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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."
I am so tired of those commie bastards. the entire planet is RED and is deserving of our nuclear wrath
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.
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
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
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?
Yeah... the sand worms!
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
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!
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
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.
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.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
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
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
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.
Good-bye
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..."
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.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
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.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
you are a mars climate change denier?
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hey God told Bush we had to go to Mars. After freeing Iraq from tyranny. You haven't been listening to His Burning Shrub.