Question: How much longer will the atmosphere sustain air travel?

Namrah Habib answered on 9 Mar 2021:

Hi Amrit! This is a really good question which I don’t have a complete answer to. I hope I understand this correctly, and you are asking about carbon footprint of flying. Flying is the activity that does produce the most greenhouse emission for an individual. This is problematic given how much greenhouse warming Earth is already experiencing and to be honest, if we continue the current amount of emissions I’m not sure how long Earth’s atmosphere will remain habitable but many people argue that it is not that long.

To make flying more environmentally friendly, NASA and some other companies are looking into electric propulsion for planes. Similar to electric cars, these planes would produce very little greenhouse gasses compared to our current planes. One example that I know of is the NASA X-57 Maxwell (https://www.nasa.gov/specials/X57/). This plane is still currently being developed and tested but it could be a huge leap to helping us reduce greenhouse emissions from flying!

I’m sorry I can’t answer your question more definitively!