Nuking Mars

[flano]

I heard once that it would be possible to nuke the mars polar icecaps to melt them and spread water around the planet encouraging organism growth. Is there any truth to this or is it baloney? Anywhere I could get more info on it if true? ( not that I hav any nukes lyin around I'm plannin on firing at mars but I'm still curious! )

thanks

[ck1]

Dont know about Mars but i'm sure I remeber some discussion about whether we should blow the moon up, maybe on tomorrows world ages ago, not sure whether they ever did though...

[jake-the-peg]

Try a search on Terraforming and Mars but don't believe everything you read

As you suspect it's more complex than that. For a start Mars has an atmosphere that's too thin and is too cold.

There's a reason that water is ice.

Mars's biggest problem is the lack of (or a weak) carbon cycle Once there was flowing water so the temperature was warmer. Probably because volcanos were active and pumping carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere. Now that seems to have stopped and the carbon dioxide is all but gone.

Earth is bigger and therefore hasn't cooled as quickly as Mars.

Big question of course is was Mars warm enough for long enough for life to get going  

[Cloned]

Yes i remeber this. It was if u sent all the nukes in the world at mars to raise the temperature, u would only raise it 1C and also make it very radioactive.

http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~browndp/web4d.html

good site

[finex]

For a slightly more scientifically plausible (if still fictional) technique, you could try and find a copy of "Encounter with Tiber", written by none other than Buzz Aldrin.

 

There's a section near the end describing how an ancient race tried terraforming Mars using nukes. I wish I could remember more, but it's been a few years since I read it!