Commercial Space: Falcon 9

First flight of the Falcon 9 will take place in the next few months. This hydrocarbon fueled rocket introduced by the Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (informally, Space-X) is expected to be able to place about 5 metric tons into LEO. The propellants for Falcon 9's nine engines are conventional kerosene (RP-1) and liquid oxygen; important emissions include water vapor, carbon dioxide, and soot. A heavy lift version of Falcon 9 is planned. Kerosene fueled rocket engines emit about 3 times more carbon dioxide (per unit mass delivered to orbit) than standard solid rocket motors.

Three Interesting Plume Phenomena

This video of a recent Atlas V launch well illustrates a few of the many interesting ways that the exhaust plume of a kerosene fueled rocket engine interacts with the atmosphere.

First, notice the contrail that begins to form at 1:41 (video time) and continues for about the next 10 seconds. This is a typical aircraft type "linear contrail" consisting of ice particles.

Second, notice that the classic rocket plume "flame" (the radiant plume) shrinks with altitude. By 2:30, with the rocket well into the upper stratosphere, the radiant plume has become small and a wide and faint white-bluish plume, likely soot particles from the RD-180 rocket engines, becomes prominent.

Third, this video shows the acoustic waves that propagate from the vehicle and modify the surrounding cirrus cloud particles. In this video you can also see the faint soot trail behind the Atlas V rocket.

These localized plume phenomenon hint at the cumulative and global impacts of rocket emissions.

Commercial Space Transport and Science

The Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference will be held next week. The idea here is that the science community can buy into the emerging suborbital space tourism sector. Instead of launching expendable sounding rockets, researchers would buy rides into the upper stratosphere, mesosphere, and lower thermosphere on reusable tourism vehicles. There is good potential for new data from little known regions of the atmosphere and more science at lower cost. Should the scientific community also investigate how the cumulative emissions from these vehicles will affect climate and ozone?

Sulfuric Acid Seduction

So-called "geoengineering" is a popular thing to discuss, even in polite company. The idea is simple: inject sulfur dioxide gas into the lower stratosphere and add a little bit - a few percent - to the natural sulfuric acid cloud layer there. The man made sulfuric acid particles would reflect a little bit more sunlight back into space than normal, thus cooling the planet. Massive volcanoes do this every decade or so and we think we understand how gases turn into particles and reflect sunlight and so on......

This plot is from a paper by Keith, Parker, and Morgan (Nature, 436, 2010) called "Research On Global Sunblock Needed Now". This idea is seductive. Relatively cheap and quick. But there are problems. First in line: this "purposeful pollution" of the stratosphere would cause a lot of ozone depletion, maybe 20%. Maybe more.

Second: It is sort of like a drug; each sulfur dioxide injection is temporary so once you start you can't stop. Look at the plot.

So where is the trade a good one? How much global ozone loss can we accept for a given amount of global cooling? Who decides?

Wild Card

Water vapor in the lower stratosphere plays an important role in the radiative balance of the atmosphere. This excellent paper by Solomon et al. (2010) reports on recent trends and changes in stratospheric water vapor levels and the relationship between water in the stratosphere and surface temperature. The processes that determine stratospheric water vapor levels, including rockets and aircraft combustion emissions, are poorly understood and so water vapor could be a climate change wild card.

S200 Static Test Success

India successfully static tested the S200, a new large solid rocket motor (SRM) that will power India's GSLV Mark III launch vehicle. Each S200 will burn 200 tons of SRM propellant, 85% of the Ariane V SRMs. SRM emissions are perhaps the most harmful of all propellant types to stratospheric ozone, though scientists do not have sufficient data or models to prove this assertion. The importance of the S200 test and imminent GSLV Mark III deployment is to suggest that SRM emissions - and so ozone impacts from rocket launches - may increase in coming years.

"What Might Have Been" Thursdays

ROMBUS. Reusable Orbital Module Booster and Utility Shuttle. Massive. A Single Stage To Orbit (SSTO) launch vehicle from the mid-1960s, when SSTO seemed possible. We now know that the numbers don't work out very well for the SSTO concept, though there are still true believers. Engineers argue endlessly about SSTO possibilities. Rombus, featuring drop away liquid hydrogen tanks, would have emitted about 4 kilotons of water vapor into the middle atmosphere each launch. The ROMBUS mesospheric contrails would have been spectacular, perhaps lasting for days.

Shuttle Contrail in Mesosphere

The science is pretty clear on this, though I have not seen a paper on this particular cloud. The mesopause is so cold and the Shuttle emits so much water vapor that contrails form at about 85 km altitude. At least occasionally. This sort of very high altitude cloud is usually only found near the polar summer mesopause. Is it important that rockets can cause these mesospheric clouds to form at midlatitudes? Do mesospheric rocket contrails say anything about climate?

Commercial Spaceflight Federation

Nice website for the interesting Commercial Spaceflight Federation. The CSF carries some influence in Washington. Its mission is (in part) to "promote the development of commercial human spaceflight, pursue ever higher levels of safety, and share best practices and expertise throughout the industry."

It looks like the CSF might act in a manner something like the International Air Transport Association, which has a mission for commercial aircraft flight. The IATA's mission is (in part) "improved safety is IATA’s number one priority, and IATA’s goal is to continually improve safety standards." That is similar to the CSF. But they go on to say "Another main concern is to minimize the impact of air transport on the environment."