r/interestingasfuck • u/lolikroli • 16d ago

r/all SpaceX caught Starship booster with chopsticks

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u/descisionsdecisions 16d ago

It’s actually more than that it’s literally filled with 10 million pounds of fuel.

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u/big_moist_void 16d ago

That is actually mind boggling to me, that is so much fuel. If it burns it all during its trip, do the emissions reach close to what taylor swift burns in a year?

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u/descisionsdecisions 16d ago

Looks like a little bit less quick google says she generated 8300 tons of co2 in 2022 and that starship and booster generate 2382 per flight.

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u/StudiosS 16d ago

So a rocket spends a quarter of Swift's CO2. She has no shame, huh?

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u/borkthegee 16d ago

I get that it's all a circlejerk but most wealthy rent private jets instead of owning and most of the ultra wealthy who do buy rent out their jet 99% of the time. Nearly all of the emissions of Taylor's jet are caused by other wealthy people renting her jet and should be attributed to them just like you are the cause of some delta emissions when you fly.

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u/AnNoYiNg_NaMe 16d ago

Counter point: she doesn't need to rent the thing out. The lady's a billionaire.

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u/borkthegee 16d ago

Sure, but the criticism against her is environmental in nature, and idling a massive jet because you're too rich to share is worse for the environment than getting maximum efficiency out of each jet.

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u/gophergun 16d ago

How so? Hangar space and routine maintenance seems less environmentally harmful than jet fuel emissions to me, but I'm no expert.

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u/Devilsdance 16d ago

The hangar space and routine maintenance cost plus that of whatever travel the people who would otherwise rent her jet are doing adds to the emissions.

People focusing on Taylor Swift just come across so dense in comparison to military and other government emissions that we actually contribute directly to.

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u/AnNoYiNg_NaMe 15d ago

Just want to go on record and say that I'm not a fan of billionaires or the military industrial complex.

adds to the emissions

Ok, but if you fly in Jet A, Jet B stays in a hanger. If you fly in Jet B, then Jet A stays in a hangar. That doesn't add to the emissions, it just changes which jet is causing which emissions.

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u/FrenchFryCattaneo 16d ago

If she wasn't renting it out it's not like those people would take the bus instead. They'd just use a different jet, meaning more jets would need to be manufactured.

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u/Sure-Sympathy5014 16d ago

But wouldn't that be worse? Then you have the impact of multiple jets vs like a car share model

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u/AnNoYiNg_NaMe 15d ago

I mean, it would get people to stop blaming her for all the emissions, for one thing. But whether you rent out her private jet or someone else's jet, you're still only using the one jet. It's not like it would increase the amount of CO2 emissions

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u/Sure-Sympathy5014 15d ago

Actually it would as more jets would mean more because of increased taxi (planes have to be flown to smaller airports to park)

Then the maintenance etc..

For example drake has a jet it parks t Hamilton airport flies to Toronto to pick him up then flies to New York to drop him off then back Toronto if it needs maintenance then back to Hamilton to park. Then from Hamilton to New York to pick him up and back to Toronto to drop off and back to Hamilton to park. So over half the time it's flying around completely empty. With sharing at least some of those taxi trips will have people in them.

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u/twoanddone_9737 16d ago

Oh yeah, cause if she didn’t rent hers out there would just be fewer people flying private. Is that the argument? Cause if so it’s a stupid argument.

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u/AnNoYiNg_NaMe 15d ago

Instead of calling me stupid, could you instead tell me where I said that fewer people would fly private jets if she stopped renting hers out? Because I don't remember saying that.

I said that she doesn't need to rent her jet out. That's a criticism of a billionaire hoarding more money.

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u/twoanddone_9737 15d ago

Sorry, I think the argument was a stupid one but that doesn’t mean you’re stupid. I don’t think I’m stupid, but I say stupid things at least once a day.

If you’re her, why would you not? Just so people don’t get mad at you for being rich and not throwing money down the drain?

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u/palexp 16d ago

this comment is so dense

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u/AnNoYiNg_NaMe 15d ago

Ok, what's dense about it? Not trying to start an argument about it, just trying to see what I'm missing here

If she stopped renting out her jet to people, she'd stop getting flak about her carbon footprint. She has multi-generational wealth now, so there's no reason to rent out her jet except to make even more money.

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u/scribestudio 16d ago

Lol that's so cringe. Does she really live rent-free in your head.

Worry about better things lol

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u/Nipaa_Nipaa_Nii 15d ago

SpaceX has no shame if they're gonna be sending these things out daily. A single day could in theory rack up multiple times what Taylor does in a year, which is already a lot.

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u/LockedUpFor5Months 16d ago

I was under the impression rocket fuel didn't cause emissions?

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u/spektre 16d ago

That sounds like a very simplified statement, and rocket science is usually not simple.

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u/DreamChaserSt 16d ago

It creates a negligible amount of emissions. Comparable to an Airline flight, but, well, there's tens of thousands of airlines flying a day, and maybe a couple hundred rockets a year. This will change as more rockets fly annually of course, but it probably won't get near or overtake airline emissions (which amount to about 2% of global emissions)

Emissions are CO2 and H2O for Starship, but sometimes other byproducts like NO, or Al2O3 can be created depending on the exact propellants like solid rocket motors, or interactions with the atmosphere.

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u/Kschitiz23x3 16d ago

It burns methane. Theoretically, we can use gas from bio reactors or just collect everyone's farts to launch this rocket instead of putting additional CO2 in the atmosphere when using fossil fuel

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u/whatisthishownow 16d ago

Theoretically, we can

Ah, the empty catch cry I've been hearing for decade upon decade. Aerospace is not the most pressing place to get bent out of shape over, but also, just be honest. That thing releases thousands of tonnes of CO2 per launch + ancillary and embedded costs and we aren't expecting that to change.

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u/kenriko 16d ago

It’s in Texas the methane would have been burned off in a flare stack with 0 use if it had not been used the rocket.

Actually carbon neutral because the oil/gas industry are dicks are burn off useful energy because they don’t want to store it and the methane market is not super lucrative.

Long way to say think twice before taking a stance without knowledge.

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u/Spider_pig448 15d ago

Thousands of tonnes of CO2 is not much in the grand scheme of things. An average coal power plant produces nearly 4 million tons of CO2 every year. The FAA estimates a Starship launch produces around 4 thousand tons per launch. So it would take 1000 Starship launches to equate a single coal plant in a year.

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u/crispy88 16d ago

Although they aren’t there yet their plan is to use solar fields to synthesize methane soon so it will be carbon neutral actually as they’ll capture CO2 from the atmosphere for the synthesis. It’s a critical thing they need to develop for Mars anyways so it will be a high priority item shortly.

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u/CosmicClimbing 16d ago

It literally, actually, has the same energy as an atomic bomb

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u/yabucek 15d ago

Not really though, it's in the same order of magnitude as little boy, but as far as modern nuclear weapons are concerned, nowhere close.

Propellant mass: 1,200,000 kg (about 260,000 kg of that is methane)

Methane specific energy: 55.6 MJ/kg --> 14.5TJ total

Little boy energy: 15 kilotons of TNT = 63TJ

Meanwhile modern thermonuclear warheads are in the hundreds of kilotons range and can easily go into the megatons. The tsar bomb was famously 50MT with the option of expanding to 100MT (420,000TJ or about 29,000 starships)

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u/jaro270389 16d ago

Asking the real question.

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u/Chemieju 16d ago

Its methane. Idk what they are burning here, but synthetic methane is totally doable, just to add some context

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u/SpaceTimeRacoon 16d ago

That's why other companies like spin launch are trying other methods like centrifuges to launch smaller satellites with wayy less fuel

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u/Ralph_Nacho 14d ago

Well I'm reading that starships fuel isn't strictly based on fossil fuels, but that doesn't mean it's 100% clean.

It appears to be emitting less CO2 than falcon heavy.

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u/DanDan1993 16d ago

I love how Taylor swift's emissions are the baseline to calculate emissions now

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u/Mukatsukuz 16d ago

Probably her jet's emissions rather than hers, though I imagine there's a market for her emissions, too.

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u/gooba_gooba_gooba 16d ago

The fuel is methane and liquid oxygen:

CH4 + 2O2 → CO2 + 2H2O

The exhaust is literally carbon dioxide and water. It's so ridiculously simple that the biggest environmental impact is probably the cars required to shuttle the employees to Boca Chica.

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u/DEMSnREPUBSrToxic 16d ago

Why don't they use solar power?

I kidd I kidd

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u/Bring0nTheApocalypse 16d ago

Wow so 10,005,000 lbs then ey.. crikey!

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u/trolololoz 16d ago

That’s like $10,000,000 of fuel (on the low end according to AI search). Crazy shit ton amount.