As of right now, and for quite a while into the future, Mars is the only planet besides Earth that is passable for habitation. However, it is nowhere near the ideal conditions like here on Earth. Many scientists and researchers are wondering how we could speed up the process instead of just manually terraforming it ourselves. Many of them have been stumped or just blatantly can't figure it out. However, CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk has come up with quite an interesting idea, he wants to nuke Mars.
Nuking Mars at first seems like a terrible idea, I mean, we hear stories about how nuclear war would end all life on Earth, so how would that help bring life to Mars? Well, the thought process is that nuclear missiles will be launched into Mars poles, causing the ice under the surface to melt, and make Mars enter into global warming. So with all that information it seems like nuking Mars wouldn’t be such a bad idea, that is, however, until you look at the negatives, which scientists quickly pointed out, far outweigh the positives. First off, Mars doesn’t have enough CO2 to even start a global warming cycle as that’s the main greenhouse gas that’s causing global warming here on Earth. Secondly, the nuclear blast would send so much dirt and debris into Mars' atmosphere that it would block out all Sunlight, causing something similar to what happened to the dinosaurs. Finally, even if we were to completely remove everything blocking out the Suns’ rays, it would only increase the average temperature to 10 degrees Celsius, which is not suitable for human nor plant life.
This far fetched idea while good in theory would have caused too many issues than what it was worth. Even if this did somehow warm up the planet and make it suitable for life it would still be uninhabitable as the blocked out sky would make it impossible for the Suns’ light to reach it. Terraforming Mars is a major project, possibly the biggest one to date, and there’s little chance it’d be as easy as launching a few nukes at it. However, this does beg the question, how would Elon even get those nukes? There’s no way the government would just hand over a couple dozen nukes to Elon just because he had a thought process about nuking Mars. All in all, Mars is a goal that’ll be in the distant future, and terraforming it is an amazing achievement that I hope to be around to hear about, but nuking it isn’t going to make anything better.
Should we nuke Mars?
If you were the government, would you hand over your nuclear weapons to Elon Musk?
https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/sciencecommunication/2021/09/21/should-we-nuke-mars/
Replies
Intersting topic so +5! Your summary is well done as well! Be sure to rpely more frequently!
Handing over nukes to Musk? He'll have his hads full with Twitter, so no.
I do not think it would be wise to nuke mars. I just don't think we could ever have enough evidence and information to know exactly what would happen if we did. I feel like it is dumb to mess with and we should just let mars be. I don't think I would just give Elon Musk nuclear weapons.
I do not know much about this stuff but I see no point to nuke the mars because why should we create more problems than needed. And I would not hand nuke weapons to Elon Musk because they're too dangerous and imagine something goes wrong and hits a country.
I don't think that we should nuke Mars because I don't really see a point. If the cons outweight the pros, then there is no point in doing this. However, I think that this is an interesting idea. If I was the government, I wouldn't hand over my nuclear weapons to Musk because they're too dangerous.
I don't know anything about mars so I have no saying in if we nuke it, alll I know is it would lead to a big converysy, this could also lead to seriuos matters in the world and start some new drama with the planets and scientist.
I dont know that much about the topic but I dont really see the point. If something were to go wrong then any unexpected reaction could happen. It could have a lot of unexpected consequences.
I think that there would be no point in nuking Mars. There is really no benefit to it since it really isn't suitable for human life. Like you said, it would cause more damage than it would do good, so I don't see the point in wasting money on something as stupid as that.
I really don't know much about the topic but it sounds kinda cool, I don't know any of the pros and cons. If they see that this will make mars more habitable, I say let them, and if it doesn't work then we can find another way.
I feel like that would be a terrible idea and there might be some pros to nuking mars but there could be a lot of consequences to it too. Plus, Mars could help us to if something happened to the earth. I think that giving all of those nuclear weapons to Elon Musk would be a terrible idea.
I don't think that we should nuke mars. There is just toom many issues if one singular thing goes wrong like you said. However if everything goes right then in theory it would become 100% habitable for humans without any problems.
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