Hacker News Reader

Comment by lamchob | Hacker News Reader

Is there any information on their stance regarding the environmental impact of failed launches? The propellants alone are usually toxic, plus the amount debris of each failed launch. Did they factor these externalities into their cost as well? At 1 million dollar per launch and 250k$ manuracturing cost alone, I am not sure this part of their cost model.

View on HN

According to Gunter's space[1] they use kerosene and liquid oxygen (LOX) as propellant and oxidizer. According to this 2004 ESA study[2] "the most promising green propellant combinations considering toxicity, launcher aspects, storability, technology seems to be LOX-kerosene and LOX-propane". I don't know about the environmental impact of debris from a failed launch though.

[1] https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_lau/astra.htm [2] http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/2004ESASP.557E...4H...

LOX-methane should probably be on this list too. Methane is no more cryogenic than LOX.

Does it matter if it’s a failed or successful launch? Successful launches are more energetic but 80% in mass of rocket usually are thrown into atmosphere, ocean and space, 70% of which being fuel, and 1/3 being upper stage gear that contains all the toxicity and that often reaches orbital velocity.

So a failed launch merely means the minuscule amount of hypertoxic upper stage component(the kind that found in Finnish mushrooms) adds into booster mass already destined for disposal.

Now, SpaceX does recover some of their hardware, but they still burn and disperse all the mass into atmosphere so there is not really a fundamental difference. It’s marketing and economy.

To-orbit propellants are never toxic unless you consider kerosene toxic. You may be thinking of e.g. hydrazine which is used in orbital thrusters. There probably is some of this on board, but rockets are always launched such that whatever is along the launch path is ocean or unpopulated area. Debris will sink or won't require much cleanup.

Deep space probes (which this is not) require a lot more prep since they contain radioactive materials on board.

A lot of orbital rockets use hydrazine and UDMH in their first stages. Titan (prior to IV, IIRC), Long March, Proton and Tsyklon.

Good point. These are all ICBM-derived rockets that used toxic hypergolic propellants so they could be stored for long periods and launched very quickly. (All hypergolic propellants are nasty things you don't want to get close to.) The only US rocket on your list is the Titan and it's been retired.

AFAIK no current US rockets for routine civilian or commercial use have hypergolic first stage propellants; long storage and quick launch are not required for these rockets.* Happy to be corrected if I'm wrong about that.

*Outside the US hypergolic propellants are still used anyway. Apparently the Long March and Proton-M are in this category.

I'd like to see companies have to pay some kind of 'litter tax'. Any item which is lost track of or dumped in the environment pays some $X per kg fee. The fee could vary based on the hazardous/non-hazardous/biodegradable nature. Then allow anyone else to get paid the same fee for collecting the litter, as long as they can show with reasonable certainty most of the stuff they collected is litter someone else paid tax on.

Means it’s free if you build a all-Aluminum rocket and fill it with alcohol?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com