides. The radical right seems to think that DDT is the only insecticide in existence -- and that the EPA regulations are binding on every country in the world.

There is no ban on using DDT to fight malaria and there never has been. DDT is banned for agricultural use (and rightly so because of environmental damage) but can still be used for disease prevention. The radical right pretends that there is a ban so they can blame malaria deaths on environmentalists.

According to the EPA's December 31, 1972 press release on the DDT ban:

"An end to the continued domestic usage of the pesticide was decreed on June 14, 1972, when William D. Ruckelshaus, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, issued an order finally cancelling nearly all remaining Federal registrations of DDT products. Public health, quarantine, and a few minor crop uses were excepted, as well as export of the material."

So it was still legal to use it for public health, quarantine, and to export it.

"The effective date of the EPA June cancellation action was delayed until the end of this year to permit an orderly transition to substitute pesticides"

See that? "Substitute pesticides." Didn't know they had those, did you?

"During the past 30 years, approximately 675,000 tons have been applied domestically. The peak year for use in the United States was 1959 when nearly 80 million pounds were applied. From that high point, usage declined steadily to about 13 million pounds in 1971, most of it applied to cotton.

The decline was attributed to a number of factors including increased insect resistance, development of more effective alternative pesticides, growing public and user concern over adverse environmental side effects..."

Again, insects had become increasingly resistand and more effective alternatives already existed.

The World Health Organization's plan for malaria prevention in Sri Lanka after the tsunami stated:

"Endemic sporadic malaria close to the affected areas transmitted by An.culicifacies, which has been considered DDT-resistant for many years, but is still sensitive to organophosphates, such as malathion, and pyrethroids."

The mosquitoes in Sri Lanka, as in many other parts of the world, have evolved resistance to DDT. It doesn't work any more. In fact, that is the reason why they stopped using DDT in Sri Lanka. It wasn't because of any ban. It was because it became ineffective. If the radical right wasn't so busy trying to ban the teaching of evolution, they might have less trouble grasping the concept that mosquitoes evolve resistance to DDT. Fortunately, the World Health Organization does not consist of flat-Earth conservatives, so they sent malathion to Sri Lanka -- which can actually kill the mosquitoes there.

Before you waste all of our time with the much-repeated claim by the right that aid organizations won't fund DDT spraying to control malaria, I'll shoot that claim down, too:

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria finances some DDT spraying in Somalia. USAID pays for some spraying of DDT to prevent malaria in developing countries.

According to a news story from the July 18, 2005 issue of The Monitor (Uganda), Dr Herbert Wilson Lwanga, the Executive Director of the Community Welfare Services, said his agency had received funding for DDT spraying programs from the Global Fund.

Until you can show me an example of where a non-government entity kills millions every year by polluting, I'd say the radical enviromentalists have quite the

Project Orion

[Zoyd]

What else could be done to get to space with minimal harm to the planet?

Orion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion

Re:Not much, that's how much.

[O2H2]

Isp is only the superficial measure of performance and efficiency for a booster. Many people have been mislead by this simple concept and that is why you have the shuttle and Delta IV- both of which are quite poor performers compared to other vehicles. Modern RP-1 (kerosene)/ LO2 engines have Isp's around 338 and deliver what is most important for a booster- thrust in a very small and weight-efficient package. Not only are the engines much smaller and lighter but the tanks are tiny compared to an equivalent H2/O2 booster. You have to make these tanks from aluminum which requires energy ( both to make the raw metal and as in the Shuttle case to remove most of it by machining to form orthogrid structures)- so the more metal the more energy investment.

The Russian RD-180 burns kerosene in an oxygen rich condition which leads to a very clean exhaust with very few unburned hydrocarbons or soot. You can see this by observing the appearance of the exhaust plumes at liftoff.

When you combine these facts with the costs of liquifaction, storage/boiloff losses and the need for acres of hydrocarbon-intensive foam for insulation you can see that a hydrogen booster is far from optimal from an overall pollution standpoint.

Solid rocket motors are by far the worst items since they have heavy cases made of either a lot of steel or graphite/epoxy- both of which are pretty energy intensive to synthesize. You also have to make the ammonium perchlorate and powdered aluminum as well as the rubber that they burn. This also must be mixed at poured at temperature so there is some process heat involved.

I had heard that when a SRM passes through the upper atmosphere that it deposits Cl2 that decomposes into free chlorine which is the anchor for ozone depletion. I had heard that the depletion is obvious and persistent. So the elimination of these motors from the upper atmosphere could be a tangible benefit. Present technology hybrid motors that do not release chlorine can just about match solids - especially when system integration, safety and hotfiring capability are included.