Super Eco

Photo credit: Flickr, p_a_h

Mission accomplished. Space shuttle Atlantis has arrived at the International Space Station. Did you know that NASA's also launching a mission to trim its "big as the state of Connecticut" environmental footprint? They'd better be.

In fact, NASA recently announced that it will pump $30 million over the next five years into boosting energy efficiency and reducing its self-described Constitution State-sized ecological impact. However, neither can happen until NASA can make painstaking heads or tails of its complicated carbon footprint. When that's finally complete, they can start chipping away at bringing it down to size. But will it be enough to "offset the potentially giant impact of spaceflight"?

Enter International Trade Bridge. The Ohio firm is collecting big government bucks to improve NASA's water conservation efforts, expand its hydrogen fuel cell development program and beyond. Never mind the DOZENS of truly amazing green tech NASA R&D programs already underway.

Five years is a long time (will it take eons?) to accurately suss out NASA's possibly galactic-in-girth environmental impact, if the struggling agency can even hang on that long. I can't even begin to guesstimate how much CO2 a single shuttle blasts into our atmosphere, never mind what becomes of all those toxins floating in outer space. I'll leave that giant leap to the "Green Aviation" rocket scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center, and to editors of Discover Magazine.

According to the publication's 2007 "Spaceport for Tree Huggers," a single shuttle launch spews 28 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere alone! But that's a mere burp compared to the glut of pollution that gets dumped on and near the Kennedy Space center post-blastoff.

3 ... 2 ... 1 ... Here goes, thanks again to Discover Magazine: " ... 23 tons of harmful particulate matter settle around the launch area each liftoff, and nearly 13 tons of hydrochloric acid kill fish and plants within half a mile of the site ... the environmental cost per launch is the same as that of New York City over a weekend ..."

Does NASA have a replacement planet mission in the works, too?