Friday, 2 July 2021

Urban Spaceman (and Woman)?

It may be 'heart-warming', that Wally Funk will finally achieve her ambition to go into space on the 20th of July (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/01/jeff-bezos-space-flight-pilot-wally-funk). Funk was a trained female cosmonaut who, in the 1960's, was not allowed to be part of a rocket crew because of her gender. She will be the oldest person to briefly touch space, when she takes the third passenger seat in Jeff Bezo's scheduled Blue Horizon flight. It may also be exciting for some, that Richard Branston's Virgin Galactic is still striving to beat Blue Horizon. They aim to achieve the first space tourism flight 9 days earlier (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/02/richard-branson-aims-to-beat-jeff-bezos-into-space-by-nine-days). I'm afraid, however, that I can't stop thinking about the mighty carbon emissions, associated with several active space tourism enterprises. It may be fun for some but will be another nail in the coffin of planet Earth.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Frankly does it matter. Nobody seems to care. Just look at the massive cars on the roads these days. People in the U.K. just can’t stop driving them. In France the roads are empty in comparison. The majority of people don’t give a flying fig about anything. Signed; disillusioned eco warrior.

Paul Brain said...

I can perfectly well understand your anger at (most) human ignorance and self indulgence but we are probably the only species capable of appreciating that we have a downside. Even if the fight is futile, people, like yourself, need to keep being a warrior. I would be interested to hear whether other people share your disillusion.

Food For Thought?

The link between global heating and food prices is clearly illustrated in a recent CarbonBrief ( https://www.carbonbrief.org/five-charts-ho...