[Thebaddog]

Can you imagine the greenies with their calculators trying to get a count of carbon units expended during the launch?

[wolfpat]

Before anybody reminds you that there are no carbon units with an oxygen/hydrogen reaction, IIRC they use kerosene to light the thing off.
What are the solid boosters using for fuel?
(And is it true that the only reason the solid boosters were used is that they're made in Walter Mondale's district?)

[JohnBovenmyer]

Can you imagine the greenies with their calculators trying to get a count of carbon units expended during the launch?

Isn't the Shuttle an H2+O2 rocket? So everything the greenies would have done to their calculators after turning them on would have been wrong. Sure, their was lots of harder to compute carbon burned prior to launch to make it possible, but as for the launch itself the calculator had it right when it was first turned on.