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I once saw a clip of Elon saying the fast way to terraform Mars is to nuke the poles. And now that I’m watching The Expanse it got me thinking about that. Excep

I once saw a clip of Elon saying the fast way to terraform Mars is to nuke the poles. And now that I’m watching The Expanse it got me thinking about that. Except for the possible impact on passive scientific study, it seems like a process worth starting sooner than later right? Any thoughts on this. Or are there other better ways to get a better atmosphere and water on Mars?

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> nuke the poles Nuking asteroids to steer them into the poles would seem like a better solution. (Haven’t run the math on the delta-v for candidate impactors, though. You’d need to manage energy to avoid losing too much to space.)
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  Anyone who can do that can aim asteroids at Washington or Beijing. This will be technology with more restrictions than nuclear bombs.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Not really, aiming an asteroid at a pole is easier because it doesn't move around during the day. And on Mars the polar ice caps are huge so they're a big target. I'm also kinda hoping that by the time we get this kind of tech we're evolving a bit away from this war thing. Probably not going to happen but one can hope...
spfzero 5y ago
Right now Mars is a pristine snapshot of processes I think we'd like to learn more about. We should propose Terraforming only after we think we've learned pretty much everything we care about. I'm not against terraforming eventually, but I think we need to give exploration a bit of time before considering which early 21st century tech would work best.
IAmGraydon 5y ago
I think that comment was tongue in cheek. It would take an utterly massive amount of nuclear weapons to appreciably melt the poles and it would likely poison the environment.
tsimionescu 5y ago
First of all, never listen to Elon Musk on scientific topics, he has no training and often spouts nonsense which he later may decide was a joke. Second of all, nuking obviously (1) produces far too little energy for terraforming, and (2) produces large amounts of dust and radioactive fallout. It's also very doubtful that melting Mars's poles would do much to help with the habitability of Mars - it will still be extremely cold, extremely lacking in Oxygen, extremely lacking in atmospheric pressure, and extremely radioactive on the surface. We also don't know how much water is left on Mars after the atmosphere was washed away - water may have frozen, but a good amount may have simply boiled away in the low pressure and been long carried away by the solar winds. Until we know for sure, boiling away more water would be extremely irresponsible. Also, given humanity's current total energy output, there is simply no way to terraform Mars. If in the future we will discover some way of using orders of magnitude more energy, we could visit this, but given current scientific knowledge, any energy used to start terraforming Mars is as wasted as trying to terraform the Sun.
- whoknowswhat11 5y ago
  I think a lot of the folks who have claimed musk is wrong on the science (ie, pro hydrogen, anti nuke etc folks) are surprisingly poorly informed. They have nuclear designs which are 98% fusion. The radioactive fallout for these is much more limited. For example, atomic lake (which was terraformed with nuclear bombs), has radiation levels of 9 µSv vs 3 from background per week What's even weirder about the "pro-science" folks - they don't seem to understand radiation exposure ranges in space. Surface of mars is going to have radiation levels on the order of 20 uSv per HOUR - we are talking RADS/year (not mili rads). That said, impactors or nuclear power on the surface are likely more feasible.
  - magicalist 5y ago
    > They have nuclear designs which are 98% fusion. The radioactive fallout for these is much more limited. > For example, atomic lake (which was terraformed with nuclear bombs), has radiation levels of 9 µSv vs 3 from background per week It's kind of weird to take an authoritative stance with that example. "atomic lake" was from an underground detonation of a moderate-yield fission device 50 years ago and largely just moved dirt around while still sending up detectable radioactive waste. OK, you can go near the lake now without ill effect but you've accomplished...what exactly? So scale it up to what is actually needed to vaporize a meaningful amount of the ice caps and look at how effective that would be at making a dent in the Martian atmosphere and the GP has a very good point. It's not a workable idea.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> nuke the poles Nuking asteroids to steer them into the poles would seem like a better solution. (Haven’t run the math on the delta-v for candidate impactors, though. You’d need to manage energy to avoid losing too much to space.)

BurningFrog 5y ago
Anyone who can do that can aim asteroids at Washington or Beijing. This will be technology with more restrictions than nuclear bombs.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Not really, aiming an asteroid at a pole is easier because it doesn't move around during the day. And on Mars the polar ice caps are huge so they're a big target. I'm also kinda hoping that by the time we get this kind of tech we're evolving a bit away from this war thing. Probably not going to happen but one can hope...

spfzero 5y ago

Right now Mars is a pristine snapshot of processes I think we'd like to learn more about. We should propose Terraforming only after we think we've learned pretty much everything we care about. I'm not against terraforming eventually, but I think we need to give exploration a bit of time before considering which early 21st century tech would work best.

IAmGraydon 5y ago

I think that comment was tongue in cheek. It would take an utterly massive amount of nuclear weapons to appreciably melt the poles and it would likely poison the environment.

tsimionescu 5y ago

First of all, never listen to Elon Musk on scientific topics, he has no training and often spouts nonsense which he later may decide was a joke. Second of all, nuking obviously (1) produces far too little energy for terraforming, and (2) produces large amounts of dust and radioactive fallout. It's also very doubtful that melting Mars's poles would do much to help with the habitability of Mars - it will still be extremely cold, extremely lacking in Oxygen, extremely lacking in atmospheric pressure, and extremely radioactive on the surface. We also don't know how much water is left on Mars after the atmosphere was washed away - water may have frozen, but a good amount may have simply boiled away in the low pressure and been long carried away by the solar winds. Until we know for sure, boiling away more water would be extremely irresponsible. Also, given humanity's current total energy output, there is simply no way to terraform Mars. If in the future we will discover some way of using orders of magnitude more energy, we could visit this, but given current scientific knowledge, any energy used to start terraforming Mars is as wasted as trying to terraform the Sun.

whoknowswhat11 5y ago
I think a lot of the folks who have claimed musk is wrong on the science (ie, pro hydrogen, anti nuke etc folks) are surprisingly poorly informed. They have nuclear designs which are 98% fusion. The radioactive fallout for these is much more limited. For example, atomic lake (which was terraformed with nuclear bombs), has radiation levels of 9 µSv vs 3 from background per week What's even weirder about the "pro-science" folks - they don't seem to understand radiation exposure ranges in space. Surface of mars is going to have radiation levels on the order of 20 uSv per HOUR - we are talking RADS/year (not mili rads). That said, impactors or nuclear power on the surface are likely more feasible.
- magicalist 5y ago
  > They have nuclear designs which are 98% fusion. The radioactive fallout for these is much more limited. > For example, atomic lake (which was terraformed with nuclear bombs), has radiation levels of 9 µSv vs 3 from background per week It's kind of weird to take an authoritative stance with that example. "atomic lake" was from an underground detonation of a moderate-yield fission device 50 years ago and largely just moved dirt around while still sending up detectable radioactive waste. OK, you can go near the lake now without ill effect but you've accomplished...what exactly? So scale it up to what is actually needed to vaporize a meaningful amount of the ice caps and look at how effective that would be at making a dent in the Martian atmosphere and the GP has a very good point. It's not a workable idea.