Yeah, someone over there at SpaceX should really address the issue of transportation fossil fuel use on a large scale. To only build orbital rockets while ignoring the climate crisis here on Earth would be irresponsible.
I've heard that the methane/oxygen (methalox?) used in Starship engines can be made carbon-neutral by concentrating the fuel from the atmosphere... And that the same process can be done on Mars too to refuel the rockets. Hopefully that's workable.
It was a joke about Tesla. Atmospheric carbon is fungible. You don't need to neutralize methalox emissions if you are doing anything statistically significant about automobile emissions, as the latter will be much, much larger.
To be fair, carbon capture for night time energy usage is a plausible path for us to solve the mismatch between when we use energy and when solar produces it. If we go that route as a society, turning a tiny percentage of that into rocket fuel is NBD, and probably better than burning kerosene which we currently cannot make via carbon capture.
i don't know any carbon capture technology that can be scaled sufficiently, in the proper time scales, that can do that in a way that is quick enough to do any significant dent to global warming.
No single tech is gonna be the solution here. It’s going to a mix of lowered consumption, more efficient tech, time shifting of demand (EVs selectively charging based on the sun), and a wide variety of energy storage tech.
Carbon capture is attractive because it can be used in places where energy density is a critical factor.
Yes, but it may be "superfluous" energy provided by wind turbines or solar at a moment of very high production when no one is ready to consume it. Turning this energy into something useful is actually a bonus.
ok i agree there is some tech transfer with NASA, so is with CERN for instance. this is however national space programs.
my question was more towards commercial space programs, will the tech they invent be open? if so is it worth letting it expand basically out of any regulations?
Current level of regulations of space tourism corresponds to the fact that we do not yet know much what will need regulating and what not.
Regulations around rocket launches have been hashed out over decades of practice. We do not yet have this kind of practical experience with space tourism.
As for the tech produced by commercial space programs: I do not know how open it is going to be, but the know-how established during development will move around as people leave their employees and join others or create their own space startups. I think this might be the most important effect: massive expansion of the pool of experienced engineers.
A historical analogy: contemporary Silicon Valley was basically founded by engineers (called the Traitorous Eight) who left a mismanaged semiconductor startup owned by William Shockley.
