Can Elon Terraform Mars?
It takes a lot to turn the red planet blue.
Elon Musk has been drooling at the mouth over Mars for years now, and as Starship develops into a functioning rocket, he gets closer to his dream of landing on the red planet. But Musk wants more; he wants to terraform Mars so that a human society can thrive on the surface without spacesuits and pressurised domes. He has claimed you can do this purely by detonating some nuclear bombs at the poles, which sadly won’t work (see my article Is Elon Right? Should We Nuke Mars?). But if Musk took the task seriously, could he actually terraform Mars?
We will take a deep dive into the world of planetary engineering, look at all of Mars’s shortcomings, and see if Musk could overcome them. Place your bets, and let’s start!
Firstly, what does Elon need to change to make Mars an Earth 2.0? Well, our ‘sister planet’ is actually very alien to us.
As Mars is further away from the Sun, it gets way less light and, therefore, less heat than we do. This means the Sun in the Martian sky shines 40% dimmer than it does on Earth and makes the planet frigid with an average temperature of -63 °C.
