Here's the stupid reason Elon Musk wants to nuke Mars

[Eugene]

Source: The Next Web

Here’s the stupid reason Elon Musk wants to nuke Mars

by TRISTAN GREENE — 1 day ago in DISTRACT

lon Musk – aka Lex Luthor in spirit — is on social media yapping about nuking Mars again. He’s not trolling; he’s not acting as a provocateur; he really wants to bombard the surface of our planetary neighbor with actual nuclear weapons.

Link to tweet

Here’s why: he thinks it’ll kick-start the planet and make it habitable by releasing trapped carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. He’s been pushing this theory since at least 2015 when he told Stephen Colbert that Mars was a “fixer-upper” and that we could fix it by nuking it. According to scientists, he’s mostly wrong.

NASA research indicates that dropping nuclear weapons on Mars will release some carbon dioxide, but not enough to make it even close to Earth-like. A 2018 study indicates that there simply isn’t enough carbon dioxide on the planet to make that big a difference. Currently, Mars‘ has an atmospheric carbon dioxide content of about .6 percent of the Earth‘s. If we let Elon Musk fire off nukes at it, scientists believe that’ll raise it to a mere 7 percent of the Earth‘s.

But that’s not stopping the controversial billionaire engineer from riling up his 28 million Twitter fans with tweets talking about nuking the red planet and selling T-shirts:

Link to tweet

It’s unclear where Musk’s getting his information from – he could be speculating or riffing off of related research – but we’ve been able to find nothing peer-reviewed to indicate that terraforming Mars is possible in any way using current technology.

-snip-

Read more: https://thenextweb.com/distract/2019/08/16/heres-the-stupid-reason-elon-musk-wants-to-nuke-mars/

[klook]

1. Did he post this at 4:20? (nt)

[Wounded Bear]

2. Mars lacks a magnetic field to protect its atmosphere...

even if we did "adjust" the CO2 level, it would be temporary, because the solar wind would just strip it away.

[RGinNJ]

3. +1

[Wounded Bear]

4. For a guy who wants in on the Space Race...

Mr Musk seems woefully ignorant of basic science. Mars has been pretty well studied over the past couple of decades. The lack of a magnetic field knowledge dates back to the Voyager and Pioneer probes in the late 70's IIRC.

[RockRaven]

7. My first thought as well.

And it does not take any special training or knowledge to a) encounter this argument or b) understand it.

[NickB79]

9. Temporary in geological terms, but not human ones

Remember, it took millions of years for Mars to bleed off it's native atmosphere when it's magnetic field died.

If we could magically give Mars a full-Earth-pressure atmosphere today, it would be habitable for hundreds of thousands of years even without a magnetic field.

[PSPS]

5. It amazes me that Musk, a total fraud, has so many fanboyz.

Not ever paying any taxes is one root cause of this parasitic disease that foists the likes of Musk on mankind.

[NNadir]

6. Thanks for that. Sometimes I feel alone in that opinion. People act as if...

...his car for millionaires and billionaires is some kind of environmental wonder.

It is anything but that. Even if it were good for the environment - it isn't - the fact is that it still depends on cobalt mined by slaves, some of them children.

His launching of his stupid car into space was one of the most obscene pieces of marketing of which I have ever seen, even worse than Jeeps driving over pristine rock formations.

[defacto7]

8. I think dropping some powdered rhino horn and a few

ice cream sandwiches would have a similar effect without the fireworks. Just call me a dull boy.

[NickB79]

10. Automated greenhouse gas factories would be more effective

There are synthetic gases available that are 7000X as effective as CO2. Mine the soil for raw materials.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/10/new-greenhouse-gas-powerful-chemical-perfluorotributylamine

[NNadir]

11. Or alternatively, we could just leave Mars alone. Isn't screwing the hell out of one planet enough?

[NickB79]

12. If it's dead, why does it matter?

I can see your point if we found life there, but a lifeless world?

[NNadir]

13. I don't know, because it's beautiful? Because it's full of history?

Never mind. Let's pollute the shit out of Earth firing rockets to strip mine Mars.

Lord knows we're polluting the shit out of "dead" deserts to built wind farms.