Why NASA Disagrees With Musk's 'Nuking Mars' Idea

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Elon Musk's Insane Plan To Nuke Mars. SpaceX founder Elon Musk is known to make the wildest statements concerning the Mars colonization project. His latest idea to nuke the planet to warm it up to sustain human life certainly turned some heads, and NASA definitely disagrees with Musk's theory.

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Elon Musk seems to be quite serious about nuking Mars… but why!?

The billionaire and founder of SpaceX teased the idea in 2015 during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

The theory is that doing do would warm up the planet enough for human colonists to live relatively comfortably. But… is that a viable option? The NASA scientists seem to think – absolutely not.

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SpaceX's Plan to Establish Colonies
Elon Musk's plan to establish a thriving human colony on the Red Planet has been no secret. His company, SpaceX, has been developing a program since forever to colonize our neighboring planet. It includes using their fully reusable launch vehicle, Starship, on-orbit propellant tanks, rapid turnaround launch and landing mounts, and production of rocket fuel on Mars!

So transforming this dry, deserted, radiation blasted planet into a world like ours would align with Musk and SpaceX's long-term goals.

Things are moving pretty quickly, and Elon Musk wants to get the word out about his program as much as he can. Which is probably how he found himself on a popular late night TV show.

Shortly after the interview with Colbert, Elon Musk followed up on the 'Nuke Mars' idea on Twitter and announced there would be T-Shirts soon.

According to him, the explosions would vaporize a fair chunk of Mars' icecaps, freeing enough water vapor and carbon dioxide, which are both greenhouse gases, to warm up the planet to make it suitable for human life. It's clear to see this terraforming concept has been bouncing about in Musk's head for quite some time now.

Could it work? Some think… yes.

Why it might work
Right now, Mars is a dry, dead planet. But its polar ice caps contain equal parts water and carbon dioxide.

Theoretically… Elon Musk isn't wrong.

Nuclear weapons could be used to vaporize the polar ice caps, releasing water and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And once the atmosphere got thick enough, the greenhouse effect would kick in.

That would continue heating up the planet, releasing more carbon dioxide, setting off a chain reaction until, ideally, the surface pressure of Mars would increase enough for liquid water to exist — making it much more habitable for plants.

And if we plant trees, we get an atmosphere with oxygen, which would enable us to settle there. It could very well go from a red planet to a green planet.

We do have evidence that billions of years ago, Mars did have water on its surface. This image is a near accurate representation of the planet, mapping where the water would have been. Mars did once have more air and liquid water, but a large majority of it was lost, we believe, when Mars lost its magnetic field. We would essentially be returning Mars to what it once used to be.

But we should probably look at a different way of achieving the same effect. Blowing up another planet might not be the best move, just from a PR standpoint.

Some suggest finding a way to guide asteroids to Mars' poles or covering the poles in a cloud of fine, black dust to absorb sunlight and heat them up.

But all these ideas require transporting heavy equipment to Mars, which won't come cheap. Nukes, unfortunately, might be the best option since they are compact and pack a lot of power in that small size.

There is one theory as to why it would work… there are many more explaining why it wouldn't.

Problems with nuking Mars
NASA doesn't want to take any chances.

The average temperature on Mars is similar to that of Antarctica in the winters, and it certainly isn't that simple to make the planet earth-like. There are barriers to overcome.

The current Martian atmosphere consists mainly of carbon dioxide, which is way too thin and cold to support liquid water. The pressure of the atmosphere is also less than 1 percent of the pressure of Earth's atmosphere. Any liquid water on the surface would quickly evaporate or freeze.

Elon Musk vs NASA: Why They Disagree About Nuking Mars