Sky damage the limit

With reference to your editorial ‘Eastern promise a boon for UK aerospace’ (Comment 12 December, 2005), I am sad there is no reference to the damage all this additional flying, which burns a lot of kerosene/hydrocarbon, will do to the upper atmosphere.

Good, responsible engineering requires that before any more flying is contemplated, completely new technology should be initiated, such as the use of hydrogen as an energy carrier/fuel.

Otherwise, for the benefit of the still relative few who fly, all mankind will suffer.

In that sense this ‘democratic’ technology is grossly different from the others that you mention, in that flying people around the world takes more energy, relatively, than anything else we do.

J Gray

Warwickshire