Rockets going through the ozone layer?

Question

My friend's dad works at NASA and she told me that rockets are breaking the ozone layer. Apparantly we can send up about 30 more rockets before this becomes a huge problem. Thoughts on this?

Answer 1

just make a rocket proof ozone layer, duh.

Answer 2

Is your friends dad a sanitation engineer(Janitor) because i know a little bit about rockets and i never heard anything about this and i'm not your average dummy.

Answer 3

nonsense.

a verifiable source would be a good place to start. hearsay has never proved anything.

Answer 4

ozone layer is just a layer of O3 and rockets going through them shouldn't make much of a difference

Answer 5

When you push an object through a gas, it moves the gas out of the way, but all the gas is still there.

Think of it like stirring water in a cup, the spoon pushes water out of the way in front, but water flows in behind the spoon when it's gone.

It's the same with a rocket through the air (which includes the ozone layer). All of the air (and ozone) is still there, it doesn't leave a big hole behind the rocket.

Incidentally, the ozone layer isn't exactly thin and fragile, ozone is a gas found mainly between 10 and 50 Km in altitude, with peak concentrations at 20 and 40 Km. The concentration of ozone never actually gets very high either, it only reaches a maximum of around 8 parts per million.

Sorry, but your friend is wrong, rockets are not destroying the ozone layer.

If you are interested, you can read more about the ozone layer here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_layer

We are, however, destroying it by other means:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_deple...

Answer 6

Your friend's dad is not familiar with the research.

The passage of a rocket through the ozone layer creates negligible disburbance by direct aerodynamic effects.

However, the plumes of solid-fueled rockets that use ammonium perchlorate or similar compounds as oxidizers contain chloride compounds that briefly and locally deplete the ozone layer.  For about 30 minutes after the passage of a large-scale SRM core, a "hole" in the ozone a few kilometers wide is created.  The hole fills in via natural diffusive dynamics.  The depletion ranges from from a fraction of a percent to total, depending on plume size and local ozone characteristics.

The global effect of SRM plumes on the ozone layer has been tracked internationally since the mid-1990s and has been determined to be negligible.  Plumes from liquid-fueled rocket engines have much less effect on the ozone layer.