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Don't nuke mars, please

PB666

By PB666
in Science & Spaceflight

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Bill Phil

Bill Phil

Posted
Posted

Didn't you already make a thread about this???

And why colonize Mars? It costs a lot of energy to get too, has low gravity, and is extremely far away. Why not go and grab some NEAs and build a few small habitats at EMLs? Eventually we could build ones that can hold thousands of people.

Terraforming Mars isn't a good thing to do. Not yet, at least. The gravity is so low, we don't know what would happen. The Martians couldn't come back after a few generations, for certain. It would take centuries, and the amount of energy envolved is enormous. Constructing in space colonies would take less time, and we would have more control over the environment.

Not to mention that Mars us pretty resource poor. At least for the really good ones.

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baggers

baggers

Posted
Posted (edited)

Nuking Mars could have some interressing side-effects:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/09/alien-nuclear-wars-might-be-visible-from-earth/404176/?utm_source=SFTwitter

Basically: 800 nukes explosions will make a visible spot for a short amount of time and could draw attention of what can see it in this galaxy.

Edited by baggers
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Nuke

Nuke

Posted
Posted

you are better off using the nukes in an orion drive to drop a mars crossing object into the ice cap. find an object with a close approach in the near future and nudge it in. you might not even need nukes, some kind of ion powered gravity tractor might be enough.

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Thomassino

Thomassino

Posted
Posted

There is another idea of having big mirrors on Mars' orbit reflecting light on surface, especially on poles full of solid CO2 and creating greenhouse effect, thus warming the planet.

But I think nuking it is a better idea. It would cost a lot less to put like 800 bombs on Mars, than to warm it using mirrors.

An as a dreamer who sees humankind scattered across many worlds of Solar system, I support idea of terraforming Mars.

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Rune

Rune

Posted
Posted
I can see it now... the quest for a 'clean, green bomb'. :rolleyes:

We have those right now. The Tsar bomba, for example, was extraordinarily clean, on account of most of its huge blast being thermonuclear fusion. The bigger you make a bomb, the cleaner it is.

And people have a wrong concept of how dirty nukes are. We have literally exploded thousands on Earth, with little to no effect.

Granted, most of those were underground... but if you want to melt ice you would also blow them up under it.

Rune. Still, I think you are all a bunch of planetary chauvinists, I'd never use planets for anything else than science and art. ;)

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Sharkman Briton

Sharkman Briton

Posted
Posted

If that guy is correct in saying that Mars is pretty resource poor, then I would suggest terraforming the Moon, if it has ore resources (Pun intended, but tbh I know nothing about planetary resources.) Either that or an already potentially habitable planetoid, possibly Europa? Or Ganymede, I think that has more gravity, and I'm taking that info from Tylo being a Ganymede analogue IIRC. Europa and Ganymede would be alot more difficult to make work but would have more appealing traits, Europa for the possible water-ice farming and potential life under the ice there, and Ganymede for the (If I'm not stupid.) higher gravity and resources, and they're not as far as Titan, though Titan would be very useful to terraform also, because of there being an atmosphere, albeit unbreathable, though we could convert the gases in the atmosphere into breathable gases, in controlled environments-Biospheres!

The moon could also be bountiful, with water-ice possibly being at the poles, and possibly good concentrations of resources, and it's right up in Earth's face (in astronomical terms) so if the water-ice really is at the poles, then they could use that for drinking (obviously.) and for growing plants (obviously.) which equates to food, all that would need to be delivered is the occasional meat (so they don't turn into carrots.) and resupplies of breathable air, until they get an oxygen farm going on using the water they feed to the oxygen-generating plants, so the moon would be one of the best possible known candidates for colonization, albeit not the most awesome.

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Nuke

Nuke

Posted
Posted (edited)

now that i think about id of you are going to make all that plutonium and detonate it all, it would probibly be better off to use that energy in fission reactors to help make sustainable mars habitation possible. take the industrial approach, just manufacture everything you need to sustain life. power mining and manufacture, agriculture would be in the form of massive hydroponics operations. build dome complexes or underground if you have to. it would also give you better access to scientific data about the surface of the planet. if you nuke it you end up destroying potential data. you can also get data on human health in martian gravity, if more gravity is needed build centrifuges underground.

Edited by Nuke
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AngelLestat

AngelLestat

Posted
Posted

In my opinion, any long term plan is pointless, the singularity is coming.

But even if we forget about that fact and we need to design a good plan for terraforming mars.

Then we need to know exactly how many h2 bombs are needed and the amount of radiation which it would release.

But from the moment you start with any terraforming plan, you are giving up to the possibility of keep studying mars in its original configuration with the microbes that might be already adapted.

So to have Global consensus about what we should do with mars, is something that it will be very hard.

- - - Updated - - -

now that i think about id of you are going to make all that plutonium and detonate it all, it would probibly be better off to use that energy in fission reactors to help make sustainable mars habitation possible.

It takes a long time to release the energy in that way, also you need to land the reactors and they are several times more complex than a nuclear bomb,

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Findthepin1

Findthepin1

Posted
Posted (edited)

A few months ago I created a thread about evaporating Mars' southern polar cap to create a positive feedback effect that would result in a Mars with perhaps twenty or thirty percent of Earth's pressure and a significant temperature rise. Using a device like the ones mentioned in this thread would be the easiest way to accomplish the evaporation of the polar dry ice.

Edited by Findthepin1
This not the
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B787_300

B787_300

Posted
Posted

Seriously though Nuking Mars is one of the easiest ways to beginning to terraform it. Also you would not use an off the shelf (out of stockpile) Thermonuclear weapon. Those are designed to not be terribly clean. You COULD use materials from old nukes and reassemble them into a cleaner bomb and detonate that, that way you get less of a radioactive fallout.

Also the only other ways to heat up mars are slamming asteroids / comets into it, slowly crush rocks to release CO2, or take a bunch of supergreenhouse gasses manufactured on earth or in space and dump then on mars. Really nuking mars is the fastest and oddly the safest and easiest way to begin terraforming mars. oh also it was first proposed and written about sin scientific papers in the 70/80s so it is not a new idea.

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LordFerret

LordFerret

Posted
Posted
A few months ago I created a thread about evaporating Mars' southern polar cap to create a positive feedback effect that would result in a Mars with perhaps twenty or thirty percent of Earth's pressure and a significant temperature rise. Using a device like the ones mentioned in this thread would be the easiest way to accomplish the evaporation of the polar dry ice.

Maybe Elon Musk read your post.

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kStrout

kStrout

Posted
Posted

Lets say we can terraform mars to have a comfortable temperature, plant life and even(lets be bold) a breathable atmosphere, Mars is still very small, very far away and would only have 0.4g, possibly not enough to sustain children, and no magnetic field whatsoever, so if you wanted to not get cancer you would have to live 2m underground to protect against cosmic rays, making your terraforming pointless. I say we mine the moon and build space colonies(see signature) in LEO, way more practical, closer, and the perfect environment with free shielding from earth's magnetosphere.

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Bill Phil

Bill Phil

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[citation needed]

I am 100% certain that tests on children born in 0.4g have never been carried out.

We know for certain that grown men and women have trouble coming home from weightlessness. And they're already developed.

Children, who are still developing, wouldn't be able to go to Earth at all.

Life adapts, be when less strength is needed, the structure has less strength.

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