Elon Musk's Latest Idea: Let's Nuke Mars

KindMind writes: The Register reports that Elon Musk, in an appearance on the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, said that to begin with, human residents on the red planet would need to live in "transparent domes." Before a move to more hospitable habitats, one needs only "to warm it up" and Musk thinks there's a fast way and a slow way to do that. The fast way "is drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles" and the slow way "is to release greenhouse gases, like we are doing on Earth."

Comments

Start the machine Elon

[Anonymous Coward]

Get your ass to Mars! No, seriously go there, and stay there.

Re:Start the machine Elon

[Barsteward]

i think it's the best place for Anonymous Cowards because they won't be missed, they could press the button when they get there

Re:Start the machine Elon

[Anonymous Coward]

but all the frosty piss is here

Re:Start the machine Elon

[Coren22]

If you take a piss on Mars, it will rapidly become frosty.

Re:Start the machine Elon

[Triklyn]

i'm all for nuking mars.

wasn't aware there might be an upside until now, but really, who doesn't think nuking mars is an awesome idea?

Re:Start the machine Elon

[lister king of smeg]

i'm all for nuking mars.

wasn't aware there might be an upside until now, but really, who doesn't think nuking mars is an awesome idea?

Might warm it up or cause nuclear winter on what is already a ball of frozen rock.

Re:Start the machine Elon

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless these are magic nukes that can give Mars its magnetic field back, anything produced by the explosions will just get eroded away into space.

Re: Start the machine Elon

[billdale]

You Musk bashers are pitiful dingbats. With thousands of billionaires around with no interest in anything but adding zeroes to the end of their net worth, we're lucky to have Elon and a few precious others that are actually doing something worthwhile with their cash. I could care less about his aspirations to go to Mars, but Tesla and Solar City are both very much in the interests of consumers, especially Americans intent on cutting their dependence on foreign oil, and the terrorism and support for despotic regimes that oil money provides. Without Elon Musk, we would still be decades away from hitting the tipping point for EVs. We NEED to wean ourselves off of gasoline before we end up with something a thousand times worse than the 9/11 attacks.

Re:Start the machine Elon

[lucien86]

Cheap space suits and thin domes..

It's the Only Way To Be Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuke the entire planet from orbit - it's the only way to be sure.

What could possibly go wrong.

Re:It's the Only Way To Be Sure

[xenotransplant]

You need to drink some water and go take a nap.

Re:It's the Only Way To Be Sure

[thedonger]

You need to drink some water and go take a nap.

You need to jam a great big black dick up your ass

I was skeptical at first, but I just tried your suggestion and it worked! Thanks!

Re:It's the Only Way To Be Sure

[kheldan]

You need to jam a great big black dick up your ass

You need to return to your containment unit (http://www.4chan.org/b/) and stay there, or we'll be forced to use The Hose on you. Again.

Re:It's the Only Way To Be Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi. Jumping in this thread (not the OP) to say that the joke is an overused slashdot meme and that while the poster may indeed need to take a nap, the sentiment is correct.

Re:It's the Only Way To Be Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Racist....

Re:It's the Only Way To Be Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

SJW

Re:It's the Only Way To Be Sure

[kheldan]

SJW

If raising the signal-to-noise ratio of Slashdot by discouraging shitheads from hanging around makes me a SJW, then so be it.

Re:It's the Only Way To Be Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Only regressive, reactionary retards derp out "SJW." Do you really want to be that fool?

Re:It's the Only Way To Be Sure

[Applehu Akbar]

Using the term retard is a hurtful reference to those of the non-brain enabled persuasion. This means that you yourself are a Reactionary Derper.

Re:It's the Only Way To Be Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

SJW

If raising the signal-to-noise ratio of Slashdot by discouraging shitheads from hanging around makes me a SJW, then so be it.

You think your bitching is capable of discouraging anyone? Ah ha ha hahaha! You sure think highly of yourself. You imagine yourself to have any control over anything that gets said here. Are you a deeply insecure little man, and this is your way of reassuring yourself that you matter?

You too should jam a big black penis up your anus, preferably forcefully and without lube. Black penis doesn't get quite as hard as white penis you know, so it will flex a little and ease the initial entry.

Re:It's the Only Way To Be Sure

[kheldan]

Y U SO MAD THO? XD XD XD

Really, kid, go back to 4chan. That's clearly where you belong. Or go do your homework or something.

Re: It's the Only Way To Be Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet has there ever been a better story for this meme to appear? A planet actually being nuked from orbit?

Re:It's the Only Way To Be Sure

[Anonymous Coward]

OK then, only regressive, reactionary retarded people derp out "SJW." Do you really want to be that fool?

Re:It's the Only Way To Be Sure

[Phoghat]

the IQ of the /. crowd has apparently hit nadir

There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

you comic-book-gobbling sci-fi retard Space Nutter. Anyone need more proof that Space Nutters are mentally ill?

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

Magneto can fix that.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Punko]

magnetosphere is useful for keeping an atmosphere in geological time frames. As we are all finding out, man does not function in geological time frames, but much faster. An atmosphere on Mars would degrade over time, without replenishment if we don't have a magnetosphere. So basically, we'd need to crash a comet or two onto the planet every century. If we have the ability to create an atmosphere in the first place, maintaining it would be several orders of magnitude easier.

What is being proposed is terraforming, which even with nukes is not "quick" in human terms.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Faust6]

True enough. Honestly I don't think we'd need much motivation to nuke Mars from orbit, because nukes. It would mean testing dangerous technology right out in the open as it wouldn't be (exclusively, anyway) used as a potential weapon. There's a spacecraft depicted in Neal Stephenson's book Anathem that strikes me as already easy to conceive.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the problem would be with launching the nukes in the first place. NASA has had enough blowback trying to launch craft with tiny RTGs.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget to account for the rate of depreciation of the atmosphere on Mars is around 100,000 kg annually. Just because Mars has no magnetosphere doesn't mean the atmosphere will be stripped away instantly. Sadly, the amount of Carbon Dioxide won't create a substantial atmosphere. The best calculations show that the complete sublimation of polar ice will only increase the pressure from 600 pascals to ~2 Kilopascals. If you want a substantial atmosphere on Mars, you'll need about 2 x 10^18 Kg of Nitrogen. The most efficient way to create a substantial atmosphere is through the use of Aldrin cycles.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

Not having a magnetic field isn't as big an issue as it has been made out to be in the past. While it is definitely a nice thing to have as it helps decrease both radiation levels and solar wind losses it is far from a major issue. If you want a good example look at Venus, it has a very weak magnetic field yet it has the densest atmosphere of any of the small rocky planets BY FAR. The bigger issue is probably the cool (at least as compared to Earth and Venus) Martian core, a majority of the original Martian atmosphere is probably still there, it has simply "sunk" into the planet without a hot core constantly ejecting it back to the surface.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuke the core first, melt it down, give it a spin.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Intrepid imaginaut]

I think people are missing the sheer scale of this, what I assume is tongue-in-cheek. suggestion. We're talking about a planet here. It would take an awful lot of nukes to vapourise enough ice to create any kind of increasd atmosphere pressure, even if there was enough ice to do so. Afterwards it would be quite radioactive and there are no guarantees it wouldn't just quickly freeze again. You'd be much better served parking giant solar concentrator arrays above the poles and blasting away instead.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[AC-x]

There's a spacecraft depicted in Neal Stephenson's book Anathem that strikes me as already easy to conceive.

That ship was actually based on a real concept.

(Also features in KSP :)

Re: There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right.

But what is really annoying is that Musk's publicist is great at getting him mentioned here even when he parrots other peoples' ideas (I think all of his business ideas come from 19th century World's Fairs- electric car, hyper loop, colonies on Mars..) or offers some of his own crackpot idea.

I also think Musk fanboys need to look up 'innovation' in the dictionary.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Defenestrar]

Tongue-in-cheek? Yeah, maybe from most people, but this guy has a reputation for coming up with a crazy sounding idea, launching it, and then going on to the next crazy idea. Never underestimate the probability of what Elon Musk might start just cause it sounds like fun.

Re: There's still no magnetosphere

[willworkforbeer]

Musk is determined to become the new Chuck Norris meme. Magnetosphere? Musk himself is magnetic enough for two planets.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

magnetosphere is useful for keeping an atmosphere in geological time frames.

Um, no. Keeping the atmosphere around is the job of the gravitational field - and that's the other problem with Mars, not enough mass to keep a thick atmosphere (11% of Earth's mass, about 1g/3 surface gravity and an atmospheric pressure of around 0.6% of an atmosphere, which is a decent start for a vacuum). The good news is that Phobos is small enough that it won't matter as an atmosphere thief.

The magnetosphere OTOH helps with charged cosmic radiation (most importantly, solar wind) - it bends the trajectory of, for instance, high speed protons ejected by the Sun so that fewer reach the planet's surface. Absent that magnetic field, you're pretty much exposed to everything the cosmos throws at you, meaning mutations/cancer for living tissue, heavy interference for unhardened electronics, all that jazz. Unfortunately, nothing short of a fairly thick shield of rock will fix it, so warming and adding an atmosphere are a moot point if one has to live underground due to surface cosmic radiation.

TL;DR - Elon Musk got caught with no scientific advisors at hand and droppede the ball.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[michelcolman]

The bigger issue is probably the cool (at least as compared to Earth and Venus) Martian core, a majority of the original Martian atmosphere is probably still there, it has simply "sunk" into the planet without a hot core constantly ejecting it back to the surface.

Then just drill a big hole down to the center, throw in some nukes, fill up the hole and let the nukes go off. Problem solved. Try not to blow the planet apart, though. Maybe on second thought just throw loads of uranium in so it goes critical but not quite as violently.

Where do I apply to become a SpaceX engineer?

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Faust6]

There you go, I suppose.

Re: There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a stark difference between and idea and a workable product. Musk might have borrow ideas (ones never fully realized) but he's done more than just parrot the ideas, he's made them a reality.

As well, he's essentially open-sourced some of the core technology to allow many people to have access as it will drive the prices of these batteries and solar units down over time.

I mean seriously, he's a billionair spending his own money for the benefit of all humanity, and you can still find shit to nit pick?

Unreal.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

Except most of his crazy ideas either never get implemented, or don't work. People focus on his successes so much they tend not to see his failures.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

What is being "proposed" is the daydream of a mentally-deficient man-child raised on sci-fi and lucked into money.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[wwphx]

I was in Las Vegas a few years ago and went to the Atomic Testing Museum. They had an exhibit and some models of the Orion program. Quite interesting.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[catchblue22]

An atmosphere on Mars would degrade over time, without replenishment if we don't have a magnetosphere. So basically, we'd need to crash a comet or two onto the planet every century.

If the Mars atmosphere was degrading that quickly (century timescales) due to the solar wind and no magnetosphere, then Mars would have no atmosphere right now. From what I have read, any changes we make would last a million years or so. The real changes happen when you tip the system into a new equilibrium. If you add more greenhouse gasses, then that causes warming. The warming causes frozen CO2 to pass back into the atmosphere, causing still more warming. The idea of thermonuclear bombs at the poles seems like an effective way of releasing large amounts of greenhouse gasses (frozen CO2) into the atmosphere. To keep up the processes, you could probably release certain versions of chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere over time. They are somewhat persistent and are extremely effective at trapping the Sun's radiation as heat. If we did start to set up settlements there, we could manufacture such gasses in situ.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[hypergreatthing]

Actually... you would need both.
Gravity to keep an atmosphere is easy. Hell even pluto has a detectable atmosphere even though it's smaller than the moon.
Solar winds do strip atmosphere and over time will leave you like mars of the moon.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[catchblue22]

Nuking the poles would release enough CO2 to start a warming process. This would cause more frozen CO2 to be released from the ground. Eventually you would start releasing water vapour. The initial kick from the thermonuclear bombs would likely start other feedbacks in the system.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

Except he didn't come up with the idea. This idea has been around for a long while.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[catchblue22]

And the parent post demonstrates why America is languishing as a civilization. Behold the "can't do" attitude. Dream small. Spend big. (I'm thinking about the California high speed rail line here...amongst the slowest and most expensive in the world). America is becoming a corrupt small-minded oligarchy.

I think the poster is understating how much protection the atmosphere provides. The Earth's atmosphere alone provides radiation protection equivalent to about a three foot thick slab of metal. As for atmospheric degradation due to the solar wind, from what I understand, if we densified the atmosphere, it would take about a million years for the solar wind to undo the changes.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

They are somewhat persistent and are extremely effective at trapping the Sun's radiation as heat. If we did start to set up settlements there, we could manufacture such gasses in situ.

Not sure how you would "manufacture" green house gasses like chlorofluorocarbons w/ some sort of carbon cycle (e.g., growing plants using the methionine cycle) to get you a reasonable amount of methane. Creating that much methane from CO2 (e.g., using the Sabatier method) would be quite energy intensive. It might be fine for making enough fuel for a rocket or two, but we are talking bootstrapping a terraforming operation.

Of course all is well, until the first industrial accident which would turn the planet into a clone of Venus (or perhaps some future warmed-up Earth).

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[DRJlaw]

Nuking the poles would release enough CO2 to start a warming process. This would cause more frozen CO2 to be released from the ground. Eventually you would start releasing water vapour. The initial kick from the thermonuclear bombs would likely start other feedbacks in the system.

Show me calculations, not seat-of-the-pants assumptions. Because here's a factually supported assumption: if the CO2 and water vapor froze out of the atmosphere to start with, pushing it back into the atmosphere isn't going to reverse the feedback loop that caused those gases to freeze out in the first place. Nevermind that, for millions-to-billions of years, what has remained in the atmosphere has been lost to space so that your near-surface reserves are likely far less than those that were present Mars crossed its tipping points.

Where is the extra CO2 and water going to come from to generate a net positive feedback?

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[powerlord]

Also shows up in a book by Poul Anderson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[fustakrakich]

That's exactly it. The core has to be restarted for anything to work, to create and sustain an atmosphere from the sequestered gasses in the ground and magnetosphere. Yes, we probably can live on a dead world, but it will need constant replenishment from outside, like the space station. It's too labor intensive.

Re: There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

So, he made Mars colonies and the hyper loop a reality?

Electric cars? GM has been trying for decades.

I know the folks at GM's electric car division. The marketing blocks for electric cars are immense. Even Saint Steve Jobs couldn't possibly get over.

Musk isn't Steve Jobs. Or even a brilliant entrepreneur like Henry Kaiser. AKA Kaiser Permanente - the architect of our current fucked up health care system.

This Musk fanboy ism is just annoying, wrong because he's taking credit for things he didn't do, and I hate self promotion - it's a sign of weak character - someone who is a narcissists.

So, I am done with Musk fanboys who are publicists - Commmunications degrees workers - suckers

Musk has Communication Majors fooling techies and it is hysterical!

Re: There's still no magnetosphere

[Type44Q]

Huh.. so what are your credentials?? Oh, right.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[ColdWetDog]

Except most of his crazy ideas either never get implemented, or don't work. People focus on his successes so much they tend not to see his failures.

So. Most of my crazy ideas (or yours) never get implemented either. SOME of his crazy ideas have been implemented. Which is why he is funding a real rocket company and we... well, we're posting on Slashdot.

Re: There's still no magnetosphere

[Applehu Akbar]

In particular, those who see no value in space programs have no business commenting on proposals like this. If Mars is useless, then why not let Elon Musk waste his own money nuking it?

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Applehu Akbar]

"Martians" could import hydrocarbons from Titan.

Re: There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing that Musk does only involves his own money.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

you are a mars climate change denier?

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[catchblue22]

Energy source: Nuclear. Chlorine is likely quite common. You'd have to find Fluorine...there is likely a lot there somewhere. Carbon, as you said can come from CO2. You wouldn't need to make that much. Some chlorofluorocarbons are extremely potent greenhouse gasses that have a long life in the atmosphere...half-life in multiple decades if not a century.

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Cito]

After we nuked the Poles we'd need to round them up on boxcars and transport them to a facility to be greenhouse gassed.

then baked in ovens until Atmosphere!

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[donaldm]

Gravity on Mars is only 38% of the Earth's and has no magnetic field to absorb/reflect radiation form the sun so even if you created an atmosphere it would not be anywhere as thick as what humans are use to. Living on Mars is possible but it would not be that much different than if we colonized our moon since we would still have to live in shielded shelters and wear protective gear when going outside.

That said I am not against space exploration and even colonization of space but lets build on science facts and not some SiFi pipe dream. I think the main attraction, although that is subjective of using nuclear weapons is that they make a big bang and do have a wow factor.

Re: There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

Genius... Lmao

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[lucien86]

Sadly there's also the problem that they are using the Disney magically enhanced nuclear weapons. Real nuclear weapons are about a million times less powerful. Elon Musk's idea is about as realistic as firing an assault rifle at the ground and using it to get yourself into space..

Re:There's still no magnetosphere

[Anonymous Coward]

Elon Musk's idea is about as realistic as firing an assault rifle at the ground and using it to get yourself into space..

Obligatory what-if.

It is about time we nuke that smug red planet

[netsavior]

I am so tired of those commie bastards. the entire planet is RED and is deserving of our nuclear wrath

Re:It is about time we nuke that smug red planet

[Faust6]

It's the only way to be sure.

Re:It is about time we nuke that smug red planet

[Anonymous Coward]

It always amuses me when people talk about red being a communist color, given that it is also used by Republicans.

I'm not saying that I feel that Republicans and communists are the same, I'm just saying that it amuses me that other people are essentially saying that.

Re:It is about time we nuke that smug red planet

[LynnwoodRooster]

Red used to go to the incumbent, blue to the challenger. Then the media started "swapping" it every election - one election the Dems would be red, the next the GOP would be red. But since 2000, the media has essentially decided that red would be the color of the GOP. The GOP didn't claim it - the media simply assigned it (probably to help break potential references to Democrats as socialists/communists).

Re:It is about time we nuke that smug red planet

[michelcolman]

Don't drag Bono into this.

Re:It is about time we nuke that smug red planet

[Anonymous Coward]

The color red was assigned to the GOP by someone who hated them, in fact. They wanted to mark the GOP as "the enemy" so they made GOP-leaning states red and "friendly" Democrat-leaning states blue. (As anyone know knows military terminology knows, blue forces are friendly forces and red forces are the enemy.) I'm not going to bother sourcing that fact, though, so it could be wrong.

But the reason it stuck is simple: people kept on bitching about how Gore "should have" won the election, despite the fact that anyone who looked at a map could clearly see that there were more "red states" than there were "blue states." And once the idea of a "red state" versus a "blue state" became an established meme, the colors were kind of stuck. So now we have "red states" and "blue states" even though, as anyone know knows political symbolism knows, that means the colors are now "reversed."

Re:It is about time we nuke that smug red planet

[jbengt]

It actually goes back a few elections before that, to late 80s or early 90s.

Re:It is about time we nuke that smug red planet

[jbengt]

people kept on bitching about how Gore "should have" won the election, despite the fact that anyone who looked at a map could clearly see that there were more "red states" than there were "blue states."

And if you adjusted the sizes of the states in the map to be proportional to population or electoral college votes, you could get a much more clear picture of the election results.

Re:It is about time we nuke that smug red planet

[Applehu Akbar]

The use of red as an identifying color by Republicans is an ironic reference to arbitrary media manipulation of party color assignments in line with political correctness. In TV election coverage, it was once conventional to use blue for Republican and red for Democrat. Then they began switching colors in alternate elections for "fairness", and that's when the Republicans decided to adopt red as their color.

Re:It is about time we nuke that smug red planet

[LynnwoodRooster]

Yes. It started back 1976 with Ford and Carter, and continued on. It used to be incumbent/challenger, then alternated. It's only been "stuck" for the last 3 elections - and I suspect it's because of political motivations.

Re:It is about time we nuke that smug red planet

[Anonymous Coward]

It was because of the continuous coverage on ABC during the endless 2000 election night that people stuck w/ red for Republicans and Blue for Democrats. It was purely by chance because other networks were using other colors.

Re:It is about time we nuke that smug red planet

[firewrought]

The color red was assigned to the GOP by someone who hated them,

The media alternated color assignment between parties up thru the 2000 election. No hate involved, just pandering use of our national colors.

the reason it stuck is simple: people kept on bitching about how Gore "should have" won the election

Your tone is caustic, but you're essentially correct: the long,drawn-out contested election of 2000 got folks to start identifying themselves in red state/blue state terminology. After a month+ media circus, the association was bound to stick no matter who won that extremely tight and controversial election.

In typical American fashion, our colors got stuck backwards from how most other western democracies use them (with red typically being the color of liberal parties and blue typically being the color of conservative parties). See political color for examples.

Only way

[Anonymous Coward]

We take off and nuke the poles from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Re:Only way

[Applehu Akbar]

Haven't those poor people suffered enough over the centuries?

Greenhouse gasses?

[grimmjeeper]

Pardon me for injecting actual science but Mars doesn't have an earth like dipole magnetic field. It can't support a Van Allen radiation belt like Earth. As a result, the solar wind is not deflected as well and the atmosphere is not sustainable. So adding a bunch of greenhouse gas would be pointless as it would just be blown away by the solar wind. So yeah, it's great to dream up ideas on how to make Mars a place we can live, it's also good to come up with ideas that might actually work.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is often pointed out, but the thought is it took millions/billions of years for solar wind to erode away the atomosphere. Could we not produce it faster than solar wind ripped it away?

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

On geologic time scales, that's true. On time scales relevant to human occupation and terraforming, it's not an issue.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actual science is that it's gravity that keeps our atmosphere in place, the Van Allen belt has fuck all to do with that. Mars' weak gravity would mean that it would be less good at retaining atmosphere, and the lack of a magnetosphere means limited protection from solar radiation, so even if you thickened up the atmosphere, everybody would get cancer and die if they lived on the surface.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could we not produce it faster than solar wind ripped it away?

Sure, if we crashed Venus and most of the moons in the solar system into Mars. There isn't enough oxidized material on the surface of Mars to come close to 1atm (or even breathable pressure) air though.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on how good we are at producing greenhouse gasses here on Earth, I'd wager we'd have little trouble keeping up with the losses due to solar wind.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. I hear PayPal never made a cent and all of its profits came from government handouts.

Get a clue.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[hey!]

Sure, but everything depends on a the timeframe of your project, doesn't it? The atmosphere won't be appreciably eroded in anything like the timeframe in which modern humans have existed. There'll be plenty of time to develop ways of bringing more water to the planet.

The bigger issue is the potential effects of living your lifetime in a continual flux of charged particles dropping down from space. There's reason to believe that spending a lot of time outside of a protective magnetosphere might lead to early onset dementia.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Just wow. Did you learn this line of crap from MythBusters or something?
 
The Van Allen belts most certainly do influence the solar winds and the solar winds most certainly do rip away atmosphere. Gravity is also involved, yes, but it's not the only factor.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

It made money by being as crooked as shit. PayPal is right up there as one of the worst companies on the internet.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

So much wrong with your comment...

Venus has no magnetosphere and it's been able of keeping its atmosphere, the solar wind, even that close to the Sun, is not that big of a deal. I mean, you have to do something about it, but if you have an atmosphere it is no really that hard to keep. Second, you don't fill one atmosphere of pressure with oxygen (unless you want a highly flammable atmosphere), in the Earth only 21% of the atmosphere is oxygen (everything else is nitrogen, which is also pretty abundant). Also, if you need oxygen for you atmosphere it would be stupid to take it from oxidized metals (which is what I believe you try to say with "oxidized material"), taking it from carbon dioxide is waaaay easier and faster, and Mars has A LOT of carbon dioxide frozen on its surface.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[xenotransplant]

So then the solution is to send the entire population of earth (who will all die from the radiation) + all the cars (which can't run without oxygen) +all the other greenhouse gas producing structures to mars, and then wait for a couple thousand years for the gasses to build up. Seems legit.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you trying to be deliberately stupid?

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Ramze]

Both are important.

Venus has no magnetosphere, and it's got a hellish thick atmosphere... so, yes, you're right in a sense that gravity alone is enough to hold certain types of gasses in an atmosphere for a reasonable amount of time. But, Venus is bleeding that atmosphere away in a comet-like tail. Venus once was very much like Earth with vast oceans, but almost all of that water turned into water vapor which was then split by ionizing radiation from the solar wind. The lighter hydrogen and oxygen ions were blown into space. It's still happening today, though almost all of the water is gone. Eventually the other gasses will also be ionized and blown away.

Mars has no magnetosphere and even less gravity than Venus, but it is much further from the sun, and the intensity of the solar wind dies off proportional to the square of the distance. I'm sure someone has done the math, but my guess is the lower gravity is a much larger issue than the lack of a magnetic field when it comes to maintaining a Martian atmosphere.

The missing magnetosphere is a much bigger problem for life than for the atmosphere. We can build domes to hold an atmosphere... even pump out gasses as they dissipate to maintain a planet-wide atmosphere. How do we protect against cosmic rays, though? magnetize the domes?

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[PatientZero]

There'll be plenty of time to develop ways of bringing more water to the planet.

Bring on the Later Heavy Bombardment!

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

"everybody would get cancer and die if they lived on the surface"

Cancer rates would be higher, and you might want to have radiation shelters for especially heavy solar storms, but its not that bad on the surface of Mars radiation wise. I think the Curiosity rovers radiation logging has shown that under normal circumstances the radiation levels, unshielded, on the surface, today, are about the same as astronauts experience on ISS. With a little additional shielding around buildings and other places where people spent most of their time you could walk around on the surface in a simple pressure/life support suit regularly and be no more at risk of cancer than today's astronauts. I'd be much more concerned with shielding the transport you used to get there than the shielding you would need once on the surface. And bringing up the atmospheric density would help bring even those levels down immensely, especially if you could get the humidity levels up.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Still need the magnetosphere for radiation. Far better to make a colony of underground mole people, cheaper, safer, and everyone can have whatever view outside that they want. I don't get all this crazy dome love. They are just plain needlessly risky.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[EvilSS]

Based on how good we are at producing greenhouse gasses here on Earth, I'd wager we'd have little trouble keeping up with the losses due to solar wind.

I'll take that wager, since our issue with green house gasses here on earth comes from our burning of fossil fuels.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Answer for cosmic rays: Live underground.

If we ever get around to inhabiting Mars, chances are we'd live "in" Mars long before we live "on" Mars.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[FlyHelicopters]

Do we know one way or another if Mars has coal, oil, and natural gas underground the way Earth does?

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[SydShamino]

And someday Earth's core will cool and we'll lose our magnetosphere and our atmosphere will be stripped away, too. It's not the loss of atmosphere that's a problem, only the loss of atmosphere on a time scale where we can't replenish it and/or move on to another planet to colonize. Assuming we can put an atmosphere back onto Mars in under, say, 250 years, the odds are good we could keep it there faster than the tens-of-thousands-to-millions of years it would take to deplete again.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[FlyHelicopters]

It used to be, they have cleaned up their act in recent years...

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then we have also to build a big magnet into mars and drive it with nuclear power plants. I do not care if the approach does not scale, Musk has also not computed the whole scenario. I guess, he just wants to nuke something. And better there then here.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[angel'o'sphere]

If you would surround Mars with an earth like atmosphere right now (with some magic ofc), the solar wind would need 10 million years to reduce it to problematic levels.
Also you seem not to know what the 'Van Allen belt' actually is.
So bottom line, adding/reactivating the Marsian atmosphere for humans would work just fine.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[DerekLyons]

On geologic time scales, that's true. On time scales relevant to human occupation and terraforming, it's not an issue.

However, on the timescales relevant to human occupation and terraforming... the fallout from the (tens of?) thousands of thermonuclear weapons is very much an issue. To have any significant effect, they'll have to be either near surface (the second worst for fallout) or surface (the worst) bursts. And no, "clean" weapons won't really make much of a difference. They're only "clean" in comparison, by any rational standard they're nasty dirty.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Coren22]

Did you learn that from a cereal box or something?

If the Van Allen belts work so well at that, than why does Venus have a thicker atmosphere while having no magnetosphere, and being closer to the sun?

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of making flippant remarks why don't you do some research?

Here.

I'm really sick of know-nothing Slashtards.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[lexman098]

Fossil fuels are literally made from fossils of long dead organic organisms. If we found fossil fuels on mars the bigger story would be that there was enough life at one point to create it.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

I also love the fact that he says we need "greenhouse gasses" added to mars, yet it currently has 95% carbon dioxide--undoubtedly from overuse of fossil fuels by the residents.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as someone who dated someone working at PayPal I would say they may have cleaned up their image but they are dirty little boys and girls.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

And someday Earth's core will cool and we'll lose our magnetosphere and our atmosphere will be stripped away, too. It's not the loss of atmosphere that's a problem, only the loss of atmosphere on a time scale where we can't replenish it and/or move on to another planet to colonize. Assuming we can put an atmosphere back onto Mars in under, say, 250 years, the odds are good we could keep it there faster than the tens-of-thousands-to-millions of years it would take to deplete again.

Seems like it would be more practical to try and crash a few large asteroids into the planet. Same energy release, but no radiation issue.

Or just find a way to build a concrete equivalent locally, paint it up airtight and live inside instead. Like Canada in winter.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

He was talking about the greenhouse gas idea, which has nothing to do with the nuke plan.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Barlo_Mung_42]

I only wish government money would be spent this well. I'll take spurring real innovation over pointless wars any day.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, so, nuke underground mars! team mars, fuck yea!

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Face, meet palm.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly how are we going to replenish such an atmosphere after it is gone? It's not like a mass evacuation of a planet is an achievable effort, regardless of the technology.

I would be far more inclined to ship greenhouse gasses from Earth to Mars, as if it's going to be eroded, better get some technology in place that will make it semi-sustainable. Instead of having the carbon sequestered in pools of rotting dinosaurs, we can revert back to a less carbon rich environment by sequestering that carbon on Mars.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[RockDoctor]

Could we not produce it faster than solar wind ripped it away?

That would mean delivering several thousands of tonnes of volatiles to the surface on a daily basis for the future. All of the future.

Or you could drop a megatonne comet fragment into the atmosphere about two Martian years in three.

That's certainly not impossible. BUT every delivery will be a significant hazard to the inhabitants of the planet. If you got a North Pole Ocean and dropped the gas supply there, one day you'll gete it wrong and make a big tsunami. If you tried dropping it into Hellas, then some day you'll git the side and cause earth(mars)quakes which will damage people elsewhere on the planet.

It's a major hazard.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, thats easily fixed. Just produce enough of the atmosphere so that it forms an atmospheric ring around the sun for Mars to travel along. Easy. It would also make getting to Mars a lot easier in the future because we could go and park in the Atmosphere ring, waiting until the planet comes back around. Easy.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Especially if we send the cows over first, they can prepare it for us.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[delt0r]

You may want to do the math. Solar wind doesnt strip that much away at all. That is why it takes Billions of years. That is 1 000 000 000 years or more.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[delt0r]

nukes designed not to have much fallout don't. Oh and the surface of mars is already blasted by cosmic rays and the such already.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[delt0r]

You don't understand anything at all about orbital mechanics or rockets do you.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[tehcyder]

Still need the magnetosphere for radiation. Far better to make a colony of underground mole people, cheaper, safer, and everyone can have whatever view outside that they want. I don't get all this crazy dome love. They are just plain needlessly risky.

Most normal human beings do not want to live permanently underground. Mind you, most normal human beings wouldn't want to live in domes and not be able to walk outside for very long either.

The whole problem with Mars colonisation is that only psychotics would be happy with living there permanently. Regardless of the technological problems, there is a huge psychological issue.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fossil-fuels-without-the-fossils/
It's like watching children debate morals.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[EvilSS]

"Oil could form with no organic matter, but probably not in commercial quantities"

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[RockDoctor]

You may want to do the math

It's been done, along with measurements.

Science 315, 501 (2007); Stas Barabash, et al., "Martian Atmospheric Erosion Rates"

From their abstract :

We have measured the current loss rate due to the solar wind interaction for different species: Q(O+) = 1.6 * 10^23 per second = 4 grams per second (g s^â'1), Q(O2+) = 1.5 * 10^23s^â'1 = 8 gs^â'1 , and Q(CO2+) = 8 * 10^22 s^â'1 = 6 gs^â'1 in the energy range of 30 to 30,000 electron volts per charge.

So, the Martian atmosphere is losing about 20g/s of material (well upwards of that, but they're the main species involved.

A year is 60 * 60 * 24 * 365.25 = 31557600 seconds, so you're talking about 631152 kg a year of material being lost (Earth year, not Martian year) : 630 tonnes a year need supplying to maintain the current atmosphere.

Mars needs, for a human - usable atmosphere, about 100 times as much of it. Modelling how much would be lost a year is going to be hard - there's a non-trivial screening of deeper atmosphere by higher atmosphere. So I think my back-of-a-thumbnail estimate of a thousand tonnes a year being needed isn't far wrong.

That's a thousand tonnes a year of H, O, N, and C. Otherwise known as comet material. You could ship in a kilotonne of ammonia/ CO2 ice and evaporate that on the ground if you liked, but you'd still need to bring in that material.

To increase the mass of the atmosphere by the 100-fold factor needed, you're going to need a lot more. As you suggest, it has taken around 3 billion years to reach the current state, so to reverse those billion years in a century, you'd need (today's kilotonne/year) * 3 billion / century, which is 30 million kilotonnes a year. For a century. I make that a 20 km diameter comet every year for a century.

Chixulub was that sort of size impactor. The (alleged) dinosaur killer impactor. Every year for a century. Now, I'm a geologist, and there are genuine questions about whether Chixulub was a dinosaur killer, or a very bad hair day for them. But to have one arriving every year for a century ... the amount of energy you're delivering to the atmosphere isn't going to be good for anyone o nthe surface of the planet while "atmosphere delivery" is going on. It's not going to be good.

Terraforming Mars is good SF, but atrocious resource management and a bloody difficult way to not achieve your aims.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[delt0r]

And as i said 600tons a year is a lot smaller than the original figure of thousands of tons a day and it don't think that first figure is realistic at all. If you could somehow get an atmosphere on mars, maintaining it would be trivial by comparison.

Also you can get really interesting results if you use very heavy gases like SF4 or UF6. Reduces total mass quite a bit and loss rates in some cases.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[Stuarticus]

The chixulub comparison is quite interesting, it does make you wonder what would happen if you could have your 100 impactors of that size delivered in a short period of time, what effect would that much energy have on the core of the planet (minimal I suppose) and how long would it take for the atmosphere to settle dwon afterwards. Of course the Martian conservation movement would be up in arms.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[RockDoctor]

if you could have your 100 impactors of [Chixulub] size delivered in a short period of time, what effect would that much energy have on the core of the planet (minimal I suppose)

I agree the effects would be minimal. To a first approximation, a crater is around 1/10th it's diameter in depth. So for Chixulub, the initial crater would have been some 18km deep. which would get you to the lower crust. IF you could stack all 100 together, you'd have a crater 1800km deep, which is about 2/3 of the way to the outer core. Of course, such a deep crater is unfeasible- the sides would be collapsing in as the initial crater is formed. (Incidentally, after the first couple of impactors, there wouldn't be much in the way of atmosphere on the site to worry about. Landing in vacuum.)

and how long would it take for the atmosphere to settle dwon afterwards. Of course the Martian conservation movement would be up in arms.

Since a large part of the kinetic energy of the impactor comes back to the atmosphere (as either direct heat from the hot crater heating the atmosphere as it rolls back, or as frictional heating from the impact of secondary projectiles), so many major impactors in a short period would be very destructive. If you stacked them in one location, the secondary impactors would still probably strip most of the atmosphere.

So you're actually looking for the time for a new atmosphere to form by outgassing. That may simply not happen, if there aren't enough volatiles left in the mantle (or it's not mobile enough to degas effectively).

If you were going to try to bump up an atmosphere by several hundred-fold (as needed to make Mars vaguely liveable), you're going to need to add (thinks ... Earth's atmosphere is 5.1480Ã--10^18 kg (Wikipedia) ; Mars' 2.5 x 10^16 ... but Mars is a smaller radius planet ; let's say 10^18kg of volatiles ; as long as there's nitrogen for bulk, we can dump CO2 into the ground as carbon and sort out the chemistry later) a thousand tonne (10^6 kg) dirty snowball every day for 10^12 days ... OK, one every hour for ~4*10^10 days. 110 million years. And you'd need a managed landing zone- say a few hundred km wide around the equator of the planet.

Terraforming Mars is wonderful science fiction. But nonetheless, it's science FICTION.

Re:Greenhouse gasses?

[RockDoctor]

I think you mean sulphur hexafluoride. Sulphur tetrafluoride releases HF on contact with water, which is not recommended. Uranium hexafluoride is pretty unhealthy too.

See my back of the thumbnail calculation - adding a thousand tonnes of volatiles to the atmosphere (by impact) every hour would give Mars around an Earth's atmosphere (to an order of magnitude) in a mere 110 million years. It's fiction.

Green House Gases?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Elon Musk not realize that Mars' atmosphere is 95% CO2?

Re:Green House Gases?

[rubycodez]

yes, but there are organisms that would be happy to live in that, if it was warmer, that would then make oxygen atmosphere. it's happened before on another world near you

Re:Green House Gases?

[Anonymous Coward]

You and your "evolution" RELIGION are a Poison. If God wanted us to inhabit Mars he would have created EDEN there. Jesus didn't say anything about MARS so its not for us to use unless HE says so.

Re:Green House Gases?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point of increasing greenhouse gases on a planet that has an atmosphere that is over 95% greenhouse gases?

People are freaking out on this planet over .04% CO2.

Re:Green House Gases?

[rubycodez]

Hey God told Bush we had to go to Mars. After freeing Iraq from tyranny. You haven't been listening to His Burning Shrub.

Re:Green House Gases?

[dave420]

Because 95% of 1L of gas is not the same as 95% of 2L of gas.

Gravity

[Major Blud]

Is Mars massive enough to have the gravitational pull to keep all of those greenhouse gases from escaping into space?

Re:Gravity

[H3lldr0p]

It is not. In fact, it's not just gravity that would be an issue.

There is also the fact that it doesn't have a magnetic field like Earth's. This also keeps the solar wind from blasting away the atmosphere.

Just because they'd be released doesn't mean that's all that would be needed to terraform Mars.

Re:Gravity

[Anonymous Coward]

The gravity wouldn't be much of an issue. The time it took for Mars to drop its atmosphere in the first place is less than the time it will take until the Sun expands enough to boil away Earths oceans.
If someone figures out a way to get a new atmosphere on Mars then it will stay way longer than Mars will be useable.

Re:Gravity

[Anonymous Coward]

"If someone figures out a way to get a new atmosphere on Mars"

Mine for it, Its just an educated guess but from what I understand the only thing that keeps our atmosphere/water from seeping into our planet is that just a few miles below the surface it is blisteringly hot. Gases/liquids try to follow gravity down but once they hit this layer are stopped, or eventually make their way to a fissure/volcano and are blown back to the surface. The Martian core however is relatively cool, meaning that much of the atmosphere that once was on the surface could very well have infiltrated into the planets surface and now sits hundreds of miles down at the boundary between the "cool" portions of the crust (150-300F) and its warmer portions (500F and higher). If that's true you could drill shafts down to that layer around the planet and pump the atmosphere back to the surface, it would be a massive undertaking though and I have no idea how many of them you would need to overcome the tendency such gasses/liquids to turn right back around and head for the core.

Nuclear WInter

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't dropping atomic bombs actually trigger nuclear winter blocking out even more sunlight?

Re:Nuclear WInter

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're dropping them on the poles, you'd only be kicking up what dust is locked in the ice.

Re:Nuclear WInter

[kellymcdonald78]

No. There are no cities, structures and forests to burn (or oxygen to support fires) on Mars to produce all of the soot needed to cause a nuclear winter

Blow up the Moon!

[selectspec]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Come on, Cohagen...

[sacrilicious]

give da people aih!

Henchmen offered

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Mr. Musk,

on your idea to nuke the poles of Mars I was very intrigued. I would like to apply as a loyal henchman for your endeavour.

Key characteristics:
* no questions asked
* red shirt preferred
* no family ties
* screaming capability above normal
* natural aversion against superheroes
* weapon experience : none, but I can look (very) scary

Previous experience : none, but eager to learn.

I look forward to an interview in which I can explain my qualifications further.

Regards,

D. Nachos

Re:Henchmen offered

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget henchman, you should ask him if you can be the CEO of Tesla like Roy:
 
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si03x9apLFU

There Goes Our Hero Watch That Fucker Elon GO

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear propulsion by serial nuclear bomb blast is, in theory, the fastest means to travel through the inner Solar system. Remember the movie 2001, that was playing in theaters in 1968! Kubrick and Clarke used US Gov research from the 1950s. In the '50s there was also an Air Force research program for a nuclear powered bomber. But the lead shielding made it too heavy.

As far as bombing Mars, this make no sense at all.

Perhaps Elon needs to dial down his cocaine addiction.

Re:There Goes Our Hero Watch That Fucker Elon GO

[kellymcdonald78]

Discovery from 2001 was a Nuclear Thermal propelled spacecraft (Hydrogen fuel heated by a nuclear reactor ala NERVA), although they never make clear if it was a solid core, or gaseous core reactor. It was not a nuclear bomb propelled craft (ala Orion)

Elon Musk is a moron

[Anonymous Coward]

The radiation is still harmful to human. So I don't think that is a good idea. And transparent domes? ohh that will protect you from the radiation.

Re:Elon Musk is a moron

[Overzeetop]

Most high energy radiation is blocked by a simple function of mass. Optical transmission has almost no bearing on other areas of the EM spectrum.

Re:Elon Musk is a moron

[Bathroom Humor]

Even if the material that they use for domes couldn't be both transparent AND block harmful radiation, (Which it could, making a special glass or even plastic that reduced radiation is not unfeasible. Even water can block radiation, though you probably need about a meter of it to reach earths' background levels when around Mars) All you would really need to do is apply a magnetic field to the dome, and include a material that gets rid of UV radiation, and presto change-o, that could do it.

I would imagine having a mostly sub-surface housing unit with smaller surface domes would be easier to maintain since the ground is better at shielding from the sun as well as space debris and wind storms. But that's beside the point.

Re:Elon Musk is a moron

[lucien86]

Dumbass. There are a lot of things wrong with idea which is incredibly stupid. The radiation from the bombs however would be almost totally irrelevant.

The real danger from radiation on Mars and on the way to Mars is NATURAL solar cosmic radiation, the shields against cosmic radiation would also stop any radiation from nuclear bombs. Fallout would be a small issue but the solution there is just to wait a year or two.

The real problem of course is that REAL nuclear bombs are not actually anywhere near powerful enough to do what Musk is suggesting..

irony

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it pretty damn funny that alarmists have begun calling global warming climate change like skeptics have always called it. And now they're saying we're heading for amother Little Ice age like we 'realists' have always speculated. And now they're saying CO2 is the weakest gas like we've always said....

Regardless, Co2 is critical to photosynthesis. If co2 levels dropped below 150 ppm then all plant life would suffocate and die followed by the rest of us. Nuking Mars is pure idiocy like much of the so-called green policies being passed by Congress.

If we want life on Mars then we have to raise the co2 levels among other things.....

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_respiration

Re:irony

[xenotransplant]

1. You don't know how to properly use the word irony. THAT is ironic. 2. You must be one hell of a credentialed climatologist in order to come up with these untested/unverified/unsourced theories while sitting at your computer on slash dot. Have a nice day.

Re:irony

[sexconker]

You don't know how to properly use the word "irony". That is not ironic.
Irony has to do with the use of words for something other than their literal intention.
It has absolutely nothing to do with things being unexpected.

Re:irony

[riverat1]

I find it pretty damn funny that alarmists have begun calling global warming climate change like skeptics have always called it. And now they're saying we're heading for amother Little Ice age like we 'realists' have always speculated. And now they're saying CO2 is the weakest gas like we've always said....

I find it pretty damn funny that "skeptics" think "alarmists" have just recently switched to climate change from global warming when the term climate change has been used at least since the 1950's. See: "Plass, G.N., 1956, The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change, Tellus VIII, 2. (1956), p. 140-154."

No scientist has said we're heading for another Little Ice Age, just that the Sun may enter a period like the Maunder Minimum. The Maunder Minimum and low solar output in general was not the cause of the Little Ice Age, just an exacerbating factor.

If we want life on Mars then we have to raise the co2 levels among other things.....

The CO2 level in the Martian atmosphere is already over 900,000 ppm. The problem is that the atmosphere is just so thin in the first place.

Re:irony

[lucien86]

The first thing you need on Mars is an atmosphere. With virtually no atmosphere CO2 levels are totally irrelevant.

Terraforming Mars

[WalksOnDirt]

The idea here is probably to release the carbon dioxide and water vapor frozen at the poles. The problem is I don't think that there is enough carbon dioxide there, and without massive amounts of carbon dioxide the water will freeze right out. I think the only possibility is to release a tailored mix of long lived gasses that will warm Mars as much as possible.

Mars can't possibly be kept warm without help. Many of the greenhouse gasses will break down eventually, and the solar wind will strip off even carbon dioxide. I suspect the rates of loss are such that they can be made up by an active society without too much difficultly.

Re: Terraforming Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, the global temperature on Mars has been rising for a while now.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html

If it's warm enough for the caps to melt then it's warm enough for plant life to grow. But clearly there's not enough co2 being released for it to start since afteralll, it a mostly dead planet.

Re: Terraforming Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, the global temperature on Mars has been rising for a while now.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html

If it's warm enough for the caps to melt then it's warm enough for plant life to grow. But clearly there's not enough co2 being released for it to start since afteralll, it a mostly dead planet.

Yeah, but that Mars warming as reported by NatGeo will go away with the new ownership...

Re: Terraforming Mars

[WalksOnDirt]

Uhm, the global temperature on Mars has been rising for a while now.

http://news.nationalgeographic...

Contrary to that 2007 article, the variations in the Sun's output is not noticeably warming the Earth nor, presumably, Mars. In a few hundred millions of years it will, but that's longer than I want to wait.

Re: Terraforming Mars

[jbengt]

If it's warm enough for the caps to melt then it's warm enough for plant life to grow

You do realize that it's carbon dioxide ice, not water ice, and that it sublimes (doesn't melt) around -109F / -78C, which is much colder than ice melting at 32F / 0C.

smaller, thinner

[tekrat]

Mars is smaller than Earth. Gravity-wise, Mars can't hold on to an atmosphere the way the Earth can. Plus solar wind, plus lack of protection from cosmic radiation.

It would be like living on top of Everest. O2 would be scarce, and it would bleed away quickly. Plus you couldn't stay out long without radiation shielding.

We can terraform Mars, but it would be expensive and not worth it. Easier and cheaper to do something about the runaway greenhouse issue on Venus; thin things out, reduce the atmospheric pressure, and there you've got something sustainable. Venus could even house enough solar to provide excess power to Earth, making it a useful colony. Mars would be like a welfare baby where we never stop having to provide for it.

Re:smaller, thinner

[Reibisch]

Just... What?

We could just ... 'thin things out'. Sure. And let's not forget that Venus could 'house enough solar' to export.

Do you even read what you type?

Re:smaller, thinner

[Anonymous Coward]

Venus: Same issue. No ionosphere.

And so Venus loses more of its atmosphere than Mars because it's closer to the Sun

Venus just has more atmosphere being made due to runaway greenhouse effect.

Venus also spins much slower. So our sleep cycles would not adapt.

Re:smaller, thinner

[Anonymous Coward]

Venus can hold onto a thicker atmosphere, that's obviously true.
However, Venus's solar day is about 117 Earth Days long while the solar day on Mars is just over 24 hrs.
It also has no magnetosphere, like Mars.

You'd need orbital mirrors or a way to spin up the rotation of Venus even after removing it's atmosphere to make it remotely habitable. Whereas on Mars we can set up sealed habitats as-is to start the colonization process.

Re:smaller, thinner

[hypergreatthing]

You forgot about the acid in the atmosphere or the corrosive ground. You couldn't live on the surface. Even probes can't stand the surface for any length of time.
You'd have to live in some bioshock infinite balloon habitation. That poses a whole other set of problems that honestly is more extreme than living on mars or the moon.
On mars you can at least build habitation 20 feet below the surface and be protected from cosmic radiation. Ditto with the moon. Hell there might be lava tubes on the moon which is the perfect place to set up some permanent residence. There's water on both, explain how any of that works on venus living in some floating bubble?

Re:smaller, thinner

[squiggleslash]

You're not thinking big enough. Venus is just like Earth only hotter. Mars is teeny tiny and doesn't have the right gravity. Both are far too close to the Sun to be safe when the Sun explodes in six gajillion years.

No, I say we terraform Neptune. And then Saturn. Both have gravities similar to Earth, and they have a lot more space too.

We just need to, uh, thin the atmosphere (that's easy right? How hard could it be?) and do something about the lack of a solid surface on either. Also I guess we probably should do something about the massive radiation coming from inside the planets (I don't know about Neptune, but I know Saturn has a problem there.)

Venus? Pah! Waste of time. Hardly a solution to our overpopulation or whatever it is that means we need to leave Earth at all. No, let's focus on the big planets... ;-)

Re:smaller, thinner

[Anonymous Coward]

Mars is smaller than Earth. Gravity-wise, Mars can't hold on to an atmosphere the way the Earth can. Plus solar wind, plus lack of protection from cosmic radiation.

It would be like living on top of Everest. O2 would be scarce, and it would bleed away quickly. Plus you couldn't stay out long without radiation shielding.

We can terraform Mars, but it would be expensive and not worth it. Easier and cheaper to do something about the runaway greenhouse issue on Venus; thin things out, reduce the atmospheric pressure, and there you've got something sustainable. Venus could even house enough solar to provide excess power to Earth, making it a useful colony. Mars would be like a welfare baby where we never stop having to provide for it.

If we could really terraform Mars, couldn't we do that here on Earth and save a bunch on Shipping and Handling?

Or is the plan to trash the Earth and let the 1% (really, 0.001%) to Mars and leave us fucked here? I'm guessing the latter.

Re:smaller, thinner

[Anonymous Coward]

Venus sounds like the better choice to me. You just need to build a very heavy Moon in orbit around the planet. Probably move some object in space and have it get captured by Venus. Once Venus starts spinning, put out a few hundred miles of mylar sheets to reflect the Sun's energy at a Lagrange point. You would need some solar powered atmosphere processors floating above the surface as well.

It might need some Hydrogen dumped into the atmosphere as well.

It would be a good 1000 year project if humans could work together.

Great idea....

[Chrisq]

Great idea.... now if the launches went wrong and just happened to drop the devices over Syria, Iran, Lybia, UAE, and Pakistan ..

Re:Great idea....

[Anonymous Coward]

You're stupid.

Re:Great idea....

[dave420]

There he goes again with the insane anti-Muslim nonsense he's becoming so famous for. Brilliant work, sparky.

Nuke it

[Anonymous Coward]

...from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Elon: no, please.

[rs79]

There's two fundamentals flaws with that idea. First recheck your gas physics and chemistry; Mars is not earth. Second our first foray into space and you want to make it radio active. Good god man that's barbaric.

You don't want to heat the whole planet anyway, that's wasteful and how does any of us get to decide what happens to an entire world, any world?

Nah, forget that it's a dopey idea.

Move a billion gallons of water to crater, put a dome over it and float residences on water. There's reasons you don't want to live on land there if you think about it long enough.

Re:Elon: no, please.

[sinij]

I have some bad news for you - entire space (and that presently includes Mars) is highly radioactive due to emissions from the stars. One nuke or a hundred won't make a dent in that and won't even come close to what Sun already emits toward Mars.

Re:Elon: no, please.

[Lab Rat Jason]

Yeah... the sand worms!

War of the Worlds

[mu51c10rd]

Hasn't anyone read the book? Those Martians have it coming...preemptive strike!

Hush, Peon!

[BringMyShuttle]

He has money. Therefore we must listen to him!

Re:Hush, Peon!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Money is an abstract representation of control over economic assets. So, the world must indeed listen to people with money. The particulars of who must listen vary based on the deployment of said economic assets, but that doesn't change the principle.

You seem to be posting sarcastically, yet what you posted is right as rain.

You think things should be different? If so, why?

Elon Musk is the new Tesla!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like Tesla, Musk had some great ideas and pushed technology in the right direction but, also like Tesla, he's now falling pray to some kind of mental illness.
 
I just wonder how long it will be until he starts babbling on about "death rays" and his fanboys start giving him credit for being the inventor of space flight and MRI.

Become Morlocks

[BoRegardless]

Because Earthlings will have to live underground on Mars.

Just had to get that plug

[p51d007]

For "global warming" eh Elon? Yep, lets get rid of EVERY DROP of Co2 on earth....because it is "warming up" the earth. And, what are PLANTS suppose to use to produce Oxygen? Man made global warming is a MYTH. Always has been. But...but...but...."scientist" said that this past July, was the warmest ever recorded since records started being kept! We're doomed! panic! run screaming into the streets!!! 1. Scientist...enough said 2. Yes, since RECORDS have been kept...a little over 100 years...and HOW OLD is the earth again? 3. Ok, given July was the warmest since records have been kept, how much warmer was it. oh, that isn't important, it was the warmest! Panic, cry, turn into zombies!!! No, I really want to know, how warm was it? That's not important (ok Hillary). Now, tell me, how much warmer was it? Ummmmmm aaaaaahhhhhhh 0.18 degrees.(I don't know the exact number, but it was less than .5 degrees) LMAO! Bunch of sheeple...wake up will ya?

Re: Just had to get that plug

[Anonymous Coward]

Ew you used the word sheeple

Re:Just had to get that plug

[bledri]

... 1. Scientist...enough said ...

People with you're attitude you scare me. Enough said.

Re:Just had to get that plug

[bledri]

... 1. Scientist...enough said ...

People with you're attitude you scare me. Enough said.

Wow, I was so scared I used the contraction instead of the possessive. Fuck.

Re:Just had to get that plug

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remember, the science has been settled. There is no debate. If you speak a breath against the Sacred Global Warming, the Inquisition will be at your door ready to force you into submission to their cause. After all, the science has been settled on many things and there is no room for dissent, especially when it is this important.

The Earth is the center of the universe. Mercury is healthy for you. Your destiny is determined by the stars. Your health is determined by your four humours.

Why would you be foolish enough to point out any "evidence" counter to these facts that everybody knows to be true?

You're foolish.

If By Mars He Means Iran

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's do it!

Vote Trump/Cruz in 2016!

Brillant idea!

[__aaclcg7560]

The quickest way to fund the manned space program is to alert the "blow crap up" political groups in the U.S. that the Iranians hid their nukes on Mars.

Someone help me out with the science...

[Lab Rat Jason]

So nukes aside, let's explore the other option... how would one produce greenhouse gasses on mars? I can't stand the bullshit rhetoric argument that we're pretty damned good at it here on earth, so it must be easy on mars..... On earth we have millions of people, on earth we have COAL, on earth we have industry driven by the consumerism of those millions of people... none of those things exist on mars. There is no energy on mars AT ALL except the sun hitting the planet, and here on earth, using the power of the sun has been argued as the REMEDY for greenhouse gasses! So WTF? Where does the energy and chemistry come from that will produce billions of tons of greenhouse gasses on mars? Sounds like unicorn fart futures are way up!

Re:Someone help me out with the science...

[Anonymous Coward]

True dat! We can't even produce enough here on earth to cause warming, how will we do it on Mars?

Re:Someone help me out with the science...

[spire3661]

The OTHER option is to do nothing. I would expect us to explore and document how Mars is in its natural state before ever even discussing terrasforming of ANY kind. Its hubris and ego that we are even talking about it at all. The first 50 years of mars exploration should be observation and research only. After that THEN we can talk about terraforming.

Re:Someone help me out with the science...

[Enigma2175]

So nukes aside, let's explore the other option... how would one produce greenhouse gasses on mars? I can't stand the bullshit rhetoric argument that we're pretty damned good at it here on earth, so it must be easy on mars..... On earth we have millions of people, on earth we have COAL, on earth we have industry driven by the consumerism of those millions of people... none of those things exist on mars. There is no energy on mars AT ALL except the sun hitting the planet, and here on earth, using the power of the sun has been argued as the REMEDY for greenhouse gasses! So WTF? Where does the energy and chemistry come from that will produce billions of tons of greenhouse gasses on mars? Sounds like unicorn fart futures are way up!

Why put nukes aside? The polar icecaps hold a lot of CO2 and H2O, with enough energy we could melt them. We could use conventional explosives but nukes would be more efficient. Another option to melt them (and add heat to the system) by using a large reflector in space to direct extra sunlight to the planetary surface. Once you get to a certain point the process should start to feedback on itself, as the planetary temperature warms it would melt more ice which adds greenhouse gasses which warms the planet that melts more ice. There are also carbonaceous minerals on or near the martian surface but breaking those up would probably be harder. There is also the option of dropping comets or asteroids on the planet to add energy and water. Any terraforming plan would obviously need to use multiple methods to even get close to the temperature that we want and all the engineering tech needed probably doesn't exist yet but it's certainly not impossible.

Re:Someone help me out with the science...

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a Red and You are a Green.
Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars.

Re:Someone help me out with the science...

[Lab Rat Jason]

I believe I asked for science... not speculation. Your cavalier use of the word "probably" has nothing to do with actual probability, and should probably be replaced with the word "speculatively" or "imaginatively."

Re:Someone help me out with the science...

[grahamsz]

Considering we put our first lander on Mars in 75, the first 50 years of exploration will be up in 2025. I don't think it's too unreasonable to be talking about it now.

Re:Someone help me out with the science...

[dave420]

Your post sounded very much like you don't care for science, and just want to hear what will make you feel content with doing nothing. If that is not the case, try not attacking scientific findings while asking for scientific findings. You'll look less insane that way.

Re:Someone help me out with the science...

[Lab Rat Jason]

hah hahha haaaaaaaaa. Magnificent. Are you actually DEFENDING the gp's scientific findings? I was lamenting the fact that there was no actual science being cited here... and you tell me I am attacking scientific findings. That deserves a slow clap...

Re:Slashdot. 2 days late and a dollar short

[xenotransplant]

And yet, here you are, as an AC no less.

From Ironman to Dr. Evil.

[Anonymous Coward]

Very disappointed at you Mr. Musk.

Pharaohs and pyramids

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever the press announced another Musk's project I think of pyramids. Musk wants a pyramid of his own.

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, nobody here or at The Register knows what a joke is.

Greenhouse gases

[Anonymous Coward]

Since water vapor makes up over 95% of "green house" gases, and man-made carbon dioxide makes up about 2%, I think it would take a long time to create enough carbon dioxide to make a difference. . . .

Seems insufficient

[Gavagai80]

According to some quick internet research:
1) A 30x increase in atmosphere would be required in order to walk around with an oxygen tank unprotected without your blood boiling.
2) Melting the polar ice caps completely would approximately double the atmospheric pressure.

So it's unclear to me what advantage the nukes would bring.

Re:Seems insufficient

[Anonymous Coward]

Raising the temperature by around 4 kelvin gets you a ~50x increase in atmospheric pressure by sublimating the dry ice on the polar caps and in the soil. That takes you to around 0.3 atmospheres, similar to the pressure at the top of Everest. At that pressure, you only need an oxygen mask, not a pressure suit, which would be a HUGE improvement to livability.

Nuking the poles is not about sublimating the CO2 directly, but by spreading the darker soil that would absorb more solar radiation and cause the temperature increase.

Re:Seems insufficient

[Gavagai80]

Interesting, but if all the dry ice in the polar caps only causes a 2x increase it's hard to believe that there's enough dry ice on the rest of the planet to cause a 50x increase (considering one wouldn't expect carbon dioxide to be in solid form that often away from the poles). Source please?

Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's get out there and find out what the guy who got rich off tax subsidies thinks !

Add greenhouse gasses?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's already 95% CO2... is the atmosphere there just too thin for Martian Warming?

Sounds explosive

[jittles]

Don't worry Elon, I have your Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator right here!

Re:Sounds explosive

[lysdexia]

Don't you know the planet's supply of Illudium Fosdick (The Shave Cream Atom) is alarmingly low? Dream on, Eager Young Space Cadet.

Apparently, you haven't done the math

[tekrat]

Please pull out your calculator and just try and figure out what even a 0.5 degree temp difference means when applied worldwide.

You're talking about much more energetic storms. Now judging by your Faux News brainwashed redneck post, I'm sure you live nowhere near a hurricane, but those tornadoes are more than likely to rip your trailer-home to shreds.

In fact, the only good news about Global Warming is that it will completely eliminate Florida. All the oceans have to do is rise a few more inches. Which is coming by 2050.

Re:Apparently, you haven't done the math

[Anonymous Coward]

People need to have this energy put into something they can understand. Like equivalent to nuclear bombs of Hiroshima or Nagasaki fame, or how fast it could propel their house through the atmosphere is concentrated.

Re:Apparently, you haven't done the math

[riverat1]

The Earth is accumulating about 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs worth of energy every second due to anthropogenic global warming. Since 1998 that amounts to around 2,269,012,000 total Hiroshima bombs. Here's a page that illustrates that.

Musk suggested it! WOW!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, except that both of these ideas have been sci-fi tropes for decades if I'm not mistaken.

BUT MUSK SUGGESTED IT SO IT'S NEWS NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where the hell is the K'Breel post?

[Anonymous Coward]

My day will be incomplete without it.

Re:Where the hell is the K'Breel post?

[Anonymous Coward]

My day will be incomplete without it.

REJOICE, PODMATES! http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7994575&cid=50504041

SimEarth

[blazer1024]

Reminds me a lot of the terraform Mars scenario in SimEarth.

Step 1: Hit Mars with a couple of comets (brings in water and stirs up dust)
Step 2: ...
Step 3: Prof-... er, I mean watch the forests of Mars burn because you left your oxygen generators on for too long

Red Faction

[Anonymous Coward]

Elon Musk, father of Ultor Corporation?

Just crash comets into the planet

[Crashmarik]

Lets you solve the lack of oxygen and other problems all at one go.

Of course that completely ignores the moon is the much more appropriate choice for colonization to begin with.

A few nukes won't be enough: Smash A Moon!

[Anonymous Coward]

The main problem is its atmosphere, which is far too thin to keep water liquid at 100F.
Simply melting its ice caps wil not give enough pressure and the gas will be blown away over time by the solar wind.

The only way to make Mars habitabe is to reestablish its magnetic field.
For this we need to melt its core, which is doable by smashing one of Jupiter's moons onto Mars.
Unfortunately, we then need to wait a few hundred million years until the surface has cooled down enough to be habitable.

The other way to emerge the magnetic field is to build a superconductive electric magnet around its equator and drive an enormous current through it.

Both does not sound very feasible for the short term.

Quit spending money on space!

[tlambert]

Quit spending money on space!

There are plenty of place on Earth we should be nuking first.

Nuke it from orbit...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope J. Bush becomes the president. All he needs to know that there are Terrorists on Mars. One small step for humanity, one giant leap for military industrial complex.

Re:irony/moo

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't know how to properly use the word "irony". That is not ironic. Irony has to do with the use of words for something other than their literal intention. It has absolutely nothing to do with things being unexpected.

Don't you mean Mooooo! Cows use irony and say moooooo! Mooooooo, ironic cow, mooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111oneone

Why nuke Mars when we can make love to Titan?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't get it.

Why go to the trouble nuking Mars when there's Titan which is ready to go with a thick lovely atmosphere and no need for nuking whatsoever. And all that H3!

Make sure you don't use the Falcon to launch it...

[Pascoea]

...we'd hate to have it blow up prematurely.

Sorry, I couldn't help it.

But seriously, Elon, keep doing what you are doing. And let's worry about un-fucking this planet before we start fucking up another one.

Late-Breaking News: IT'S HAPPENING!

[Tackhead]

An emergency session of the Council, something not held in the better part of a yeernak, has just concluded.

K'Breel, Speaker for the Council of Elders, emerged from Council chambers, and addressed the planet thus:

"IT'S HAPPENING!" thundered the Speaker's voice across the frozen plains. "The first blueworlders came in their natural static form, sending stationary representatives to orbit our world and settle onto our plains. You said that if all they could do was remain in high orbit or dig a little trench that was so tiny that any freshly-hatched podling could cover it over in an afternoon, that the obese and sedentary blueworlers were mostly harmless."

"WE TRIED TO WARN YOU, BUT YOU DIDN'T LISTEN! Then came the mobile ones. Brave fighters for the Martian Defense Force have deflected a few of them into deep space, shot others down in fiery blazes of glory, but still the invaders came. Their mechanized terrors evolved rapidly in size and capability with every wave - the first a small short-lived rock-pushing prototype, the second two larger and armed with gelsac-shredding drills, which left a trail of destruction in their wake during yeernaks of struggle, and the latest one descended from a skyhook, powered by Pew-238, and armed with a fully operational photonic weapon system."

"And now - now, after our atmospheric scientists have confirmed the effectiveness of their hundred-yeernak small-scale test on their own world - we have their declaration of intent to use chain reactions of core annihilation to scour the snows and release so much carbdiox that they create a greenhouse effect here - in order to saturate our elegantly-dessicated sands with the toxic and corrosive dihidrox filth that now covers three quarters of their hot, blue, gellhole of a world. THIS IS THE FUTURE YOU CHOSE!"

"BUT YOU CAN STOP IT, PODMATES! All it takes, all it takes, podmates, is an investment in advancing the tribalism of the organic self-replicators that tend to the blueworlders. The Blueworlder Social and Physical Sciences Committee reports that the self-replicators are flawed, critically so, and tend to devolve into tribal groups prone to infighting, primitive displays of aggression, and intertribal warfare. The only flag their mechanized monsters shall raise will be our own red flags, and they will raise our flag over their own world, hoisted by their own proverbial petards. REJOICE, PODMATES! WE SHALL BURY THEM!"

When a junior analyst reminded K'Breel that maybe the real threat was the self-replicators, and that the creatures the Council had spent a full 30% of the planetary budget fighting, were not, in fact, the primary threat -- that their rapid evolution was actually the result of the controlled and directed guidance of thousands of organic minds working in concert -- and that his report, "Organic Blueworlders Determined to Strike in Homeland" had been summarily ignored, K'Breel had the reporter's gelsacs nailed to two small white rectangular posts and promptly incinerated in carbohydrox fires. Slithering back to the Council chambers as the posts smoldered in the background, the Speaker was heard to mutter "As if a small group of thoughtful, committed organics could change the fate of the world for the better or the worse; as if it ever has..."

Eh, almost right

[hypergreatthing]

If he had said that he wanted to drill to the core of mars and inject fissionable material directly into the core to start it back up and hopefully jump start it's magnetosphere he would have had an interesting idea on bringing a dead planet back to life.

An april 1st headline in september?

[mark-t]

I have no words.

Crossing the threshold

[DerekLyons]

Am I the only one that think that Elon Musk has crossed the line from visionary to full blown nutjob?

Re:Crossing the threshold

[vovin]

Only if you ever though he was a visionary.

Better be damned sure there's no life

[Anonymous Coward]

Before we nuke any other planet we'd better be damned sure there's no life on it. This is the kind of thing that will earn us a "not fit for existence" rating from the Intergalactic Federation of Planets.

Uh... Saturn ring chunks are better

[Anonymous Coward]

... safer (no nukes), self-fuelling transport to Mars (burn part of the chunk itself, mostly ice, to propel it), and you get additional water and atmospheric gas material. Crash them in a long shallow re-entry and we could even contro; the placement of craters for domes.

SF authors thought of this decades ago, why is anyone seriously suggesting nukes?

Re:Uh... Saturn ring chunks are better

[lucien86]

A very good idea. Of course how do you steer or move a comet? About the only mechanism that has the power to do it today is 'Super Orion' - pushing them using lots of small nukes..

The other 'tiny' problem with Super Orion is that the ship has to launch from the Earth - and that means detonating dozens of small nukes in the atmosphere and in low orbit here. - Launching a Super Orion ship might (statistically) kill a couple of hundred or even a couple of thousand people over the world from cancer.
Given that pollution from cars kills about half a million people a year, and pollution from burning coal kills over a million a year, and smoking kills about 10 million a year, a few thousand is just statistical noise - but I bet people will still complain about it.

For the love of...

[aseth]

He was asked what would be the *quickest* way, not what he thought was the *best* way.

Lower Gravity on Mars is a problem

[frank249]

The surface gravity on Mars is 38% of that on Earth. It is not known if this is enough to hold a breathable atmosphere. Additionally, the lower gravity of Mars would require 2.6 times Earth’s column air mass to obtain 100 kPa pressure at the surface. Earth's atmosphere has a mass of about 5.15×1018 kg three quarters of which is within about 11 km of the surface. The atmosphere becomes thinner and thinner with increasing altitude, with no definite boundary between the atmosphere and outer space. The Kármán line, at 100 km, is often used as the border between the atmosphere and outer space. So the atmosphere on Mars would have to extend to 260kms to have the same surface air pressure as Earth.

Re:Lower Gravity on Mars is a problem

[Opportunist]

Someone hand that man a mod-up, he put it way better than me a few posts below. This is basically the problem we face here, Mars would already have an atmosphere, if it could retain it.

Re:Lower Gravity on Mars is a problem

[delt0r]

Well we do know mars could hold a breathable atmosphere for many millions of years. The physics of gravity and a gas is pretty straightforward. However as you pointed out, you need a lot of atmosphere to make it work. that has to come from somewhere.

Re:Lower Gravity on Mars is a problem

[frank249]

Elon Musk recently posted on Twitter that is was not advocating setting off nukes on Mars but merely presenting it as one of the options available to quickly generating an atmosphere. Setting aside the problems of radiation and the mechanics of getting thousands of bombs to Mars, what would be the effect of nuking the poles?

The polar caps at both poles consist primarily (70%) of water ice. The northern polar cap has a diameter of about 1,000 km during the northern Mars summer, and contains about 1.6 million cubic kilometres of ice, which, if spread evenly on the cap, would be 2 km thick. (This compares to a volume of 2.85 million cubic kilometres for the Greenland ice sheet.) The southern polar cap has a diameter of 350 km and a thickness of 3 km. The total volume of ice in the south polar cap plus the adjacent layered deposits has also been estimated at 1.6 million cubic km.

So there are a few problems with this. First the northern pole region has a surface area of 3,141,590 sq km and the southern a further 384850 sq kms.. Even the mort powerful nukes only cover a few sq kms with the direct fireball. And even if they can vaporize the ice, it would condense and freeze in a short period of time due to the cold tempuratures. The Martian surface temperatures vary from lows of about 143 C (225 F) at the winter polar caps to highs of up to 35 C (95 F) in equatorial summer. The wide range in temperatures is due to the thin atmosphere which cannot store much solar heat, the low atmospheric pressure, and the low thermal inertia of Martian soil. The planet is also 1.52 times as far from the Sun as Earth, resulting in just 43% of the amount of sunlight.

In the long run, it might be easier to cool Venus with space shades than try to warm Mars.

Re:Lower Gravity on Mars is a problem

[frank249]

Earth's atmosphere consists of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and only .04% carbon dioxide. The water in the ice caps contain oxygen but where could you get all the nitrogen?

Nuking Barsoom is an act of aggression!

[sglewis100]

Won't anyone think of the poor Barsoomians?

get your finger off that button....

[twnth]

Shouldn't we do a more thorough job of checking the place out for life, before we start painting the landscape with our most powerful weapons?

We should have waited.
~Saxifrage Russel

How long would that warming last?

[rnturn]

As I understand it, Mars has virtually no magnetic field so it receives the full brunt of the solar wind without much resistance. I recall reading (somewhere) that was theory as to why Mars doesn't have much of an atmosphere any more. If you release all/most of the CO2 in the polar ice caps, what's to stop the solar wind from stripping that away, too? Plus, what little atmosphere is left on the planet -- still enough to produce the occasional dust storm -- would then producing storms with an exciting new ingredient: radioactive debris created by the nukes. Great.

Not gonna work

[Opportunist]

The idea itself is compelling, but you miss one very important little detail: Mars is WAY smaller than our planet. And I mean WAY smaller. It's a little over half the diameter of our planet. Its mass is 1/10th of the Earth's mass. Average density is 2/3 of that of our planet. Escape velocity is half of that we have here.

The problem ain't that it cannot create an atmosphere. The problem is that it cannot retain it.

Re:Not gonna work

[delt0r]

The gravity is plenty to hold on to a atmosphere. If you have enough of it it would last a very long time. But it is a *lot* of atmosphere, where you would get such peta tonnage of volatiles and move it, is the trick.

red mars quote:

[Anonymous Coward]

“I know.” She sighed. “We’ll all say that. We’ll all go on and make the place safe. Roads, cities. New sky, new soil. Until it’s all some kind of Siberia or Northwest Territories, and Mars will be gone and we’ll be here, and we’ll wonder why we feel so empty. Why when we look at the land we can never see anything but our own faces.”

There is that

[DerekLyons]

There is that indeed.

mars vs space telescope

[Anonymous Coward]

-going to Mars is a complete waste of time and money-who cares if we find bacteria or single cell life there?. We need to put a ginormous 300 ft. telescope in space immediately with a space colony of repair parts and maintenance engineers living right next to it so we can easily spot earthclone planets that have multicellular lifeforms with large pendulous breastlike protuberances and juicy orifices that like to f__k alot -all the time with earth men.

We should be more prudent.

[mike4ty4]

I think we shouldn't be trying to terraform Mars anyways until we've first ruled out the possibility of the existence of any native life. Evidence keeps coming in that makes the odds look better and better there may be something there, yet we have nothing to be able to say conclusively and decisively one way or the other. I think we should get that out of the way first.

If we don't, and there was life and we destroyed it, well, for one, is that moral? Even if it's only simple organisms, is it right to just blow them away? Especially we want to claim to care about, say, life here on Earth. What kinds of attitudes would we be putting out into the universe that might get us into trouble in the more distant future when maybe we could actually travel somewhere else with real, intelligent life? More "tangibly", we would be doing science a HUGE disservice by destroying an example of a second natural biosphere, something which would be of enormous scientific value in its own right to study.

The ruthless ideology of exploitation is what created a lot of the problems we have right here on Earth. Why should we continue it?

So I think we should get that down first. If there is life, we should try to find a way to preserve it. That may mean sacrificing terraforming, or even colonization at all, although I'd imagine that if we actually worked on understanding that life once we found it, we might be able to figure out a way to live on the planet without also denying it life.

And even evidence of past life could be vulnerable. In that case it's not so much a moral issue as an issue of scientific value. I think we need a prudent approach to Mars. I don't think we shouldn't go; I just think we need prudence and a measured plan.

Personally, I think the nukes should be used to resurrect Project Orion and send a manned mission to the Jupiter or Saturn system, or even further to Pluto or even Eris. THAT would be awesome.

He's forgetting one thing

[thisisauniqueid]

Mars' once-liquid core cooled and solidified long ago, so Mars does not have a magnetosphere. Without one, keeping Mars habitable will always be an uphill battle.

"Fossil Fuels"

[Anonymous Coward]

Fossil fuels are literally made from fossils of long dead organic organisms. If we found fossil fuels on mars the bigger story would be that there was enough life at one point to create it.

There are no such things as "Fossil" Fuels. An old myth that will never die it would seem..

Re:"Fossil Fuels"

[tehcyder]

Fossil fuels are literally made from fossils of long dead organic organisms. If we found fossil fuels on mars the bigger story would be that there was enough life at one point to create it.

There are no such things as "Fossil" Fuels. An old myth that will never die it would seem..

Is this some Young Earth Creationist Conspiracy Theory?

Wrong on both counts

[DerekLyons]

nukes designed not to have much fallout don't.

 

1. "Clean" nukes aren't actually clean except by comparison with "dirty" nukes - they're still plenty nasty.
2. Either way, the ruling case here is the need for a near surface or surface burst to expose the ice cap to the maximum radiation level - both will suck up surface material and turn it into fallout

So, not only wrong, but you don't even have a clue what you're talking about.
 

Oh and the surface of mars is already blasted by cosmic rays and the such already

So? That doesn't make drenching with fallout sensible. Doubly so since so many colonization plans depend on mining surface material or using it for construction. In either case, making it 'hot' is a really bad idea.
So, not only wrong, but you don't even have a clue what you're talking about.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

put nuke in the hand of private entity .... #whatcouldpossiblygowrong #jamesbond #drno