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

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 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).

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.