Singer Katy Perry and five other women went to space on Monday morning as part of a special trip of ten minutes. What price did the environment paid for this 100% female space trip?
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A little after 8:30 am, the New Shepard rocket by Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos, crossed Karman’s line, which defines the limit between the earth’s atmosphere and the space, 100 kilometers above sea level, before turning back.
The interpreter of I Kissed a Girl was accompanied by the Gayle King host, the journalist and fiancée by Jeff Bezos Lauren Sanchez, the activist Amanda Nguyen, producer Kerianne Flynn and the former scientist of Nasa Aisha Bowe for the 11 -minute trip.
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“Going to space is incredible, and I wanted to be a model of courage, merit and bravery,” said Katy Perry on her return to earth.
She said she wanted to undertake this trip to encourage her daughter Daisy to “never set a limit to her dreams”.
More frequent space tourism
Space tourism becomes more and more frequent, while two companies are currently competing on this market: Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, which each have more than a dozen commercial flights in space to their credit. This 100% female epic – and all the others – was not made at a zero cost for the environment.
Although Bezos’s company claims to use “less fuel to produce the same push” than usual fuels, reality remains that this kind of trip – which has no scientific aim – pollutes.
Even if it is true that the New Shepard rocket does not produce CO2 Throughout her journey, she still emits water vapor, which is harmful at high altitude.
Photo AFP
The professor of atmospheric chemistry and air quality at College London University, Eloise Marais, also considers water vapor as a greenhouse gas, she explained in an interview with BBC.
“It changes the chemistry of the stratosphere, reduces the ozone layer and also forms clouds that affect the climate,” she said.
NASA had warned, in 2022, that space trips could damage the ozone layer. Each launch produces a short a short time.
Ethical and moral questions
Other rockets, such as the Falcon 9 of SpaceX, which use more traditional fuel, emit so many CO2 That a commercial flight between New York and London, specifies the non -governmental organization Space Generation Advisory Council.
The carbon footprint per traveler is however exponential, since a rocket can only contain 1% of the number of passengers in an aircraft.
The soot expressed by a rocket also has a warming effect 500 times greater than that issued by the aircraft, according to a study by Professor Marais published in 2022.
In addition, space tourism also raises questions of an ethical and moral order, since it is only accessible to the richer while all humans, in particular those in developing countries, undergo the consequences, underline researchers from the University of San Diego.
– With AFP information, Sustainability Magazine and the BBC
