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I imagine one of the real, true joys of being perma-branded as visionary, revolutionary, tech futurist is that people have to take everything you say with a sort of sacrosanct respect because clearly you’re just so much damn smarter than the rest of us.
Like, “Oh my Lord, Sir Richard Branson says we could completely eradicate malaria in the third world by shoving tennis balls up our asses. I’ll be damned.”
Or, “Larry Page thinks one day cars will be driven by the reanimated bones of dinosaurs. No way.”
It’s like, half the time I think these dudes are fucking with us just for fun. Case in point, Elon Musk, who today came out in favor of nuking Mars.
Which I’m down with that. Fuck Mars and I’m sure dropping thousands of radioactive bombs on a planet we’ve never set foot on will have no adverse effects whatsoever. This dude’s smart, so it’s gotta be the right move. From The Daily Mail:
Elon Musk has hypothesised Mars could be heated up quickly by dropping nuclear weapons over its poles and said he would like to visit the red planet one day.
Musk told CBS’ new Late Show with Stephen Colbert that Mars is ‘a fixer upper of a planet’ that could be made by Earth-like if it were warmer, USA Today reported.
He explained that this could be achieved slowly – with the gradual release of greenhouse gases, to make a process like global warming on Earth – or quickly, using nuclear bombs.
Heat accounts for between 35 and 45 per cent of the energy released by the explosion, meaning a huge amount of heat is generated incredibly quickly, which could potentially be harnessed to heat up the Martian atmosphere, according to Musk’s fledgling theory.
Fuck it, whatever. He’s gotta be right. He invented Uber or something. I’m just glad to see our society’s foremost visionary gets his brightest ideas from The Simpsons.