Just 300 flights of a US space shuttle in five years will space shuttle destroys the "OZONE LAYER" Soviet scientists Valery Burdakov and VYACHESLAV Filin have concluded. They warned that exhausts of rockets' supèrsonic aircraft are causing severe damage to the stratospheric Ozone.
Burdakov and Filin helped design the Energiya rocket, which takes the USSRS Buran shuttle unto space. But unlike the US shuttles, which propellant fuel, Energiya uses fuel based on "OXYGEN "HYDROCARBONS" and "Hydrogen," which are far less damaging Energiya. The filing says the threat to the ozone layer was taken into account when designing Energiya. We knew that the ecological we issues could not be regarded as secondary," He says, "Although this has made the whole task more complicated."
Industrial pollution and natural phenomenon such as volcanic eruptions are known to damage the ozone layer. Still, Burdakov and Filin believe that the danger posed by space rockets has mainly been ignored.
Many potential harmful industrial pollutants, including chlorine and nitrogen compounds, never reach the ozone layer 20 km to 50 km above the earth, they argue.
Instead, they are trapped by the lower atmosphere and fall back as acidic rain Space rockets, however, pierce the ozone layer, directly spewing out hundreds of tones of destructive as they pass through.
Solid propellant fuels are most damaging. Burdakov and Filin estimate that one flight of US shuttle emits 187 tones of nitrogen chlorine, seven tones of nitrogen compounds, and 177 tones of aluminum oxide aerosols before it reaches 50 km. One chlorine molecule can destroy 100,000 units of ozone layer molecule, and a bit of nitrogen dioxide can destroy ten ozone molecules.
The US shuttle produces 378 tones of carbon monoxide, 346 tones of water vapors, and 116 sounds of hydrogen. But these less damaging, one molecule of each destroying one molecule of Ozone. Overall, however, a single shuttle flight can destroy up to 10 - million tones of the ozone layer.
Burdakov says, "The process of ozone depletion co-relates well with a gradual increase in the amount of chlorine since the beginning of 1981, by the solid fuel shuttle boosters directly into the stratosphere".
By comparison, one launch of the Soviet Energiya rocket destroys the 1,500 tones of Ozone - 7,000 times less than the US shuttle; this is because it uses a mixture of oxygen hydrocarbon fuel for its first and a combination of hydrogen-oxygen for its second stage.
The US shuttle is not the only culprit. Other solid-fuel rockets are also damaging, in particular, the US Delta rocket which destroys eight million tones Ozone per inch, the US Titan - ii rocket and of France Arian V. Burdakov and Filin calculate that there are considerable risks other systems, supersonic HOTOL (UK) Nasp (US) and Hermes - Arian V (France).
Burdakov believes urgent action is needed. By 2005 he says, space rockets will be discharging 100,000 chlorine and nitrogen pounds compounds into the atmosphere each year accounting for 10% of ozone depletion. He says some form of international control is needed and calls for a reassessment of robust fuel rocket technology & of the need for supersonic military aircraft to fly in the atmosphere. They also believe. Heavy carrier rocket is preferable to medium-sized missiles, as they cause less damage per tone of payload carried into orbit. And flight trajectories of future space system be calculated must be calculated, so their presence in the ozone layer is reduced, he says.
Finally, Burdakov suggests an adapted Soviet Energiya rocket, possibly using ramjet engines, could be used "OZONE LAYER." He suggests that the missile could be used to promote releasing reactions at the height of around 100 km, which would speed up the natural generation of "OZONE "from atmospheric oxygen. He admits this would require "more detail calculations and serious analysis of its ecological consequences."
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