[LINK] "Elon Musk suggests nuking Mars, is promptly accused of being a super villain"

[rfmcdonald]

CBC's Max Leighton reports on how Elon Musk's talk with Stephen Colbert of using nuclear weapons on Mars' polar icecaps, presumably with the goal of releasing their water and atmospheric gas into the thin Martian atmosphere, was received.

(At very most this would be just the start.)

[T]hings turned sinister when Colbert brought up Musk's plans for the red planet … Mars.

For the most part, Musk appeared genuinely undeterred by Mars' stark uninhabitability and suggested the "fixer upper of a planet" could be warmed, and rendered more hospitable to humans, in two ways: the "slow way," which, like Earth, involves the release of greenhouse gasses, and the "fast way" which requires the detonation of thermonuclear bombs over the planet's poles.

That's right. Musk suggested we consider, possibly, one day, nuking Mars.

"You're a super villain, that's what a super villain does," said Colbert. "Superman doesn't say we'll drop thermonuclear bombs, that's Lex Luthor, man."

Once again, Musk seemed mostly indifferent to the comparison.