Elon Musk: We should head to Mars, just in case World War 3 happens

Elon Musk is – it’s fair to say – one of life’s optimists. The glass is not only half full, but it’s half full of delicious, refreshing apple juice, and it comes with one of those big sharing bags of Maltesers. You need that attitude if you want to change the world in so many different ways, but it does mean that when he comes out with something a bit more pessimistic, you can’t help but feel it. “If even Elon Musk is sad, then why should I be happy?”

In a wide-ranging interview with GQ, Musk once again reiterated the need for humans to colonise Mars in some capacity, explaining: “You back up your hard drive… Maybe we should back up life, too?” That’s nothing new – we know he believes we have a duty to continue the human race.

What is interesting is his reason for wanting to make the leap to Mars as quickly as possible. There’s a school of thought that says technological advancement only moves forward, but Musk isn’t convinced that’s the case, citing the decline of the Roman Empire and Ancient Egypt, following the pyramids, as examples. “There’s a window that could be opened for a long time or a short time where we have an opportunity to establish a self-sustaining base on Mars before something happens to drive the technology level on Earth below where it’s possible,” he said.

What sort of event would cause that? “I think we need to acknowledge that there’s certainly a possibility of a third World War, and if that does occur it could be far worse than anything that’s happened before. Let’s say nuclear weapons are used. I mean, there could be a very powerful social movement that’s anti-technology.” Musk’s words echo one of the possible answers to the Fermi Paradox – why in such a vast universe, we’ve never heard from any aliens.

It’s certainly food for thought, whether or not you think it’s likely. The world of technology can often be extremely short-termist, so it’s good that figures such as Musk are keeping an eye on the bigger picture, but how quickly could we land a human on Mars? Well, the next 20 years seems feasible, but a bit unlikely without a big change in political will. Hopefully, Musk’s fears won’t materialise at all – certainly not before we can make the next giant leap for mankind.

READ THIS NEXT: 16 things Elon Musk believes.

Images: Steve Jurvetson and OnInnovation used under Creative Commons

Elon Musk sees the car of the future driving itself over 2,000 miles to pick you up

Tesla, the Elon Musk-owned electric car company, released an update for its Model S and Model X cars that allowed them to park themselves. Never one to rest on his laurels, Musk then announced that, by 2018, he expects this feature to work absolutely anywhere you can drive your car.

Currently, Tesla’s Summon technology is only capable of driving in a straight line. Its uses are limited, with Tesla suggesting it’s best used for parking your car in a garage at night, or for wheeling itself out in the morning. But that’s just its beta-stage ambitions – the finished version should, as Musk explains, be able to drive itself almost anywhere.

Musk outlined his ambitions for the service in a tweet, saying: “Summon should work anywhere connected by land and not blocked by borders.”

In Musk’s final vision of Summon, you should be able to bring your car to you from the other side of the US, or the other end of the UK. It’ll be smart enough to stop off and charge itself if it can’t make the journey in one go, and it’ll sync with your phone’s calendar so it knows exactly where to go.

The best thing about all of this is that, if you own a current Model S or Model X, it should have the functionality by 2018. Your expensive electric car purchase will still be relevant.

Now watch this: Tesla’s snake charger is awesome

Elon Musk fires shots at Apple for using Tesla employees to build the Apple Car

Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk has voiced his frustrations with Apple and its Car project, known as Project Titan, calling the Cupertino-based company a “Tesla Graveyard” for its practice of hiring fired Tesla employees.

Speaking to German newspaper Handelsblatt, Musk’s insult came from a general concern about Apple’s car project. “We always jokingly call Apple the ‘Tesla Graveyard’,” said Musk. “If you don’t make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple… I’m not kidding”.

Musk’s sick burns are well-intentioned, though: building a car is very different from putting together a Watch or iPhone.

“Did you ever take a look at the Apple Watch? (laughs) No, seriously: it’s good that Apple is moving and investing in this direction,” states Musk to Handelsblatt. “But cars are very complex compared to phones or smartwatches. You can’t just go to a supplier like Foxconn and say ‘build me a car’. But for Apple, the car is the next logical thing to finally offer a significant innovation. A new pencil or a bigger iPad alone were not relevant enough.”

Musk’s point isn’t that Apple doesn’t have the skill to turn its hand to car manufacturing, it’s just that it doesn’t currently build anything itself. But if Musk can do it, why can’t Apple?

Apple’s car project is estimated to arrive in 2019, so there’s still plenty of time for it to smooth out any issues and poach more of Tesla’s fired employees.

Apple is used to having insults hurled its way from other prominent tech figures. Let’s hope Tim Cook can smack down Elon Musk like Steve Jobs did to Michael Dell on stage.

Elon Musk wants to nuke Mars – WTF?

There are all kinds of problems associated with putting humans on Mars. But overlooking the logistics of the whole thing, and imagining for a second we could just hop on a bus and arrive on Martian soil with change from a fiver, there’s a bigger issue: it’s hugely inhospitable to humans.

As Dr Lucy Rogers wrote in her piece exploring the difficulties: “Astronauts would face an average temperature of -55°C, surface winds of up to 80mph and dust storms and whirlwinds.”

“The pressure is only 1% of that on Earth, and the atmosphere contains over 95% carbon dioxide. Also, Mars has no magnetosphere, so radiation hits the surface. Therefore, humans would need to stay in enclosed habitats that offer similar protection to a spacecraft, and would need airlocks and spacesuits to venture onto the planet’s surface.”

Not an ideal holiday home, then, and there isn’t a quick and easy solution. Or is there? Elon Musk – the entrepreneur involved in SpaceX, PayPal and Tesla – has a suggestion: nuking Mars.

Come again?

For those who don’t want to watch the video, here’s a quick transcript:

Colbert: Why do we want to go to Mars? It’s uninhabitable.

Musk: It’s very inhospitable, that’s true.

Colbert: It is – you like have to be in domes and everything and…

Musk: Initially… initially.

Colbert: Initially? Really? How long before we could turn Mars into some place we could live?

Musk: It is a fixer-upper of a planet. First you’re going to have to live in transparent domes… but eventually you could transform Mars into an Earth-like planet.

Colbert: How would you do that?

Musk: You’d warm it up.

Colbert: With a blanket?

Musk: There’s a fast way and a slow way…

Colbert: Okay, give me the fast way.

Musk: The fast way is to drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles.

Colbert: You’re a super villain!

Bad news for the imaginary aliens people keep seeing on the planet, for sure, but a late-night chat show isn’t the ideal place to discuss intricate theoretical science. The idea is that, by turning the ice from Mars’ poles to water vapour, enough of it may enter the atmosphere to change the climate into one that’s a bit more Earth-like.

Brian Toon from the University of Colorado, who wrote a paper on terraforming Mars back in 1991, told the LA Times that, while it’s possible to make that happen, bombs aren’t the answer: “It seems possible to make it Earth-like, but there’s a lot of barriers to overcome. Blowing up bombs is not a good one.”

Jason Smerdon, from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory also acknowledges the possibility of terraforming other planets, but told US News he “would be cautious about our ability to terraform and manage another planet when we struggle so mightily with the practical and preventative measures that are vitally needed to maintain our own.” That’s a fair point, and one which Musk – concerned about climate change as he is – should probably acknowledge.

Another scientist, Dr Matthew Genge from Imperial College London wonders exactly how fast a solution Musk’s idea is. “If we wanted to terraform Mars quickly, the way to do it would be to evaporate those ice packs, but I don’t think we can turn enough ice into gas using nuclear weapons. It would take ten centuries,” Genge told IBTimes UK.

“The biggest nuclear weapon ever made is the Tsar Bomba which had a yield of 25 megatons of TNT, and that would still not be enough. You’d need a lot of nuclear weapons. They cause radiation and it’s not just the immediate effects of that radiation. It’s embedded into the target materials, which generate lots of nasty isotopes which are really quite harmful to human beings,” he added.

On top of that, another side effect could actually cause Mars to cool even further, according to Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Centre at Penn State University. Detonating nukes could “generate so much dust and particles that they literally block out a significant portion of incoming sunlight.” In other words: a nuclear winter on a planet that’s already a bit on the nippy side.

NASA, too isn’t too enthused about the idea, either. “We are also committed to promoting exploration of the solar system in a way that protects explored environments as they exist in their natural state,” the Space Agency said in a statement.

So what do you do when your idea is pretty much universally panned?

Back to the drawing board.

Images: CTBO and European Space Agency used under Creative Commons