[ryanmercer]

>Plenty of wild non-war applications have been proposed for nuclear bombs over the years

Yup, Project Plowshare (US) and Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy (USSR) looked a lot of interesting/crazy ideas for non-military applications for nuclear weapons.

Some of the ideas were just nuts for use on earth (like making bays) but if we ever do start setting up shop on another planet, like Mars, nuclear detonations could probably be used for construction efforts early on to get some serious work done quickly - Project Orion, especially if done with materials mined from the asteroid belt, could be an extremely viable option for interstellar travel even if just for probes.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Project_Plowshare

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Natio...

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsio...

[upwardbound]

Relatedly: apparently it would be a good idea to destroy the Martian moon Phobos before settling the planet. It's a fascinating proposal and makes sense; you can read about it here:

https://marspedia.org/Bringing_down_Phobos

[ortusdux]

If we are going down that rabbit hole, I love the plan to create an artificial Martian magnetosphere by placing a magnetic field generating satellite between mars and the solar winds. Generating an atmosphere on mars is all well and good, but it will just blow away again without some protection. The generator would only require roughly 583.9 exajoules, or roughly the world's total energy consumption in 2020.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.06887.pdf

[db65edfc7996]

>Generating an atmosphere on mars is all well and good, but it will just blow away again without some protection.

NASA estimates the Martian atmosphere is ~2.5e16 kgs[0]. Current estimate[1] is that the Martian atmosphere loses 2-3 kg/s. Presently losing something on the order of 1e-9 percentage per day. I think if humans ever have the ability to thicken the Martian atmosphere, we can cover the loss.

[0] https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.htm... [1] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2018.05.030

[m4rtink]

A man made denser atmosphere after terraforming would presumably loose more due to higher pressure.

[ncmncm]

A superconducting tape girdling the planet's equator would suffice, and require after startup only the power needed to keep it chilled at all times below 70K.

[upwardbound]

That sounds actually quite practical and like an amazing option! Are there papers about this you could please share the links to?

[ncmncm]

Just a youtube video.

21340 km of superconducting tape could take rather some time to fabricate. Then, of course you need to get it there, and lay it out, and construct 20k refrigeration plants. Then, extract enough nitrogen from the atmosphere (1.89% concentration) for refrigerant; you'll need about 4M tons of it. You also need 21340 km of cryo-safe piping bonded to the tape, which probably weighs another 4M tons. Plus heat insulation.

Leakage from 21340 km of tubing, even if just migration of single molecules through the walls of the tube, would require continuous injection of fresh nitrogen.

And, I guess, you had better protect it from meteorite strikes. A planet-sized magnetic field suddenly imploding would seem to release enough energy to vaporize your whole tape. Maybe you should have two of them, parallel, 100km apart so they are unlikely to both be taken out by the same meteorite.

[ryanmercer]

>but it will just blow away again without some protection.

Not in any appreciable amount over human timescales.

[saalweachter]

Just out of curiosity, do you know to what extent the various applications (from making artificial bays to sealing wells) depend on it being a nuclear bomb versus "a big bomb"?

[KineticLensman]

> do you know to what extent the various applications (from making artificial bays to sealing wells) depend on it being a nuclear bomb versus "a big bomb"

Well, any of them where emplacing a million tons of TNT might be problematic