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
I don't think Elon Musk should own any nuclear weapons unless he becomes president. Nuclear weapons are no joke and after hearing what he wants to do with them, I think that it would be a terrible mistake if we handed him nuclear weapons.
If I were the government I would not hand over nuclear weapons to Elon Musk. I do not think we should try to nuke Mars because the plan is way too far fetched to be realistic. I think we would do more harm than good.
Why would we do thsi in the first place. Mars barly has anything on it we've only seen a bit of water on it. I would not hand over a deadly weapon to Elon Musk because that just seems like a waste, all we would do it just dameging mars.
I don't think we should nuke Mars. I see no reasons for doing that. If I was in the government I wouldn't hand over nuclear weapons to Elon Musk. I think nuclear weapons are really dangerous and not everyone should be able to get them. I think the government shouldn't hand anyone besides them nuclear weapons.
I think this is a very interesting topic that many don't know about. Honestly nuking Mars doesn't sound like it will do much to help us in the end because there isn't enough CO2 in the atmostphere. So nuking Mars will do just that, nuke mars. Nothing beneifcial by the sounds of it.
Nuking Mars will also cause a lot of other problems, such as blocking out the Sun for countless years as the dust and debris that's kicked up from the explosions will be kept within the atmosphere by the constant blowing of Mars high power winds. It'll be the downfall of us colonizing Mars before we even reach there.
I do not see any reason to nuke mars. I think it would be a waste of a nuke and would just harm the solar system for no reason. I think mars is far enough away where it is not going to affect anything on the earth. I don't think we should even think about it until we plan to live on it, which is a very long ways away.
Nuking a planet in no way would affect the Solar System as a whole, unless of course you completely removed it but that won't happen. Mars colonization isn't something that's necessarily a huge requirement as of right now, but it's a way for us to show major improvement in technology.
I don't think there is any good reason to nuke mars. Nothing that it is doing is affecting the earth and I think it would be a waste of time, money, and materials. There are better things going on in the world right now to worry about, and we should wait until we know more about mars to do anything crazy like nuke it.
I personally think that we should not nuke mars because it doesn't really affect the earth in any way so it's not hurting anybody when it's up in space. I think we should keep it around in case scientists want to visit it sometime and discover some stuff about it. There could be many negative things that come from nuking mars so I think it's better not to do it.
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