Google’s Sergey Brin is headed to space, (CBC) (CNN) and just the deposit on his ticket will set him back $5 million. But that’s chicken feed.
It’s the carbon offsets that’ll really cost him.
(Seriously, has anyone done the math on what that would involve?)
Yeah, apparently, someone has. From The Space Review:
A calculation for the carbon dioxide emissions of an orbital trip to the ISS on a Soyuz launcher suggests the emissions are 143 tonnes per passenger. Clearly any scaling up of orbital tourism will not use Soyuz technology.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t actually provide the calculations. Wikipedia provides the fuel stats, and I debated actually trying to work it out for myself, but sleep seems more appealing.
If we assume that it is 143 tonnes, then using myclimate.org — one of the more expensive but more respected providers of carbon offsets — it’s still only a paltry $5,000 or so. Which, sadly, means that while it’s a *great* line, it’s not so much the case.