Scientific Philosophy and Sustainable Satellite Launches
Deduction or Induction? Which scientific principle will help us achieve sustainable satellite launches.
Sustainability is a dominant topic. The philosophical logic behind it is quite simple: Pollution leads to rising temperatures which will have adverse effects on humanity. Many — if not all — areas of life take advantage of the fact that public resources can be used for free, a problem know as tragedy of the commons.
Manned Space Travel has already integrated sustainability with high levels of recycling — out of sheer necessity. But the launch and satellite industry is still burning massive amount of rocket fuel with significant carbon footprints. For example, the Falcon 9 uses a combination of refined kerosene and oxygen. While the 34% carbon content of the roughly 150 tons of fuel in every Falcon 9 launch is a droplet in the ocean of carbon pollution, the planned frequency of launches will have a much stronger impact.
The future of satellite launches will be dominated by commercial uses and smaller, lighter satellites. Military applications will require heavier satellites with massive rockets to launch. Many commercial applications can be done through CubeSats. More than 3.000 CubeSats are expected to launch over the next half-decade. Even with launch cost dropping to a little over $10.000 per kg payload, this will not only be costly but come with a significant environmental impact.
Back to the question of scientific philosophy: Deduction or induction? The question if science should rely more on deduction or induction is as old as science itself. Let’s recap the difference quickly. By the laws of logic, deduction is the much safer method to arrive at conclusions than induction so it should be preferred if possible. As an example of deductive inference consider the following:
All Frenchmen like red wine & Alain is a Frenchman therefore Alain likes red wine.
But not all inferences are deductive. Consider the following example:
The first five eggs in the box were rotten & All the eggs have the same best-before date therefore the sixth egg will be rotten, too.
This looks like perfectly good reasoning but it is not deductive as the premises don’t entail the conclusion. However, this type of reasoning is found in our lives everyday. It severely limits our ability to come up with truly new ideas and to think out-of-the-box.
All satellites in space got there by rockets & more satellites need to go to space therefore we need more rockets
is another of these mistakes in thinking.
What if we can find a fully sustainable way to launch the myriads of future satellites into low orbits?
Another logical thought exercise could look like this: Slingshots work (we know since the story with David and Goliath) & electromagnetic acceleration work & electricity is available fully sustainably therefore we can launch satellites with electromagnetic acceleration and without pollution. As a bonus, we can lower launch cost by a factor of ten. Drastically lower launch cost will also create much bigger markets as more ideas and applications suddenly become economically viable.
The beauty about the last logic is that all required technologies already exist and merely require new calibration to work together.
Stay tuned for more about sustainable satellite launches through electromagnetic acceleration.
Björn Holste — SpacePort One
