Interesting article, thank you.

A note about black carbon, however - it requires a carbon based fuel. This launch vehicle (and some others too) used H2 as its fuel. As a result, we can note emissions of zero for black carbon, alumina and chlorine.

The article has one more estimation error relative to this flight. They seem to have estimated 17.5% of the landing pod’s mass to burn up on re-entry. This is a reasonable estimate when re-entering from orbital flight (initial speed at least 7.8 km/s), but the flight in the news article was suborbital: a steep ascent to the Karman line (initial speed of re-entry: very low), followed by a ballistic fall.

As evidenced by photos of the capsule (also available in the news article), nearly none of its mass burnt away. It features no thermal protection tiles on the sides (there could be some under the bottom) and exhibits no visible signs of overheating or mass loss (even the painted text has remained readable).

So, while the article could be accurate in its analysis of solid-fueled and carbon-based launches and orbital re-entries, this flight differs considerably from the analyzed pattern. The capsule didn’t enter orbit, didn’t carry retrograde engines to initiate re-entry, as a result was lighter, and launchable using a relatively small rocket (19 m is really small for a passenger carrying rocket).

As a result, I think they caused very little harmful atmospheric emissions (I would consider water vapour harmless, thermal NOx harmful). Based on this, I would even speculate (based on intuition, no calculations) that during the flight (notes: not during the building of the spacecraft, not during spacecraft fuel production) less pollution was caused than an airliner burning aviation fuel emits over 500 km… maybe 1000 km.

It was just their energy bill that was huge.

Myself, I’m not so skeptical.

Yes, it’s a very expensive passtime. They burned H2 and O2, but used a lot of energy.

They had no practical purpose for going - only demonstrating that it’s safe. No experiments besides the flight itself, and it’s been demonstrated already that Blue Origin can fly and land. The added data point was just telemetry and small improvements, and the message that Blue Origin dares to fly VIPs.

I’m content to mostly ignore it, and note “there’s one more private space launch company out there”.

For greater traffic between Earth and space, things must change. The rocket stage that ascends out of the atmosphere would be better released from an extremely high-flying plane or airship. Chances of surviving accidents would increase. Required engine power levels would drop. This has been tried by Scaled Composites. Sadly their space programme was set back by deadly accidents unrelated to their architecture, losing 3 ground crew to an explosion and one pilot to a pilot error. :(

At a later time, instead of ascending out of atmosphere by burning carried fuel, one should seriously consider delivery of energy from Earth by laser (rocket as a solar concentrator, no looking out of windows) and maneuvering in orbit with the assistance of permanent space tugs utilizing highly efficient magnetic thrusters (orientation) and ion engines (propulsion). Probably ion engines that permanently sit in space and only get reaction mass and energy delivered to them regularly.

In the far end, if lots of cargo and lots of people must visit space, then a space elevator must be constructed. Materials that allow making one still don’t exist.

or agreeing to tracking cookies.

Now that I think of it - yes. I agree to them, but my browser is configured to discard them on leaving.

The Guardian doesn’t have a paywall, it just shows an annoying message you can get past. At least my browser doesn’t prevent me from seeing the article, so I’ll copy the essence.

It was jurisdiction shopping by the oil company, trial errors by the court and manipulation of public opinion, third world oligarchy style. :(

• The jury – the most sacred due process protection available to a defendant – was patently biased in favor of the company. Seven of the 11 people seated had ties to the fossil fuel industry. Some had admitted they could not be fair, but the judge seated them anyway. There was no Native American or person of color on the jury even though issues of Indigenous rights were central to the trial.

• Morton county, where the trial was held and where many of the protests took place, voted 75% for Trump in the last election and has extensive ties to the fossil fuel industry. In a pre-trial survey, 97% of residents in the county said they could not be fair to Greenpeace. Yet the judge refused repeated requests by Greenpeace to move the case.

• Energy Transfer ran a major television and online advertising campaign in the county lauding itself in the weeks leading up to the trial. A newspaper called Central ND News, with articles critical of the protests, was also sent to county residents; Greenpeace believed Energy Transfer might have been responsible for it. But the court refused to allow Greenpeace to use court discovery procedures to determine how this unethical campaign to taint the jury pool happened.

• Adding to the absurdity, Greenpeace was blamed for the entire protest movement even though it played only a minimal role. The protests were led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, on whose ancestral land the Dakota Access pipeline was being built. In fact, only six of the 100,000 people who came to the protests were from Greenpeace – yet Energy Transfer was able to convince the jury to hold the organization responsible for every dollar of supposed damages that occurred over seven months of protests.

• Secrecy pervaded the proceedings. The court repeatedly refused to open a live stream to the public or to create and release transcripts. A request by media organizations (including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times) to access the live stream was denied. Thousands of key documents were sealed and thus hidden from public scrutiny.

• The judge, James Gion, made evidentiary decisions that gutted Greenpeace’s ability to mount a defense. For example, a major expert report showed that the pipeline had leaked roughly 1m gallons of drilling fluids into drinking water sources used by millions of people. Greenpeace lawyers needed the document to debunk the argument that the pipeline was safe, but the judge refused to let the organization use it.

• The 35-page verdict form was confusing and the results seemed to prove the jury was in fact confused. It appears the exorbitant damages number was calculated by pulling numbers out of thin air – including millions for public relations expenses, private security costs, which were being paid anyway, and refinancing costs due to various banks withdrawing from the project once they learned about the protests. (Lobbying banks is also constitutionally protected advocacy.)

The article itself provides the data to argue that it’s sensationalist.

Hydrogen is therefore an indirect greenhouse gas with a global warming potential GWP of 5.8 over a 100-year time horizon. A future hydrogen economy would therefore have greenhouse consequences and would not be free from climate perturbations.

If a global hydrogen economy replaced the current fossil fuel-based energy system and exhibited a leakage rate of 1% then it would produce a climate impact of 0.6% of the current fossil fuel based system. If the leakage rate were 10%, then the climate impact would be 6% of the current system

P.S.

Nobody in their right mind will spend energy to manufacture a gas and then let 10% of it leak out unused.

Leak rates characteristic of fossil gas systems are related to the nature of fossil gas systems.