Hacker News Reader

Not car-hours, but a Falcon 9 launch apparently has similar impact to a 777 crossing the Atlantic. Not nothing, but surprisingly little all things considered.

https://www.treehugger.com/spacex-launch-puts-out-much-co-fl...

View on HN

Difference being the per person emissions. 4 people, vs upwards for 250. But still not nearly as bad as I thought it might be.

per capita, sure. Another way to think about it is this capsule is flying what, twice a year? One 777 will do 2 trips in 24 hrs, 365 days a year. Then add up the thousands of planes doing that a day. I'd be worried if we ALL had a reason (and the means) to take frivolous space flights. Which may come some day out of all this, who knows anymore!?!

Yea that is surprisingly low, if accurate.

I mean, they're both 200 foot long tubes full of fuel that gets used up by the end of the flight. Only so much carbon you can fit into a set volume.

Agreed, though without considering it as such if someone asked me to compare to an airliner I would have placed it between 10-100x the emissions, and would not have been surprised at more!

Remember 3/4 of the rocket is just the oxygen for combustion!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com