The SpaceX explosion is nothing but disturbing, there is no “success” in creating thousands of tons of pollution. We absolutely do not know if the atmosphere can handle these repeated explosions of tons of metals. SpaceX is not making life “multiplanetary,” instead they may be putting life on the fast-track to being planet-less
@carlysagan we absolutely do know that the atmosphere can handle these explosions. We have the science to know that these explosions are insignificant on the atmospheric scale.
These explosions are a drop in the ocean, which is why regulators have no problem with seeing them happen in the course of developing these new technologies.
@volkris as someone who has been researching this specifically for the past year & worked on LEO environments for years, there really is hardly any knowledge regarding whether the atmosphere, ionosphere, & magnetosphere can really sustain dramatic increases in conductive dust - which stays there indefinitely. We have far, far surpassed meteorite metal levels with rocket & satellite debris
@carlysagan if nothing else we know it can sustain it because we've seen that it has.
@carlysagan yes but that's a different, slippery slope sort of argument. It's a different issue.
The planet can take this level of activity. Maybe it wouldn't be able to take a dramatically increased level of activity, a dramatically different level, but for now we're talking about this level.
Heck, a system like starship offers to deliver payloads more efficiently than other systems, so the sooner it gets put into production the less environmental impact there will be. It would require fewer launches.
@volkris the thing is that space activity is dramatically increasing. Soon there will be a launch every day. Soon there will be satellites demolishing every single day and then every single hour. This rate of space activity and debris is very, very new for the planet and there are already studies coming out that show we may create new ozone holes doing this https://www.space.com/starlink-satellite-reentry-ozone-depletion-atmosphere