The new space race for commercial space flights and space tourism raise certain questions concerning climate change. The big threat from the scaling-up of space travel comes from black carbon, a type of particulate matter that, when hurled into the stratosphere, stays up for years, absorbing visible light from the sun. According to a study Black carbon emitted into the stratosphere by rockets would absorb 100,000 times as much energy as the CO2 emitted by those rockets. And emissions from 1,000 private rocket launches a year would persist high in the stratosphere, potentially altering global atmospheric circulation and distributions of ozone. The simulations show that the changes to Earth’s climate could increase polar surface temperatures by 1 °C, and reduce polar sea ice by 5–15%. A growing space tourism industry will function like an experiment in engineering the climate.

There’s one issue and it’s simple: you don’t want to put black carbon in the stratosphere.

What then? Are rockets the only way to get there? Tomás Saraceno says no, we can float into space with balloons, from space stations hovering in the upper atmosphere and calls for an Aerocene.

Tomás Saraceno’s project Aerocene proposes the longest 0-fuel flight around the world, powered only by the heat of the Sun and infrared radiation from the surface of Earth. Being a sculpture with research potential, it contributes to the ongoing dialogue between art and science and posits a new way to collect data, distribute information and translate scientific research through an artistic form.

Aerocene is a collaborative project that engages in disruptive, alternative, and collective interactions with space and space technology and appropriates and reinterprets existing data sets; its launch in the dramatic landscape of the desert, led by Tomás Saraceno, implies the initiation of the growing global movement of artist-scientist-activists who are working in such a way that the imaginary of space becomes an expansion of the social imaginary, providing alternatives to traditional state-based and emerging commercial interests.The sculptures that are part of this endeavour examplifies the way how we can fly just as the planet Earth is floating in its contact flux.

In the dunes of White Sands on sunday november 8th 2015, for the first time in the world, a registered solar heat powered balloon carrying a human person has floated more than 2 hours without touching ground – and burning any gas ! The test flight was successful !

“Space without Rockets”, the international campaign for sustainable space exploration and research, organized by Aerocene in collaboration with curator Rob la Frenais and the Rubin Center at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Participants: Tomás Saraceno, artist who has begun the aerosolar movement, realised a number of lighter-than-air artistic projects (Becoming Aerosolar, Aerocene), and co-founded Museo Aero Solar collective; John Powell, founder of JP Aerospace; Rob La Frenais, conference chair and curator of the Aerosolar/Space Without Rockets project; Ewen Chardronnet of the Association of Autonomous Astronauts; Kathelin Gray, co-founder and Director of the former Biosphere 2 in Arizona, from Synergia Ranch in New Mexico; Nicola Triscott, Director of the science-art organisation The Arts Catalyst, London; Nahum Mantra, co-curator of the Matters of Gravity zero gravity exhibition; Cristobal Martinez of Post Commodity.

http://rubin.utep.edu/…/t…/tomas-saraceno-becoming-aerosolar
http://tomassaraceno.com/projects/news/