Launching rockets can be either a very, very dirty business or a pretty clean one, depending on the kind of fuel you use. The shuttle’s solid boosters are filled with a rubbery mix made up of ammonium perchlorate, aluminum, iron oxide, epoxy and a polymer bonding agent. If you think setting all that on fire would produce some nasty exhaust, you’re right. The Saturn V moon rockets used a mix of kerosene and liquid oxygen in their first stages, which produced it’s own air-fouling smoke. The second and third stages, however, were fueled with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, releasing mostly flame and steam. The rockets that would be used for launching tourists on suborbital missions would be filled with some kind of hydrocarbon fuel which, like the kerosene in the Saturn V, would act as a pollutant.

To conduct its calculations on the atmospheric impact of recreational rocketry, the AGU proceeded on the assumption that the space tourism industry is correct when it projects that it will be launching about 1,000 vacation rockets per year by 2020. That’s not an entirely unreasonable prediction since Branson is by no means the only entrepreneur in the game. If that ambitious goal is met, the first and biggest concern would be the amount of soot the engines would produce. One thousand commercial launches would produce 10 times the soot emitted by government and private rockets today—and that presents serious problems.

Since particles of soot are black, they absorb rather than reflect away heat and light. Soot  from rockets poses a special danger since it is emitted far higher in the atmosphere than 0ther sources of air pollution. “Rockets are the only direct source of human-produced compounds above 14 miles [22.5 km],” said the paper’s chief author Martin Ross in a statement.

In the case of vacation rockets, this would mean a layer of accumulated soot in the stratosphere about 25 miles (40 km) high, or three times the altitude at which commercial airlines fly. The AGU’s computer models showed that by blocking sunlight, the soot could actually cool much of the surface of the planet by 1.2ºF (.7ºC), which seems like a good thing in the face of global warming. However, it would warm Antarctica by 1.5ºF (.7ºC), which is exactly what the rapidly melting southern ice does not need. Worse, soot that’s been deposited 25 miles high can hang around in the atmosphere for years, unlike soot from factories, coal-fired power plants and airliners, which precipitates out in as little as a few days or as much as a few weeks, depending on quantities and circulation patterns. Read more at ecocentric.blogs.time.com

The captain of a Qatar Airways plane has died while flying the aircraft from the Philippines to the Qatari capital, Doha.

The assistant pilot took control of the plane and the flight was then diverted to Kuala Lumpur where it landed at around 11.30am local time, Qatar Airways said on Wednesday. Read more at english.aljazeera.net

“There is always an increased risk of infection whenever you enter a confined space, but an aircraft cabin is no worse an environment than the office you sit in every day,” said Dr. Mark Gendreau, an emergency and aviation medicine expert at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Mass.

Cabin air, he said, is refreshed about 15 times an hour, compared with less than 12 an hour in an office building. On most full-size jets, the air is also circulated through hospital-grade HEPA filters, which are supposed to remove 99.97 percent of bacteria and the minuscule particles that carry viruses. The cabin air is also divided into separate ventilation systems covering every seven rows or so, limiting the ability of germs to travel from one end of the plane to the other.

Still, that does not rule out the prospect of diseases spreading from passenger to passenger on a long flight. Travelers tend to ignore doctors’ advice to avoid flying if they are sick, exposing unsuspecting seatmates to a threat of infection, the research panel noted. Read more at www.nytimes.com

Think your seat in coach is cramped? Take a look at the SkyRider. The new airplane seat, to be unveiled next week at the Aircraft Interiors Expo Americas conference in Long Beach, would give passengers an experience akin to riding horseback. They’d sit at an angle with no more than 23 inches between their perch and the seat in front of them — a design that could appeal to low-cost airlines that have floated the idea of offering passengers standing-room tickets on short flights. Read more at www.usatoday.com

The charmingly named, 31-foot-long MQ-8B Fire Scout Vertical Takeoff and Landing unmanned aerial vehicle was flying at an altitude of 2,000 feet on August 2 when the Navy completely lost control of the craft due to, they say, a “software issue.” It continued, guided only by its own probably-evil robot brain, for about half an hour, flying 23 miles into restricted airspace. The Navy re-established control when the drone was just 40 miles from the nation’s capital. Read more at gizmodo.com

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Seven puppies died after flying in the cargo hold of an American Airlines jet. American said it contacted the shipper who put the puppies on a Tuesday morning flight from Tulsa, Okla., to Chicago, and is investigating further. Airline spokeswoman Mary Frances Fagan said Wednesday the shipper put 14 puppies aboard Flight 851, which was scheduled to leave Tulsa at 6:30 a.m. but was delayed an hour by storms in Chicago. American said on its website it won’t carry warm-blooded animals if the actual or forecast temperature is above 85 degrees. As the plane sat on the tarmac in Tulsa, it was already 86 degrees before 7 a.m., according to the National Weather Service. Fagan said cargo holds carrying animals are routinely kept between 50 and 70 degrees. Baggage handlers taking the puppies to a kennel area at O’Hare Airport grew concerned because they looked lethargic. Employees tried to cool down the dogs, and they were taken to a vet’s office, but five died initially and two others died later, Fagan said. Read more at www.wtopnews.com