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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."
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.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
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?
On geologic time scales, that's true. On time scales relevant to human occupation and terraforming, it's not an issue.
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.