Name: This eco-friendly rocket fuel can change the space industry
Uploaded: 2022-12-05
Duration: 5 min 19 s
Description: BluShift made history in 2021 for launching the first commercial rocket using biofuel. As rocket use grows so does concern about polluting the stratosphere. Small companies are developing innovative solutions to the problem.

BluShift made history in 2021 for launching the first commercial rocket using biofuel. As rocket use grows so does concern about polluting the stratosphere. Small companies are developing innovative solutions to the problem.

This eco-friendly rocket fuel can change the space industry

Environment

BluShift made history in 2021 for launching the first commercial rocket using biofuel. 

BluShift made history in 2021 for launching the first commercial rocket using biofuel. As rocket use grows so does concern about polluting the stratosphere. Small companies are developing innovative solutions.

BluShift made history in 2021 for launching the first  commercial rocket using biofuel.

Rocket launches are gonna increase by some tenfold over the next 10 years. Going from a very small percentage of contribution to climate change to a very large portion. We're doing stuff to make our airplanes more sustainable car transportation more sustainable. What are we doing for rockets? Why is it important to address the issue of sustainability of rocket activities? The stratosphere is a region of the atmosphere that is extremely sensitive to small changes, primarily that's due to the mass of air that's there. You're up at 1/10 to 1 1000 of the pressure when you deposit exhaust products up their, their impact on climate, their impact on ozone is disproportionate. If the surface you've got something that lasts for a few weeks in the stratosphere, you've got something that lasts for a few years. There are two kinds of particles, there are black carbon particles and there are aluminum particles and these particles have a huge lever arm in terms of their influence on climate and ozone because they're in the stratosphere, the same materials emitted at the surface of the earth would have no impact at all. That's where the uniqueness of rockets comes in. There are a variety of rocket fuels that are currently in use very generally. We don't think of the environmental part of it when we think about their uses were thinking primarily about the energy that you get the cost and the safety of those fields across the industry. We're seeing a handful of companies working on bio fuel alternatives. I'm Sasha, dairy and Ceo and founder of Blueshift Aerospace, It was about a decade ago that I started blue shift and it really started on a farm. They have to be my brother's farm and at the time we were testing out a certain type of rocket engine using petroleum fuel. And I sat down my brother's kitchen and I saw the certain substance on his windowsill. He just pulled off the farm a few weeks before and I thought gosh, if this if this could work as well or even close to as well as petroleum alternatives, it's a much more sustainable way of fueling rockets. And so it was like maybe two weeks later we tested out the fuel. Found out not only did it work, it work better than the petroleum that we made history as the very first company to have launched a rocket commercially using a carbon neutral bio derived, non toxic rocket fuel. We saw the media and the public questioning the larger rocket companies, why why aren't you doing things in a more sustainable way? In the past, the space industry has been dominated by a few very large players. Us government soviet government, chinese government. But now space is becoming a free market commercial activity. And so we expect small companies to start to play a role here. Gregory Constantine ceo of their company. Their company is a carbon utilization company that takes carbon dioxide before it's captured from the atmosphere and turns it into useful products that can help shape our future. Yeah. The beauty about working with groups such as Nasa is they're really focused on pushing innovation and pushing research and development. And some of the work that we're doing with them is really geared towards the rocket fuel that we're making from carbon dioxide and how we can optimize the use of the work that is done in academia. And the work that is done in lab doesn't often find its way to commercial realities as well. And because it's a big challenge. Um and so we try to spend a lot of time innovative business solutions as well that allow that innovation to see the light of day in the real world, thankfully some of the work that we're doing with groups like Nasa as well allows us for that research and development into actuality small companies that innovate. If they can innovate and there's all this room for growth, then they can change the face of the space. The biggest challenge right now is the research, we have to understand now what these different propellant types will do in the future. We know that the amount of carbon dioxide put out by a medium sized rocket is about the same as an airline flight. And we know there are thousands of airline flights every day and there are only a few 100 rocket launches each year. So when it comes to the big picture aviation has thousands of times greater impact than spaceflight. But when it comes to the upper part of the atmosphere, there is no aviation, and rockets are the only game in town. The spaceflight industry, It's very small right now. And if it froze that way, we could write the paper and and go home. But we think it's going to grow a lot and that's why we have to get better scientific information.