Nuke Mars, heat up the planet, send humans there, Space X founder says

Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun, is the closest candidate that is expected to somehow harbor life and become humans’ next destination for a rainy day. Last Monday, NASA announced that it had found flowing liquid water on the surface of the Red Planet, boosting, more than ever, the potential for existence of a more life-loving environment on the planet. Now imagine this: To make it more hospitable, we could detonate colossal nukes on either poles of the planet, every few seconds, to give it necessary warmth for gasifying its frozen CO2 and create a global greenhouse to bring about conditions necessary for human life there. Though it might sound like a bizarre dream, the idea has actually been forwarded by a business magnate.

The founder of Space X, an American aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company, believes that by creating huge fusion explosions above Mars poles, almost every few seconds, the cold planet will get warmer and more habitable by these short-lived artificial "suns."

“What I was talking about was having a series of very large, by our standards, but very small by calamity standards, essentially having two tiny pulsing suns over the poles. They’re really above the planet. Not on the planet,” said Elon Musk, as quoted by RT on Saturday.

“Every several seconds send large fusion bombs over the poles. A lot of people don’t appreciate that our sun is a giant fusion explosion,” the Canadian-American tycoon added.

Musk’s plan is simple, at least theoretically. There are huge quantities of carbon dioxide entrapped on Mars poles as thick layers of dry ice. By heating up the temperature, the gaseous CO2, a powerful global warming agent, is released towards the sky, which would in turn warm the atmosphere sufficiently to create a feedback loop and a runaway greenhouse effect on the planet.

In a warm environment aided by flowing water, plant life can survive and gaseous oxygen would be released, preparing the scene for animal life to emerge later on.

There is worldwide attention towards finding life on Mars and creating life-supporting environment there, although profitable business is also a major factor.

“I worry that we’re not going to have anybody on Mars until we find oil on Mars,” said Neil deGrasse Tyson, American astrophysicist, cosmologist and science communicator last Monday.

According to Musk’s program, we shouldn’t bother ourselves with the familiar dome-shaped settlements on the Red Planet, detached from the harsh environment existing outside. He is simply speaking of causing climate change as vast as an entire planet, in the hope of altering Mars environment akin to that of the Earth.

But the 44-year-old seems to be entirely unaware of the potential failure of the nuke carriers in Earth’s mid-air, or the legal concerns regarding the ownership of Mars. Furthermore, creating false "suns" over Mars poles and causing global climate change there are merely theoretical.

Despite these seemingly impossible odds, Musk's far-fetched idea has haunted Europa, the icy moon of Jupiter, which is another candidate of supporting life in our Solar System.

“Europa mission would be cool” he wrote on his twitter account earlier in September, thinking of nuking there too.

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