Elon Musk's Mars Plans Include Bombs, Bubbles, Cybertrucks And New Species

Elon Musk has never been shy about his ambitions of putting mankind on Mars, saving Earth from an impending population crisis, and achieving it all through his diverse portfolio of companies. But those plans are not merely rhetorical claims to prop up his image as some kind of techno-futuristic messiah. According to an interview-driven report published by The New York Times, work is underway at SpaceX regarding a planned Mars colony, and the ambitions include something as wild as detonating thermonuclear bombs on the red planet.

Musk's space tech company reportedly has a dedicated company that is currently exploring plans for bubble-like habitats and the materials that would be used to build them. Scientists are experimenting with a variety of materials to achieve the goal of in-situ construction, instead of hauling hundreds of tons of materials from Earth – a process that is cumbersome as well as wildly expensive. One of those ideas is AstroCrete, which is essentially a mix of Martian dust, sweat, and blood to form a concrete-like material.

3d printing is being seen as another viable solution, with the dome-like Sfero concept being one of them. SpaceX's imaginations seem to be grander. Internal material reportedly shows concepts of a colony living in a city shaped like a giant central dome and smaller ones around it. "Mr. Musk is particularly concerned with making sure the city looks cool," claims the report, further adding that the ongoing discussions are focused on the construction materials.

Musk has reportedly conveyed to SpaceX employees that he expects a million people to touchdown on the Martian soil within the next couple of decades, a plan which is far more ambitious than the targets NASA has set for the latter phases of the Artemis mission. But reaching Mars is only one small step of a much bigger equation. The planet's surface is not particularly suited for human beings, and for a community to thrive at such a large scale, terraforming seems to be the only viable solution to negate the harsh environmental conditions and make it suitable for human survival.

Terraforming is essentially giving a planet an extreme makeover by altering crucial features like how hot or cold it is, the air pressure, what the land looks like, and what kind of life can survive there. Terraforming in a nutshell is changing one planet to make it more like another one.

For Musk-led SpaceX, the terraforming solution could come in the form of thermonuclear bombs on the planet, which after detonation, would theoretically heat up the cold, desert-like planet. It's not outlandish. In a paper titled "A Future Mars Environment For Science And Exploration," Jim Green, a former top scientist at NASA, proposed a massive magnetic shield between the Sun and Mars to save the planet's atmosphere. NASA isn't averse to the idea, either.

Assuming — and that's a big assumption — SpaceX manages to put a human community on Mars and even gets the community habitat ready, the next big question would be survival. It seems SpaceX is thinking about that phase, as well. "Another is working on spacesuits to combat Mars's hostile environment, while a medical team is researching whether humans can have children there" adds the report. For moving people around on Mars, specially modified Cybertrucks have been proposed. It seems shooting a Roadster into space was a sign of Tesla's interplanetary ambitions, after all.

Then comes the question of the resources, both food and energy. "Mr. Musk plans to use Starship as sort of a Noah's Ark, carrying plants and animals on the initial voyage," adds the report, which cites insider sources at SpaceX. The report doesn't detail exactly what plants SpaceX will bring, nor how it plans to grow edible material for its Martian colonies. SpaceX, however, intends to build greenhouses in which humans would cultivate the plans they carried from Earth.

These would be special plants, or more specifically, new species. "I think it's quite likely we'd want to bioengineer new organisms that are better suited to living on Mars," Musk was quoted as saying by Forbes, alluding to the well-known practice of selective breeding. The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) has also sponsored a program called "Redesigning Life for Mars" that would use the gene-splicing technique to transfer resilient genes of certain plant species. The hybrid plants will then be grown inside Martian greenhouses, capable of withstanding low temperatures and high radiation exposure, in theory.