Do you think that with all the space crafts going up into space is damaging the ozone?

I don’t think it works like that. The ozone layer is gas. It’s not like a balloon where the rockets are punching wholes in it. It’s more like a submarine in the ocean. As it goes down, the water just takes it’s place. Same concept applies here. The gasses don’t stay torn apart.

@ensoX24, if that is the case then what else could it be that is causing the ozone to deplete like this, and why is it getting faster and faster? Great question Rossi_bear

Space shuttle launches do release tremendous amounts of gas. It can’t help the ozone.
http://stason.org/TULARC/science-engineering/ozone-depletion-intro/23-Do-Space-Shuttle-launches-damage-the-ozone-layer.html

thanks tigg!! and thanks buster for the link!! :)

I’m not saying rockets aren’t damaging, but the way rossi stated it made it sound like they were punching holes in it. Perhaps it was just a misinterpretation that appears so commonly on the Internet.

@EnzoX24, not really punching holes, but putting holes is what it sounds like to me.

yes i ment they were putting holes in the ozone.

more than we’ll ever know.

I feel pretty certain that the tiny number of space craft would not even register as a hundredth of a percentage point compared to the millions of cars and lawn mowers, thousands of power factories, thousands of industrial factories, and myriad other ways in which we 6 billion or so have been soiling ourselves. The effect would be infinitesimal compared to all of the other crap that we do.

And it’s not like we’re going to have the shuttles much longer anyway.

We all have great thoughts on the topic, and I am so happy that people here are not taking this question as a joke. There has to be some merit in it, as with the fact that we are ALL killing the earth, one way or another in our daily lives. Even if you ride a bike to work, how was that bike made? They use rubber, how was the rubber made, you have to use oil to keep the bike going, you need water, are you going to drink from a stream, or buy bottled water to go biking, or buy 1 bottle of water, and refill it. I think that if there were laws about reusing things, then things might not be as bad as they are now. ? Coming from a fanily of 8 kids, we HAD to recycle, and reuse, I wore hand me downs and hand me overs for most of my childhood. Necessity is the mother of invention.

@Laureth: Is that true? If so, why?

NASA’s retiring them.
Link.
Another link.

Ozone is destroyed primarily by chlorine and bromine. Chlorine commonly exists in our world as dichlorine, or Cl2. The Chlorine that depletes ozone is a single atom, not the molecule Cl2. In order for this to happen, the Cl2 has to be split apart, and the way this happens in the Stratosphere is by photodissociation. Basically, the light from the sun is so energetic, that it breaks the molecule up into its elemental parts. But where does this chlorine come from in the first place?
Well, first, chlorine natuarally exists in the atmosphere. In fact, one of the causes (although by no means the predominant cause) of depletion of ozone are a phenomena called polar stratospheric clouds. These are clouds that actually exist in the stratosphere. How novel. But they aren’t clouds as you or I tend to think of clouds. These clouds are made up of water and nitric acid. Here’s a picture a woman gave me when I was down in Antarctica: Nacreous pretty, huh? Well, these clouds form activated chlorine (the single element, not Cl2), and we measured a few of these clouds this year because they give us a good sense of what kind of depletion is going on up there. But, they don’t last very long. Because they can only form at temperatures less than -80 degrees C, once the sun comes up in Antarctica, the stratosphere warms, and these clouds can’t form any more. Thus, reducing the ozone depletion.

The reason we see such a massive hole in the ozone layer is because of chloroflourocarbons, as I’m sure you’ve all heard of. These are emitted at the surface, and make it up to the stratosphere by upward moving air (think of a thunderstorm. This one storm has strong up drafts, and can deposit the CFCs into the stratosphere.) CFCs are not very reactive on their own, that’s why they can make it up that high. But remember photodissociation? Well, as soon as those bad boys get into the stratosphere, they dissociate and single Cl is free to roam around the atmosphere destroying ozone. And the big problem is that one Cl atom can destroy more than one molecule of ozone. Jerks.

So enough of my back history: to answer your question, I wouldn’t worry about space shuttles destroying ozone. It takes very specific elements to destroy ozone, and I am fairly certain the space agencies don’t use freon or halons (CFCs) to propel their spacecrafts.

how do you explain global warming then>?

Global warming and ozone depletion are different things.

@rossi: Yes, as Laureth said, ozone depletion and global warming are two separate things. Ozone depletion is as I described it above. Global warming is the effect of trapping outgoing heat (radiation) at the closest layer of the earth. I actually prefer to call it “global climate change’, because people seem to get all hot and bothered when it is colder than normal. “Where’s that global warming?”

I don’t really understand your last question here. Are you suggesting that space shuttles are causing global warming? I don’t understand the “how do you explain” part. What I wrote above is not my opinion. It is fact.

yes i thought it was to do with the same thing. i just looked it up and realized it was different. thank you for telling me. when i was in school they didn’t have the thought of it yet. thank goodness for google.:)