Space exploration is needed to help tackle climate change and is not just a hobby of the super-rich, the UK's best known astronaut has insisted.
Tim Peake said he was "disappointed" that sending people into orbit was increasingly viewed as a hobby for billionaires.
Speaking at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, the Army Air Corps officer claimed the world would never tackle climate change without the help of technologies developed in part by space exploration.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos flew to Scotland last week to promote his own climate efforts despite facing accusations his private space exploration project is unjustifiable.
Asked how he feels about space travel becoming the preserve of billionaires, Peake said: “I personally am a fan of using space for science and for the benefit of everybody back on Earth so in that respect I feel disappointed that space is being tarred with that brush.”
Peake also claimed the widely reported figure that one rocket launch emits more than 300 tonnes of carbon is false.
He said: “It is important to get the facts right as well – rocket fuel, some of the most efficient rocket fuel is hydrogen and oxygen.
“(Jeff Bezos’s) Blue Origin is using that, so it is not 300 tonnes of carbon, there is no carbon, it is water vapour – if you burn hydrogen and oxygen it’s water vapour.
“Now water vapour in itself has problems, I am not trying to defend it or deny it, but we also have to get the facts right about what people are doing.”
Peake was only the sixth British person to go on board the International Space Station, and famously ran the 2016 London Marathon from its treadmill.
“At the end of the day, almost 50% of all our climate data comes from space – we need space to be a finger on the pulse of the planet,” he said.
“There is absolutely no way that we can fight climate change if we don’t know exactly what is going on and if we don’t know the consequences of the decisions we make.
“So, whether its ocean salinity, whether it is temperature, carbon dioxide output, deforestation, ice caps, it is coming from satellites, so space is required.”
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