Scientists: When a SpaceX upper stage burns up in the atmosphere, it burns up in the atmosphere!
Chicken Little rules!
We’re all gonna die! In making the first direct measurement of the plume caused by the vaporization of the lithium in a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage as it burned up in the atmosphere, scientists now claim the pollution for those upper stages as well as the coming launch of tens of thousands of satellites is going to seriously harm the environment.
You can read their paper here. From its conclusion:
Beyond this single event, recurring re-entries may sustain an increased level of anthropogenic flux of metals and metal oxides into the middle atmosphere with cumulative, climate-relevant consequences. After oxidation and heterogeneous uptake on alumina and other metal-oxide particles, aluminium and co-injected species could perturb stratospheric ozone chemistry, modify high-altitude aerosol microphysics through new particle formation, growth, and coagulation, and thereby influence radiative balance. Key unknowns include emission inventories for rockets and satellites, lack of a systematic observational survey of mesospheric metals, altitude-time ablation profiles, chemical lifetimes, particle size-composition distributions, and transport pathways into the lower stratosphere. Addressing these uncertainties will require coordinated, multi-site observations (including resonance-fluorescence and elastic lidars, in situ sampling, and satellites), together with whole-atmosphere chemistry-climate modelling to connect event-scale injections to long-term impacts.
The problems with this study, and its conclusions, are numerous. First of all, this first direct detection of the lithium plume is really no discovery at all. We know the rocket’s upper stage carried lithium. We know it burned up in the atmosphere. It is plainly obvious that lithium would end up as vapor in the upper atmosphere where stage burned up. This detection simply measured what we already knew.
Second, the amount detected is really insignificant. At about 60 miles elevation the numbers rose from 3 lithium atoms per cubic centimeter to 31 during the stage’s burn-up, numbers that will quickly dissipate at these high altitudes. We are not talking big numbers.
Finally, the threat from debris from upper rocket stages is only a temporary problem. As the demand to launch more satellites grows — which it will — the demand to recover and reuse the upper stages will grow as well. Already two American companies, SpaceX and Stoke Space, are developing rockets that will be completely reusable.
The mentality of these scientists is the same “Chicken Little” view of life held by the establishment science community for decades, from climate to industry to Covid to any human endeavor. “Everything humans do is bad! We must ban it now before it destroys us all!” And none of their cries of panic ever carry any larger context or reasonable perspective.
Sadly, this same attitude permeates the mainstream propaganda press. They don’t question such studies, they instead reprint their claims in bold, without any skepticism. We are thus ill-served by our so-called “independent and free” press.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Chicken Little rules!
We’re all gonna die! In making the first direct measurement of the plume caused by the vaporization of the lithium in a SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage as it burned up in the atmosphere, scientists now claim the pollution for those upper stages as well as the coming launch of tens of thousands of satellites is going to seriously harm the environment.
You can read their paper here. From its conclusion:
Beyond this single event, recurring re-entries may sustain an increased level of anthropogenic flux of metals and metal oxides into the middle atmosphere with cumulative, climate-relevant consequences. After oxidation and heterogeneous uptake on alumina and other metal-oxide particles, aluminium and co-injected species could perturb stratospheric ozone chemistry, modify high-altitude aerosol microphysics through new particle formation, growth, and coagulation, and thereby influence radiative balance. Key unknowns include emission inventories for rockets and satellites, lack of a systematic observational survey of mesospheric metals, altitude-time ablation profiles, chemical lifetimes, particle size-composition distributions, and transport pathways into the lower stratosphere. Addressing these uncertainties will require coordinated, multi-site observations (including resonance-fluorescence and elastic lidars, in situ sampling, and satellites), together with whole-atmosphere chemistry-climate modelling to connect event-scale injections to long-term impacts.
The problems with this study, and its conclusions, are numerous. First of all, this first direct detection of the lithium plume is really no discovery at all. We know the rocket’s upper stage carried lithium. We know it burned up in the atmosphere. It is plainly obvious that lithium would end up as vapor in the upper atmosphere where stage burned up. This detection simply measured what we already knew.
Second, the amount detected is really insignificant. At about 60 miles elevation the numbers rose from 3 lithium atoms per cubic centimeter to 31 during the stage’s burn-up, numbers that will quickly dissipate at these high altitudes. We are not talking big numbers.
Finally, the threat from debris from upper rocket stages is only a temporary problem. As the demand to launch more satellites grows — which it will — the demand to recover and reuse the upper stages will grow as well. Already two American companies, SpaceX and Stoke Space, are developing rockets that will be completely reusable.
The mentality of these scientists is the same “Chicken Little” view of life held by the establishment science community for decades, from climate to industry to Covid to any human endeavor. “Everything humans do is bad! We must ban it now before it destroys us all!” And none of their cries of panic ever carry any larger context or reasonable perspective.
Sadly, this same attitude permeates the mainstream propaganda press. They don’t question such studies, they instead reprint their claims in bold, without any skepticism. We are thus ill-served by our so-called “independent and free” press.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The naked political agendas of Millennial newspeople is bad enough; but the fact that so few of these outlets employ journalists with a real science background does not help, not at all.
Well said, all around.
The mentality of these scientist is “How dare they spend money going into outer space when they can funnel that money into our research”. I have seen numerous people comment that Elon Musk should be putting his money into their pet project be it scientific research or welfare for the lazy or reduction of CO2 or maybe reduction of the number of people on Earth.
On the other hand, a million orbiting data centers eventually burning up might have some negative impact on something (climate, ozone, health). Worth studying.
“chem-trails”
J Fincannon: You are assuming those million orbiting data centers would be de-orbited like today. I strongly suspect that as the numbers grow, the capability to preserve these in orbit will grow as well. Salvage will become a profit center. Less and less will be dumped in the Pacific.
I’m not saying the study shouldn’t be done. I’m just saying it is likely like fighting the last war, and will be providing information about conditions that will no longer exist.
“Addressing these uncertainties will require coordinated, multi-site observations (including resonance-fluorescence and elastic lidars, in situ sampling, and satellites), together with whole-atmosphere chemistry-climate modelling to connect event-scale injections to long-term impacts.”
and require massive grants to the authors of this study, which is all speculation.
Entitlement and fearmongering are always popular, unfortunately.
Where does Lithium come from? the Earth. So going back into the Earth sounds fine to me.
But think deeper.
How much Lithium is shoved back into the atmosphere in Forest fires, volcanoes or Dust storms and water run off?
Plus all the lithium that gets tossed into the atmosphere by mining it in the first place
Now add in the hundreds if not thousands of Electric cars that catch fire for any number of reason?
The billions of phones, note pads, laptops and power back up devices. All those devices the left embraced fully.
But the greenies needed their huge fleets of electric cars to “Save the Environment”.
Even if all Lithium production stopped now, how does lithium get recovered or even replaced.
And they are complaining about this?
You have a far larger chance of getting poisoned by your own cellphone.
And of course SpaceX is moving towards Starship/Super Heavy for delivery of its Starlink satellites. That is a 100% reusable model, except for the fuel and the satellites themselves.
I would like to see everything launched in space to stay in space….harvested. It is why I like the concept of stage-and-a-half designs.
Tsander wanted autophage designs.
More of the usual wowsering and special pleading by the establishment “scientific” parasite class uncritically boosted by the politically corrupt and scientifically illiterate “press.” Or, as we could just as well say, another typical Friday.
Jeff Wright,
If one is looking to avoid putting metal oxides into the upper atmosphere, I don’t think autophage rocketry is really the way to go.
There composites would be the rocket stages.
The simplest rocket might be a LOX tank right under the payload with lower stages just tire rubber.
Keep metal launched to space in space.
Of course, you and I both know this paper was aimed at a specific target. I don’t recall anything like this back in the 1990s when RLV were talked about.
If I had money to compete against Elon, I’d go the expendable LOX/tire rubber route or the Kistler route…but no more complicated than that.
Every time the wind blows east from the great salt flats, magnesium chloride, sodium chloride, lithium chloride, potassium chloride, fluoride salts and dirt is deposited all over my house, lawn and cars. The local paper calls it heavy metal and toxic waste pollution… others call the mud rain fertilizer… how do you fight nature? At least they’re finished burning all the nations nerve gas supply!
Hopefully we won’t have any more accidents at the Hercules plant… I hear they will start testing nuclear weapons again.
Cancel all environmental Earth observation satellites now !! Including all CO2 monitoring !!
From the paper’s conclusion:
So, essentially, they know nothing at all important. The paper’s title is correct, that they have a measurement. The paper’s conclusion, however, makes it sound as though they expect some terrible effect. Too bad the paper was not about the effect, just about the measurement of one specific datapoint, good only for reference in future studies of the possible effects. Instead, the conclusion is mere speculation.
_____________
pzatchok asked: “How much Lithium is shoved back into the atmosphere in Forest fires, volcanoes or Dust storms and water run off?”
Robert answered that one already: “At about 60 miles elevation the numbers rose from 3 lithium atoms per square centimeter to 31 during the stage’s burn-up, numbers that will quickly dissipate at these high altitudes.”
Of course, no one is measuring the other sources mentioned by pzatchok. Only the SpaceX source. No judgement, but it looks a little like bias, to me. Well, maybe a little judgement.
Jeff Wright,
The only experience we have, even at modest scale, with “burning tire” rocket motors were the Virgin Galactic hybrids. They use NO2 instead of LOX and, even so, the “exhaust” tended to be on the chunky side. On the positive side, at least a rocket engine that actually “blows chunks” of rubber won’t be leaving any of those chunks in the stratosphere. But the narsty smoke would stay there far longer. If you were launching as much stuff as frequently as Elon plans to do with Starship, that would likely be a problem – close to the ground as well as high up.
You seem to be part of a modest cottage industry of folks attempting to outsmart Elon. That is proving to be almost entirely a mug’s game. Tire fire rocketry does not look like a promising path forward.
For those seeking to understand the life forms that expel the waste found in this “alarming” report, read Ayn Rand’s, “Atlas Shrugged!” Specifically, the report issued by establishment “experts” in response to the new alloy of steel, “Reardon Metal.”
Max had the best take on all this—if Mother Nature were held to EPA standards–she’d flunk too.
did you intend to say cubic centimeter instead of square centimeter? I don’t what surface you’re referring to when you say “At about 60 miles elevation the numbers rose from 3 lithium atoms per square centimeter” What surface is at 60 miles altitude? (not elevation)
I wonder how many lithium atoms are thrown into the atmosphere with every ocean wave that hits the shore? seawater contains 180-200ppm Lithium. That’s 1.6*10^19 atoms per liter of seawater. 30 more isn’t going to hurt anyone.
When perusing reports of this kind, always look for the weasel-words/phrases:
“…may sustain an increased level…”
“…could perturb stratospheric ozone chemistry…”
Zimmerman:
I’m not saying the study shouldn’t be done. I’m just saying it is likely like fighting the last war, and will be providing information about conditions that will no longer exist.
Fincannon:
I would not believe any one report about anything. But it would be interesting to compare the components of micrometeorites and their rates and possible impact on the Earth with the “unnatural” satellite and rocket launch burnup flux/components.
Given 1 million data centers are supposed to replace 99% of human intelligence with AI, maybe it doesn’t make a difference though.
slicksister: My mistake. It should have read “cubic.” I’ve fixed the error.
Starship will be coming back, it might as well bring back obselete sats it delivered if no beneficial reuse or recycling can be accomplished. No need to deadhead.
That takes propellant as well. It might be best to have the ISS de-orbit Dragon-mod with a lot of hypergolics shove things to where the basking shark can gobble it up in one go after re-fueling the stretch service module… hypergolic depots don’t worry me, due to no real boil-off threat and no cryogenics.
For LEO “hygiene” it makes more sense to have fewer, larger Orbital Antenna Farms than mega-constellations, although the mass-production of those could also allow space-based missile defense to actually be a thing…. that’s more important on a strategic level than some day trader fussing about latency…but I digress.
One interesting story I would like to share from phys is the story called:
“EPA criminal sanctions align with a county’s wealth, not pollution, study finds”
This helps prove that the eco-lobby/eco-justice fools really are lying about what they’re really up to.
The individuals who helped keep development at bay?
Hunters…like my fellow Fur/Fish/Game crowd. But ecologists turned on us from the left like zealots from the right turned on MSFC even though we were always trying to go BEO, despite Clinton and Obama trying to confine humanity to LEO.
Jeff Wright,
“But ecologists turned on us from the left like zealots from the right turned on MSFC even though we were always trying to go BEO, despite Clinton and Obama trying to confine humanity to LEO.”
My takeaway there is that you are blaming the right for what the left did two MSFC.
Engineers get it from both sides.
Flood control was a legacy of FDR, and conservatives historically would rather have tax cuts, and or support military spending. Democrats don’t like levees, because an Attenborough told them not too—that and they think less of human life than some hair-lipped, two-anused snail darter or other that has a red spot above one eyebrow than a blue spot behind the other. Social programs play better
When Katrina struck, it cost taxpayers far more than it would have to just fix up the levees…for years, JPL hoped MSFC would be BRAC-d so they could launch more bomb-disposal robots atop Delta IIs.
An individual at Secret Projects Forum wondered if all upper stages had a similar “footprint.”
Here is the study on EPA’s bias:
https://news.wsu.edu/press-release/2026/02/23/epa-criminal-sanctions-align-with-areas-wealth-not-pollution/
They rank highly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_State_University
This study deserves more talk than it has been getting.