Global Warming?

Question

I have no idea if anyone else has ever asked this question, but isn't the ozone layer ripped everytime a shuttle is launched into space?

I apologize if this question has bothered anyone, NOT everyone "absorbs" information quickly.

Answer 1

Wow... uhm.. ozone is gas. It seperates around the shuttle and closes in after it leaves. The problem is this gas is being devoured by other chemicals such as vehicle emissions.

Answer 2

The Shuttle probably may poke a little hole, but it would close immediately. The main environmental worry with the Shuttle is the tons of sulphuric acid released from the solid rocket boosters with each launch. They have to have an EPA waiver to keep doing that. The holes in the Ozone to worry about are those at the poles, mainly the south pole. Those holes are thousands of miles in diameter. They are caused by chloroflourocarbons. That's the stuff used in air conditioners, aerosol spray cans, the inhalers asthmatics use, and things like that. They now use something else for most of these things in the US, but it varies country to country. They've been banned in the US since about the late 1970's, but some countries are just now getting rid of them. Every bit that's ever been released is still floating around, and will eventually rise to the top of the atmosphere and react with the natural ozone. So we don't yet know if we've acted in time.

This doesn't have anything to do with global warming, but it is a problem (a serious one). Without the ozone layer, the radiation from the sun is strong enough to kill every living thing on land, including us. Even with the ozone layer, the amount of hard radiation you get when exposed to direct sunlight is about the same as the legal limit of microwave leakage from a microwave oven in the US. Even at that level it can cause skin cancer, and even kill with a long exposure.

The hole at the south pole used to show up each year and then disappear, but it got a little bigger each year, until it never went away. It has grown to be thousands of miles across, extending at it's peak well up into South America. They are already seeing changes in cancer statistics at southern latitudes, and they use more sun protection than we do in the US.

Answer 3

The ozone layer isn't like fabric, it's just a part of the atmosphere with relatively large amounts of ozone molecules (3 oxygen atoms joined together). Even the ozone layer only has a few parts per million of ozone - so for every million molecules in the ozone layer, only a few of them are ozone molecules.

Thus the space shuttle passing through the ozone layer isn't any different than you walking through the troposphere, which is the lowest level of atmosphere which goes down to the Earth's surface. You just push the atoms and molecules out of the way, they don't rip.

Answer 4

Dana explains it niceley when he says that the ozone layer isn't like farbic.

It's very much like the air that is around us all the time - OK, there's a lot less of it and it's made up of different gases but it behaves in the same way.

So imagine when you walk down the street or a train goes along a railroad - it has to cut a path through the air but then when you, the train or whatever has passed the air moves back. It's much the same as in water, if you dive into a lake you punch a hole in the water but more water quickly pours in to fill the hole.

Others have asked the question but with so many questions having been asked it would be kind of hard to come up with something completely new. Here's one similar question that was posted after yours, some of the answers there may be useful - http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Ai6mgYsugrsWrBepLIJzdswS.Rd.?qid=20070727132607AAsrlNg

Answer 5

First the ozone layer is very high where the magnetic field collides with the solar winds. There is a slight problem though . About 50 to 70 miles is where the ozone layer is,and the problem is that all high voltage must be turned off or u will have an arc over that might burn something up. The ozone is O3 and held there by a charge that is created by the solar winds and the magnetic field. O3 without the charge will return to O2.

Answer 6

And this is why skeptics think that people concerned about global warming are stupid sheep who believe anything they hear.

Have you recieved a basic education and if so were you asleep during the science lessons.

There are 3 common states of matter...
Solid, Liquid, and Gas.

Liquids and gases are called fluids because they can be made to flow, or move. In any fluid, the molecules themselves are in constant, random motion, colliding with each other and with the walls of any container.

Asking if the shuttle rips the ozone layer is like asking if throwing a rock into a pond rips a hole in the surface of the water.

Answer 7

The shuttle going through the ozone layer is not the problem, it's the shuttle itself, emitting carbon dioxide.

Answer 8

Mmmm just like passing a needle through your fabrics on your clothes. It does not affect the ozone layer...
The shuttle goes thru and the massive gas layer return back to original shape...
What's makes the ozone layer weak, and dissapear is the mixture of natural gases emmit by our environment..
Carbon monoxide is number one.

Answer 9

i havent heard that but warming is caused by burning fossil fuels
spray cans are destroying the ozone...use sticks and pumps

Answer 10

yeah i ask that question before but i think it wont scape because the space keep the air into the earth.