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 agree that nuking Mars could warm up the planet to suit human life, but it could have some unexpected consequences that we don't know anything about. I feel like Elon knows what he was doing, but nuking a planet might be a little too eccentric.
I personally think that nuking mars could work to heat up the planet and it could work to make more living space for humans. I do not think that the Gov. should give there nukes to Elon but I don't think they should have any say on wether he buys them with his own money or not.
I think we should nuke mars. Hear me out, if we send a nuke into space who knows if that will even do anything to the planet. Its like a science project but at a bigger scale. Elon Musk probably owns nuke already so we don't need to hand them over.
I dont see any reason we should nuke mars because theres probably life on there. I would definetly not give Elon Musk nuceler weapons he would kill a bunch of people or start a war or something. Nuclear weapons are very dangerous and nobody should have them.
I don't think there is any reason to nuke mars especially if people plan on going there in the future. If Elon Musk got ahold of nuclear weapons it wouldn't be good as he would obviously want to try them out and that would end up doing massive damage.
I don't see any point in nuking mars. We have done lots of research on it and if we nuked it everything we have learned would be destroyed. If there is live on mars it would kill it and we would never know.
I don't think we should nuke Mars. I think that frankly it's an insane idea. We have no way of knowing what actually inhabits Mars and the potential of doing more harm than good is very very real. Elon Musk has too much power already, the man does not need to be handed nuclear warfare.
If there is life on Mars and we somehow haven't noticed it yet then I'll be baffled, but yes, nuking Mars won't achieve anything good other than maybe warming it up just a tad, but the repercussions will far out weigh that positive.
I don't think we should nuke Mars because it could start some sort of war, not only on Earth, but outside our planet in some way. We don't know what is out there, so I feel like nuking a planet to find if there is life out there is not the best idea.
I don't think the government should ever hand over nuclear weapons to anyone because of how dangerous they are. They aren't something to mess around with, and it would be a huge mistake to give Elon Musk any form of a nuclear weapon for his plans.
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