Month: November 2018

Enlarge / Shiny new natural gas power plants like this one in North Carolina have replaced a number of old coal-burning plants. (credit: Duke Energy / Flickr)

In the US, the effort to slash the CO₂ emissions of our electrical grid has actually gotten an early bump from the low price of natural gas. New natural gas plants can produce electricity with about half the emissions of the older, dirtier (and now more expensive) coal plants they’re replacing. But there’s been a lot of debate over a drawback that eats into that gain: some of the natural gas leaks into the atmosphere during production and transportation. Precisely how much methane (a greenhouse gas) leaks is important—leak enough and natural gas isn’t actually better than coal.

Some estimates have suggested that leaks were a serious problem, while others produced much lower numbers. Now, a new study figures out why the different analyses produced a range of numbers:  it depends on the time of day people were looking for leaks.

Top down or bottom up?

Studies estimating real-world leakage have come in two primary flavors. The first is referred to as a “bottom-up” approach. This involves walking around gas wells and pipeline equipment while measuring leakage. With estimates for each process or type of equipment, you scale up to the big picture based on an inventory of equipment and records of the amount of natural gas produced.

Enlarge / We need your help to produce a new newsletter to chronicle the dynamic launch industry. (credit: Aurich Lawson/background image United Launch Alliance)

Welcome to Edition 1.24 of the Rocket Report! This week we catch you up to date on efforts by Europe, Japan, and China to develop reusable rockets. (Spoiler alert: they're a bit behind their Western competition). We've also got a couple of articles about NASA's development of the large Space Launch System. (Spoiler alert, part two: Boeing says everything is fine).

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

A Chinese commercial rocket failed to reach orbit. The Chinese private company LandSpace launched its solid-fueled Zhuque-1 orbital launch vehicle on Sunday, from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. However, the launch failed to deploy the spacecraft in the correct orbit, NASASpaceflight.com reports. According to gbtimes, the failure was later attributed to a problematic reaction-control system.