Ep. 765: Rockets vs The Environment

Astronomy Cast

Science, Astronomy, Natural Sciences, Space

4.8 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Astronomy Cast Ep. 765: Rockets vs The Environment By Fraser Cain & Dr. Pamela Gay Streamed live on Sep 22, 2025. We don’t launch a lot of rockets every year, so their impact on the environment is minimal compared to other forms of transportation. But that number is steadily increasing with rates that we’ll have to take seriously. What’s the current and future impact of rockets on the environment Rocket facilities are often surrounded by wildlife preserves and they always fly through our atmosphere. Let's take a look at how launches do and don't impact the environment around them from the surface of Earth, to the farthest orbits (and landings).

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm
0:02.0	Oh Thank you. I'm going to Astronomycast, Episode 765, Rockets versus the environment.
0:53.8	Welcome to Astronomycast, our weekly facts-based journey through the cosmos. We help you understand not only what we know, but how we know what we know. I'm Fraser Kane. I'm the publisher of the universe today. With me, as always, is Dr. Pamela Gay, a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Institute and the director of Cosmo Quest. Hey, Pamela, how are you doing? I am doing well. We are recording this
1:12.3	on the fall equinox. It's all downhill from here. Yeah. Yeah, we could feel it. The weather
1:20.3	definitely, definitely changed. Things are cooler. The wind is up. Hopefully the rain will return.
1:26.0	We're still waiting on any amount of rain here.
1:28.6	It's been five months now since we've had serious rainfall. Yeah, everything is just parched.
1:35.3	So, you know, the deep into September, the wildfire warning is still pretty extreme. So hopefully we will get just a miserable storm that will just dump a ton of
1:46.8	rain on us and reset us back to some level of normality. I have to admit we are in that strange
1:52.7	time of year in southern Illinois where all of my morning glories are wildly blooming everywhere
1:59.3	and the leaves are changing. And I kind of dig the combination.
2:04.4	Like bindweed? Kill it with fire. The white flowers? Little blue flowers. Okay. All right.
2:11.7	All right. They're good. We don't launch a lot of rockets every year. So their impact on the
2:17.3	environment is minimal compared to other forms of transportation.
2:20.7	But that number is steadily increasing with rates that will have to take seriously.
2:25.0	What's the current and future impact of rockets on the environment?
2:28.1	And we'll talk about it a second, but it's time for a break.
2:33.9	And we're back. So give us a break. And we're back.
2:36.2	So give us a sense of the environmental impact.
2:41.8	I guess what are the forms, what are the ways that rockets can harm the environment compared
2:49.0	to, you know, other forms of transportation that we're familiar with.
2:54.0	So we have a number of different things going on. We have both launch and return to consider.
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