As exciting as it is to experience space I could imagine the environment cost is far from ideal.
The environmental cost of doing anything is far from ideal, but in the case of space tourism the impact is minimal. A 777-300 flight from New York to London outputs about 1,261KG of CO2 per passenger.[1] In British Airways configuration there are 299 seats on a plane like that, which is 377,039KG in total. There are 28 direct NY-LDN flights daily.
If the goal is to reduce the amount of high atmosphere CO2 then persuading 300 fewer people to fly across the Atlantic would have a larger impact.
It's also worth pointing out that Jeff Bezos owns two Gulfstream G650ER private jets, which will be putting a lot more CO2 in to the atmosphere than his day trip to space.
[1] From https://www.atmosfair.de/en/offset/flight/
EDIT: It turns out that Blue Origin's rocket exhaust is water, so all the CO2 is retained at ground level. I guess that's good news.
Generally it drives practical use cases, has a clear revenue model (which is really, really important to keep any complex financial and technical project honest) and drives popular demand for "space" in general. Having rich and famous tweeting orbital and translunar updates would do more for image of space travel than 50 years of science fiction and state advertising combined.
For example, low gravity has lots of well documented side effects. Even though short term microgravity is not too bad, having a constant stream of rich people travel there will create more demand for space medicine, which will probably drive innovation to improve the lot of all space travelers long term.
Launching stuff to orbit will have a carbon cost. And it should be tallied. But it's a cost we have to pay ANYWAY to become an interstellar species.
In general you are of course right. The top 1% will slightly increase their already large carbon footprint by a small amount.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water-gas_shift_reaction
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_reforming
The days of hydrogen being an efficient storage medium for solar or nuclear energy through electrolysis are far in the future.
Elon Musk has promised to eventually fuel Starship with synthetic "green" methane. Green hydrogen is a much simpler problem, so if Blue Origin hasn't yet made that promise, it's quite likely they will soon.
Just so I can pencil this on my calendar, where does this fit on the timeline relative to full self-driving and the hyperloop?
In terms of carbon it's not even that bad, a spaceflight is roughly comparable to an airliner crossing the Atlantic. Of course it puts other pollutants in more layers of the atmosphere, something we definitely have to study as spaceflight becomes more common.
Anyway the question is if 2-3 minutes are enough to have it kick in.
Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-much-air-poll...