Elon Musk, 48, is no stranger to unusual tweets and cryptic messages, which he shares with his 27.8 million Twitter followers. But the South African billionaire outdid himself today (August 16) when he seemingly declared war on the planet Mars. In an enigmatic, two-word tweet, the SpaceX CEO called for the Red Planet to be attacked with nuclear weapons. Mr Musk’s message was received with a barrage of responses from around the globe.
SpaceX is also in the process of developing the Starship – an interplanetary launch vehicle designed to ferry people to the Moon, Mars and beyond.
However, this is not the first time the Mr Musk has suggested dropping nuclear bombs on Mars.
In 2015, he appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert where spoke about terraforming the Red Planet to make it more habitable for humans.
In Mr Musk’s opinion, the fastest way to induce a warmer climate on Mars is to drop nuclear bombs at the planet’s south and north poles.
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Speaking later that year at a Solar City event in New York, Mr Musk said: “They’re really above the planet, they’re not on the planet.”
The idea, he argued, is to detonate fusion bombs on Mars in a bid to create miniaturised stars.
Mr Musk said: “A lot of people don’t appreciate that our Sun is a large fusion explosion.”
The proposition was, however, met with scepticism from the scientific community.
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A NASA funded study in 2018 found it would be impossible to trigger a greenhouse effect on the Red Planet by forcibly releasing trapped carbon dioxide from specific regions of Mars.
Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado, who led the study, said: “Our results suggest that there is not enough CO2 remaining on Mars to provide significant greenhouse warming were the gas to be put into the atmosphere.
“In addition, most of the CO2 gas is not accessible and could not be readily mobilized.
“As a result, terraforming Mars is not possible using present-day technology.”
As far as Mr Musk’s tweets are conners, the SpaceX boss said in April 2018: “My Twitter is pretty much complete nonsense at this point.”
