“Elon Musk tweeted on Thursday evening ‘Nuke Mars.’ A few hours later he followed it up with ‘T-shirt soon’,” writes Business Insider.
BGR reports:
Musk’s tweet is a reference to the theory that by dropping one or more large bombs on Mars’ poles, the CO2 locked away in the ice there would be released, giving the Martian atmosphere a much-needed boost… Making the planet’s atmosphere denser could help it retain heat and bring it a small step closer to being habitable by human settlers. However, past research has suggested that bombing the planet’s poles wouldn’t release nearly enough CO2 to be worth the trouble. Elon Musk has publicly disagreed.
It’s unclear why the SpaceX boss decided to bring this all up again, but he does have a habit of saying whatever he thinks will get a big reaction on Twitter. Oh, and apparently he’s hoping to sell some shirts as well.
In any case, no space agency is ready to even begin preliminary planning for a crewed Mars mission, much less any long-term efforts to change the climate of the Red Planet. If that ever does happen, bombs may or may not play a role.
The article adds that scientists “aren’t fully on board” with Musk’s line of thinking, but the t-shirts really are available in the online SpaceX store. Late Friday Musk began promoting them with an optimistic tweet.
“Nuking Mars one T-shirt at a time.”
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot