SpaceX punched a hole in the ionosphere

Same can be said for actual web on desktop.

The fact is they have a device that connects to the internet, shifting the goalposts in the argument does not make that less true.

> The carbon footprint of an astronaut going into space on eg a Falcon 9 is on the order of that of a couple average American families for a year.

You certainly mean the direct carbon footprint, right? Not counting what was involved in building the rocket, importing the material, test launches while developing the technology, etc?

> It's not a huge impact compared to how much they advance our understanding of how to live in space

Not sure I get that comparison. So you say "it's okay to contribute destroying life conditions on Earth in this case, given how much it helps us understand how to make people survive around Earth"? We can't move the Earth population to live in orbit once surviving on the ground is impossible, so it's a bit like saying "the carbon footprint of burning tires is not huge compared to how practical it is as a way to get rid of tires", IMO.

We won't, as a species, go live in orbit, we won't go live on the Moon, and we won't go live on March. And we quite certainly will not ever reach the next star (which is what, 4 light-years away?). We don't need to understand how to live in space in order to survive on Earth. And right now we are destroying Earth. We need to first learn how to survive on Earth, and then maybe we can consider playing with human spaceflights again.

> I haven't run the numbers on Starship, but my impression is that it'll be significantly more efficient.

Again, you're missing all the indirect impact, and then all the rebound effects. Every success of SpaceX gets us into a world where the space business (because it is now a business) emits more CO2. I don't know why people don't get the memo, but right now our survival depends on reducing our CO2 emissions, not increasing them.

So, let's see the hard evidence of how thoroughly the problem of launching rockets has been studied. What percentage of the SpaceX budget is dedicated to studying why SpaceX should not launch rockets?

Journalists are great, but it's not like they have a many million dollar budget to study this. The hole in the ionosphere seems to be news, seemingly this is an area where humanity is missing _lots_ of knowledge.

There are some interesting reads on whether Musk is a net benefit or not (reasonable people can disagree here)

> this brings us to the first fundamental problem: Elon Musk does what he wants and wants everyone else to do the same. He only sees the advantages of his approach, without ever asking himself about the consequences. It is certain that the aerospace industry has played a fundamental role in the study of climate, thanks to the weather satellites placed in orbit. The problem is that Elon Musk wants to multiply the number of satellites by 20, which will directly disrupt space operations and astronomical research.

https://bonpote.com/en/elon-musk-solution-or-nightmare-for-t...

Personally, I think the AI car thing has been a distraction and has been an excuse for continuing to put all of our transport eggs in the single-occupancy-vehicle basket. Had Musk pushed the EV numbers he is pushing now back 20 years ago - I would agree that he had done a lot. As-is, for EVs, I view Musk a bit like Steve Jobs, brought the touch-screen phone forward by several years and helped the market adoption, but touch-screen phones would have happened without Jobs.

There are some other interesting reads too from less biased sources:

> It's not surprising that Musk’s socially-responsible message of warning about environmental crisis combined with his massive capital success building electric vehicles (EVs) has given him a messianic status among some of his many admirers. But this status also means that by attacking the Build Back Better legislation, which is by far the United States’ most significant legislation ever aimed at fighting climate change, Musk is providing ammunition to climate deniers and fossil fuel industry opponents of efforts to protect the U.S. from climate change, create good jobs, and lead the world in technology and policies.

> If Musk is really serious about combatting climate change, we need him to support an all-hands-on-deck approach. The commitments, innovation, and investments of private companies must be matched with government policies and incentives.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/margooge/2022/01/17/where-does-...

And then this article is perhaps the best so far:

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-isnt-a-climate-hero-just-becau...

> Let’s look first at Musk’s achievements in both electric cars and solar power, which Manjoo singles out. In many ways, Tesla is certainly deserving of a lot of praise

> Meanwhile, Musk has dismissed the idea of improving existing public transit—which experts say is arguably more important in cutting emissions than popularizing electric cars.

People like you is why I use a throw away

I've gotten the memo, thanks, I've devoted a good amount of time to this stuff, and yes, some things are useful enough that they're worth emitting their relatively insignificant amounts of CO2 for. Obviously, it's the wrong direction on CO2, but we don't have an alternative for lifting stuff into space, yet. And even if they got to 10,000 Falcon 9 launches per year (they're at ~80, so >100x), it would add something like 0.02% of our current global emissions.

wrt direct vs. indirect emissions, rockets are incredibly thin cans full of fuel that immediately gets burnt. The direct emissions will almost certainly dominate the embodied carbon from manufacturing, especially when they're launched >10 times. Once you start including the infrastructure, it's less clear, but it's a close-enough estimate for setting the context in an internet comment. Is the value we get from an astronaut doing work in space worth the carbon footprint of a few American families for a year? I think so, I get the sense that you don't agree. That's fine.