Plan to drop nukes on Mars to prepare for human life

More hints to a future without planet earth?, with all the talk of global killers and world war 3, it doesn't surprise me in the least that we are looking for another home, we have outstayed our welcome here, give the fish a chance

Elon Musk is clearly in the 2016 race for Supervillain of the Universe, because on the "Late Show with Stephen Colbert," he suggested there were two ways to make Mars hospitable for humans.

There's a slow way and a fast way, and both, said Musk, involve warming the planet.

The slow way is to flood the planet with greenhouse gases and cause a kind of Martian climate change over a matter of years.

The fast way is much more … interesting.

"The fast way is to drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles," said Musk with a completely straight face.

"You're a supervillain!" Colbert said. "Superman doesn't say, 'let's drop nuclear bombs.' That's Lex Luthor, man."

That would be one way to do it. And how does he propose getting there affordably? Why, with his reusable SpaceX rockets, of course. The last test of that technology, which involved landing the craft on a floating barge in the ocean, failed spectacularly when it tipped over and exploded

But within two to three years, Musk told Colbert, it'll be ready for human passengers. Yes, really -- Musk thinks that people like you or I could hop in a SpaceX craft and start jetting around in space.

Is it ready? It'll have to be: SpaceX really wants to use its reusable rockets to bring NASA astronauts to the International Space Station within the next couple years, said Musk.

What could go wrong?



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a reply to: LeeAndrewCox

Forgive my ignorance but I though we couldn't live in places contaminated by nuclear bombs? Negasaki and Hiroshima seem to disprove this but, why contaminate in the first place.

Yes Bobw927 is right it would certainly destroy any evidence of earlier inhabitation by humans or whoever.

Surely Musk just has his own venture in mind and is hoping to clean up financially but if he hopes to do this perhaps he needs to think up something means that people would find acceptable. "Go outside and play in the nuclear contaminated garden" is hardly something one would want to tell one's kids to do.

Without the magnetic shield such as earth has, there is no point in trying to add more atmosphere to Mars, the solar wind will just blow it away, as it has done already.
Mars does not have enough gravity for an earth type atmosphere, its present atmosphere is 0.015 that of earth's, that is one fifteenth of a pound per square inch.

Being so close to the asteroid belt, I would not put my faith in a pressurised dome either.

a reply to: Shiloh7

I believe he said one bomb on each pole, north and south. That would only contaminate, or hide evidence, on or near the poles.

I don't see how this would work. Maybe he means multiple bombings over a number of years? Or one massive bombing with multiple bombs? I don't know, its just wierd to me. And seems irresponsible until we are sure there is no life or other discoveries that could be destroyed in the process.

a reply to: pikestaff

I agree, so what are the other reasons for wanting to nuke the planet known as mars....oh i dont know whats one thing humans are generaly good at cleaning the slate so we can move in

originally posted by: Shiloh7
a reply to: LeeAndrewCox

Forgive my ignorance but I though we couldn't live in places contaminated by nuclear bombs? Negasaki and Hiroshima seem to disprove this but, why contaminate in the first place.

Yes Bobw927 is right it would certainly destroy any evidence of earlier inhabitation by humans or whoever.

Surely Musk just has his own venture in mind and is hoping to clean up financially but if he hopes to do this perhaps he needs to think up something means that people would find acceptable. "Go outside and play in the nuclear contaminated garden" is hardly something one would want to tell one's kids to do.

Yeah, strange indeed, all this talk of SpaceX makes me think NASA and other are planning beyond planet earth more so now than ever, we live in very unstable times, to be honest it never crossed my mind that they would like to drop a nuke to hide something, watch this space for sure though

Americans..if they can solve a problem by shooting it or blowing it up they are happy bunnies!

originally posted by: 3n19m470
a reply to: Shiloh7

I believe he said one bomb on each pole, north and south. That would only contaminate, or hide evidence, on or near the poles.

I don't see how this would work. Maybe he means multiple bombings over a number of years? Or one massive bombing with multiple bombs? I don't know, its just wierd to me. And seems irresponsible until we are sure there is no life or other discoveries that could be destroyed in the process.

I suspect he thinks two nukes would melt the poles and thus release millions of tons of CO2. This would cause a runaway global warming scenario.

originally posted by: pikestaff
Without the magnetic shield such as earth has, there is no point in trying to add more atmosphere to Mars, the solar wind will just blow it away, as it has done already.

It took millions of years for that to happen and it happened at a time when the solar wind was much stronger. Mars, Earth and Venus are all losing atmosphere at roughly the same rate today.

A terraformed Martian atmosphere would be fine for a few million years at least.

So it would be worth it. But even with the "fast way" it would still take hundreds of years before Mars had anything close to an Earthlike environment.

Mars does not have enough gravity for an earth type atmosphere,

Actually it does.

its present atmosphere is 0.015 that of earth's, that is one fifteenth of a pound per square inch.

Not due to Mars's gravity. Due to atmospheric loss early in the solar system and our Sun's history when our Sun put out a lot more ionizing radiation than it does today.

Being so close to the asteroid belt, I would not put my faith in a pressurised dome either.

Mars is not at much higher threat of impact than the Earth other than the thin atmosphere currently means rocks which would burn up in ours make it to the surface but Mars's proximity to the asteroid belt is of little consequence.

Actually, dropping icy asteroids on it would be better. Especially if you can give it a steep angle of insertion so that it mostly burns up in the atmosphere.

If one wanted to melt the polar caps, it would be also better to use rocky asteroids (no radioactive fallout) if they wanted to do it faster (not to mention you can use asteroids that have a much bigger yield than any nuke that has ever been built).

Better way (but much slower) to melt the poles, would to be spreading of dark material (like a black colored dust) on the poles so that they absorb more sunlight, meaning more heat.

Mars can hold a much thicker atmosphere than it has. The solar wind stripping it away would take tens of millions of years or more. We could add more atmosphere to it much faster than the solar wind could take it away.

But, even if we made it thicker, you'd still have some issues: too much CO2 is in the atmosphere now, simply adding a lot of oxygen won't change that. You need to get the CO2 level down, else the air mixture would still be too toxic for humans (or any other Earth type animals) to breath.
We also would need to add nitrogen into the mix. Not an easy thing to do.

Even if all this was done, there would still be the issue of the lack of large magnetic field around the planet to deflect charged particles from the sun. Radiation exposure on the surface would end up still being too high for very long term exposures (years). A thicker atmosphere would help with that quite a bit, but having a field in place would be a LOT better.

Terraforming Mars is quite possible. But there are no quick fixes. Even using nukes.....you'd have to use a LOT of them. We're talking at least hundreds or more.

Mars is 50 million or so miles further away from the sun; could be a problem keeping warm after the TN bombs had cooled down. Atmospheric pressure way too low and most of it composed of CO2. No magnetic field to protect against the solar wind.

Has this geezer thought this through?

originally posted by: Shiloh7
a reply to: LeeAndrewCox

Forgive my ignorance but I though we couldn't live in places contaminated by nuclear bombs?

Mars as it is today due to its lack of a thick atmosphere would require people to bury their habitat to protect against radiation in the form of solar radiation and cosmic rays.

No one is seriously thinking of using nuclear bombs on the Martian poles. Musk just said that because it gets peoples attention to the idea of terraforming.

There have been ideas to build huge mirrors to melt them though.

Also ideas to redirect water rich comets and asteroids to impact the planet have been thought of.

Alternatively we could just move all CO2 producing industry to Mars, that would also do the job in a few hundred years to 1,000 years.

Even still, terraforming Mars will not be something completed overnight ala "Total Recall" or even in a human lifetime.

a reply to: Kragle

You only need to look at the financial markets to know that there are no holds barred and anything goes if it makes a few people money, so don't be so hard on people.

Didn't scientists have ambitions to test nuclear weapons on the moon? With the things that go on we aren't told about e.g. for national security reasons why should anything today be out of limits - even claims such as weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - a prime example of governmental lies omissions are probably the biggest etc.

a reply to: MrMasterMinder

Americans..if they can solve a problem by shooting it or blowing it up they are happy bunnies!

He is South African... Shows yer full of it huh?


V

An illustrated history of Mars and its atmospheric loss.

As you can see the Sun was more active back then with higher UV output and it still took around 300 million years for it to really strip much of the atmosphere once Mars lost its magnetic field. So a terraformed Mars today with a Sun which would be much more friendly to its atmosphere could last 500 million years or more without problem. Plenty of time for its residence to move on or find a way to generate a planetary magnetic field.

b.y.a = Billion Years

This is not new idea, and with more precise nuclear weapon, it might be even possible. First of all,it will not be possible with 1-2 nukes, but thousands of nukes over period of decades. Even if successful and everything works as planed, it would take over 100 years to teraform the planet.

Better way as some have suggested would be bombarding planet with asteroids, but this would take much more resources and planing and would take much longer to teraform.

Why it might work

Right now, Mars seems like a dry, dead planet. But its polar ice caps contain about equal parts water and carbon dioxide.

Nuclear weapons could be used to vaporize them, releasing those materials into the atmosphere. Once the atmosphere got thick enough, the greenhouse effect would kick in: energy from the sun, absorbed by the planet and released as infrared radiation, would be trapped.

That would continue heating up the planet, releasing more carbon dioxide, setting off a chain reaction until, ideally, the surface pressure of Mars would increase enough for liquid water to exist — making it much more habitable for oxygen-producing plants.

“You could start turning Mars from a red planet into a green planet,” Michael Shara, curator of the American Museum of Natural History’s astrophysics department, told NBC News.

Nuclear weapons aren’t the only way that humans could melt the planet’s polar caps. Shara offered some alternatives, like finding a way to guide asteroids to Mars’ poles, or covering the poles in a fine, black dust to absorb sunlight and heat them up.

But many ideas involve transporting heavy equipment to Mars, which would be very expensive. Nukes are fairly compact and immensely powerful, offering a lot of bang for the buck.

Using nukes might not be the best public relations move. But modern thermonuclear weapons can be designed to leave very little fallout, Shara said, and wouldn’t pose much danger centuries after they hit.

It could take firing thousands of them over the course of decades to start the greenhouse effect, Shara said. After that, it might only be centuries before people could start buying vacation homes on Mars.

Why nuking Mars might fail

“It’s a clever idea in principle,” Shara said. “Whether it would really work, I don’t think anyone has worked up the physics in enough detail to say it would.”

Even the most advanced computer simulations would have trouble predicting the aftermath of starting a runaway greenhouse effect. Gary King, a microbiologist at Louisiana State University, thinks bombing the Red Planet would be reckless.

“Cloud formation could have a dampening effect, for instance, cooling Mars rather than warming it,” King told NBC News.

Plus, there are ethical questions to be considered, especially since we haven’t thoroughly explored the planet yet.

It would be good to know that there are no microorganisms left over from an earlier period still lingering in the ice, he said. “The odds aren’t high, but no one can say that they are zero either.”

Source: www.msnbc.com...

The "Nuke Mars" idea has been around for decades. The idea is that the high temperature in the nuclear fireballs would disassociate the oxygen in the rusty soil in large quantities very quickly. After the bombardment, wait a hundred years for the radiation to die-down, then move in.

The idea was around before we really understood that asteroid bombardment could give comparable effects on a virtually unlimited scale, without the radiation (with the caveat that moving asteroids is hypothetical, whereas thousands of nukes exist now).

My challenge to would-be terraformers is this:

Terraform Nevada first.

No, seriously - You've already got a nice thick oxygen-rich atmosphere, and all the water you need is just a few hundred miles away (and already in liquid form to boot).

When you can get that forbidding desert (with a large area that's been subjected to hundreds of nuclear detonations) looking like Kentucky, then I will be convinced you're ready to take-on another planet.

Why exactly do we need an atmosphere? If we can build a spaceship hermetically, why not do the same for the Mars colony?