Rocketing Toward Climate Disaster: The true cost of an 11-minute space flight (#305)

Last week, six women boarded Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket and made headlines for their 11-minute suborbital flight.

It was hailed as a triumph. The first all-female commercial spaceflight crew.

But behind the media fanfare lies a harsh reality:

A luxury experience for a handful of people, paid for by burning through precious environmental resources, at a time when the planet can least afford it.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket uses liquid hydrogen and oxygen for propulsion. While its emissions seem clean - just water vapor - the environmental impact is far from benign. Producing liquid hydrogen, unless sourced from renewables, is an extremely carbon-intensive process.

Moreover, the water vapor expelled at high altitudes does not simply disappear in rain. It traps heat in the stratosphere, contributing to global warming and possibly accelerating ozone depletion.

All this for a few minutes of zero-gravity selfies.

Space tourism today represents some of the worst excesses of late-stage capitalism: enormous energy expenditures, luxury for the ultra-privileged, and environmental costs borne by everyone else.

These short suborbital flights fall under the growing category of luxury emissions.

Extravagant carbon outputs for elite entertainment.

Studies have shown that a single Blue Origin-style flight can produce per-passenger emissions equivalent to several years’ worth of carbon output from the average human.

Meanwhile, the global south battles droughts, rising seas, and collapsing ecosystems. Crises they did not create but will suffer from disproportionately.

In a world where over one billion people lack access to electricity, six people used massive energy resources to spend 11 minutes peeking into space. It’s a grotesque reminder of inequality on a planetary scale.

Representation Matters. But Not at Any Cost

True, the flight was a historic first for gender representation.

But representation without responsibility is hollow.

A woman shattering a glass ceiling aboard a carbon-hungry, billionaire-funded rocket does little for a girl growing up in a flood-ravaged Bangladesh village or a fire-prone California town.

Milestones in diversity are important.

Yet if they occur on platforms built on environmental degradation and elite excess, they risk becoming nothing more than greenwashed PR stunts.

Space companies like Blue Origin promise a cleaner future: more reusability, greener fuels, less waste.

But these promises ring hollow when the very premise of suborbital tourism is unnecessary.

No amount of recycling rocket parts can offset the indulgence of launching humans into space for a few minutes of entertainment, instead of focusing these technologies on scientific discovery or climate monitoring.

There’s a bitter irony here: while scientists race to better understand climate tipping points using satellites and data from space, billionaires and their guests are busy treating the same atmosphere as a theme park ride.

Rick’s Commentary

If humanity wants a future in space, it must be earned through stewardship, not spectacle.

We can and should celebrate milestones of inclusion and diversity, but not when they come strapped to rockets that push us closer to ecological collapse.

Representation should inspire systemic change, not serve as a distraction from planetary destruction.

Perhaps the next generation of heroes will not be the few who escape Earth’s gravity for a few glorious minutes, but those who fight to protect and repair the only home we have.

We need fewer billionaires launching celebrities into space, and more leaders launching solutions here on Earth.

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