“Traditional air travel has been a boon for mankind, but at a cost to Earth’s atmosphere. Take COP21, for example. Based on the track records of previous conferences, this year’s meeting is all but guaranteed to emit tens of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — of which 85 percent can be linked to the air travel of 22,000 delegates, according to The New York Times. And that figure doesn’t account for the travel of approximately 18,000 journalists, activists, and others monitoring the talks. The United Nations says it will offset all carbon emissions from its staff’s travel. As for delegations from the 195 participating countries, offsetting programs are voluntary.

“Mobility is responsible for a lot of carbon in the air,” Saraceno says. “We need to rethink how we fly. Imagine if different politicians flew to the conference not on an airplane, but by aerosolar flight. The earth is our biggest battery.”

During their collaboration, Saraceno, Illari, and McKenna imagined how emission-free air travel might be possible through aerosolar flight. The resulting video shows tropospheric jet stream trajectories seeded from all world airports in the days leading up to COP21. Each singular path represents 12 hours of travel time, and colors highlight hypothetical balloon launches from the New England area on five departure dates.

Although aerosolar flight won’t replace jet travel anytime soon, Saraceno and his collaborators around the world are one step closer to its realization. In New Mexico’s White Sands National Monument last November, his team took the world’s first and longest fully solar-powered, lighter-than-air vehicle tether flight. “The visceral feeling of launching Aerocene [at White Sands] felt like skydiving, but away from Earth’s surface,” he says. Eventually, Saraceno will attempt to set the longest human aerosolar flight in Argentina.”

At COP21, finding hope for climate in the “Aerocene”
Cassie Martin, MIT