this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
55 points (93.7% liked)

SpaceX

1886 readers
26 users here now

A community for discussing SpaceX.

Related space communities:

Memes:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

It did the thing!!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] jjagaimo@lemmy.ca -2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

The assessment noted that SpaceX did not plan to recover any Starship debris or have any boats or aircraft in the area to monitor the reentry and splashdown. It added that “any debris is expected to have sufficient mass to sink to the seafloor.”

Great for the environment

[–] brianorca@lemmy.world 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's mostly steel. Nothing toxic, not even kerosene or solid propellant.

[–] nowwhatnapster@lemmy.world 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I'm sure there are some electronics or materials there that you wouldn't want in a bathtub with you, but I agree with your point. This is literally a drop in the ocean compared to the mass amounts of other pollution sources. Honestly, the diesel the retrieval boats would need to burn to retrieve the debris is probably worse for the environment.

That is the fate of pretty much every rocket booster with the exception of Falcon 9. Starship is designed to be a fully reusable launch system (booster and upper stage) and these tests are stepping stones towards that goal.

[–] zarcher@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago

I agree that its not great to dump items in the ocean. But given that it is rather hard to predict exactly where it will drop, and how fast if would sink after hitting the ocean surface with significant velocity, it would take an army of boats to recover anything.

For rockets i feel you have two large impacts to the environment, the production cost and the burned propellant. For starship the construction does not require too much harmful material i geuss. And the fuel is methane and oxygen. Methane will convert to CO2, but it does not have any nitrogen. Not as good as hydrogen + oxygen in the combustion product which only leaves water.

Looking at environmental impact is always hard, because you need to look at the whole lifecycle. Which frankly i am too lazy to compute here. Perhaps they have performed some research into it required by some legislation.