Elon Musk’s plans to colonize Mars is no longer a secret. The entrepreneur has been expressing his ideas for making the surface of Mars habitable for human beings and construction purposes. Terraforming was the term Musk was using for the process. In a recent interview with Stephen Colbert, Musk had said that it could be done using thermonuclear explosions on the Martian surface. Now, however, the latest study from NASA says that setting off bombs on the Martian planet wouldn’t be a practical solution for terraforming a planet like Mars. NASA says that the process would not be effective in converting Mars into something like the Earth.
The idea of terraforming is to create an Earth-like atmosphere, which should be able to protect the planet from obstacles and radiation from the space. According to Musk’s idea, setting off bombs on the surface will release the sufficient amount of carbon dioxide to the surface. However, according to the studies conducted by NASA, carbon dioxide would not be enough to thicken the atmosphere in a way that the actual function of the atmosphere would be fulfilled. However, the new research says that the Martian surface doesn’t have the sufficient amount of gases to create such an effect.
Another problem is that the thermonuclear action would cause the emission of gases that would bring about a change of 1.2% of earth’s atmospheric pressure. It means that Musk would have to find another solution for terraforming Mars. The researcher also goes onto say that the current technologies are not as powerful as it comes to making use of the CO2 that is present on the Martian surface. It should be noted that, despite a bunch of early findings that positively reported moisture on Mars, current studies show that most of them have been lost. SpaceX hasn’t commented on the topic.
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Colin has been working in the business industry for quite a sometime and he recently made the decision to become a full-time business journalist. At Daily Research News, he also helps us take care of the business writing.
