Space Sustainability Lab
Connecting end-of-life choices with space sustainability, using figures anyone can check.
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gas cremations in one Falcon 9 launch
Each dot is one cremation at 245 kg of CO₂. Together they make up the 387 tonnes of CO₂e estimated for a launch4. The brightest dot is a single person. But no memorial uses a whole launch, so see what a share looks like below.
Try a mission scenario
This splits a launch’s CO₂ by mass. It is one simple way to share out emissions, and the result depends heavily on the assumptions, so change them.
Published estimates range from 387 to 518 tons4.
Our assumption for a rideshare launch, not a published figure.
share of launch CO₂e
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What this leaves out. CO₂ is not the whole picture. Soot from kerosene rockets is released high in the atmosphere, where it is treated as more climate-relevant than CO₂5, and burning up on re-entry produces aluminium oxides that may harm the ozone layer6. Cremation still happens first in nearly every case, so a flight adds to it rather than replacing it.
Compared with cremation
Research reports
We have not published any reports yet. Planned topics:
- How memorial payloads compare with the rest of a rideshare launch
- Soot and re-entry effects per memorial, beyond CO₂
- Singapore cremation data alongside the scenarios above
Sources
- Modelling Crematorium Emissions in Wales, Federation of Burial and Cremation Authorities.
- Funeral.com, Energy use and carbon footprint, summarising a TNO study.
- Hinduism Today, report on the Centennial Park study, 2008.
- GreenLaunch, Rocket launch CO₂ comparison, quoting an FAA estimate. The primary FAA document is still to be checked.
- Physics World, report on soot from rocket launches.
- Ferreira et al., Potential Ozone Depletion From Satellite Demise During Atmospheric Reentry, Geophysical Research Letters, 2024.