Elon Musk Might Be A Super Villain

What good is an atmosphere without an adequate magnetosphere to protect it from solar winds?
 
Hypergreatthing said:
Explain how a planet gets a magnetosphere. I have yet to see that explained.
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From my layman's understanding, you have to have an iron core that's already spinning. Supposedly, Earth has one and Mars does not. At least that's my understanding.

If you aren't sure why an iron core would give you a magnetic field then its time to google my friend. :)
 
dceremuga said:
Who cares. I can't stand Colbert. He's an asshole
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I hope you understand that the Colbert you've seen on TV the past 10 years is not actually Stephen Colbert. The Stephen Colbert you see on The Late Show is actually Stephen Colbert.

:D
 
I really dislike the comparisons of Musk to any sort of comic book / movie hero or villain. The guy is a slightly less awful version of Steve Jobs or the Koch family... getting the slightly less descriptor because some of what his companies do might have at least a small degree of public good.

Look at his history, he personally has neither built nor invented anything. He was the marketer for a 90's software startup. Took part of the money from selling that to yahoo to become an angel investor for paypal (which wasn't the first e-currency company) and however many companies got no traction or press. Took the money from selling Paypal to ebay and became the ass that nearly destroyed Tesla in the process of forcing out the prior leadership and securing a mix of government subsidies and VC funds to buy time till an IPO. The old blog posts from Eberhard at the time were entertainingly scathing.

Space X came at about the same time it looked like he was going to get a payday from selling Paypal. He hasn't actually built, designed, or invented anything for Space X, but he does make a good public face as a "futurist." The positive press from that feeds back into supporting Tesla and has separately begun to pay off in some sweet, sweet government contracts.

The hyperloop is just a sad joke.

Solar City was actually a really good example to highlight corporate greed and high-end governmental corporate welfare through the gifting of grants, below-cost loans, tax abatements, tax rebates, and other incentives all of which will need to be paid for at the expenses of directly useful social programs.
 
dceremuga said:
Who cares. I can't stand Colbert. He's an asshole
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The character he played on the Colbert Report was supposed to be an asshole. You might want to check yourself into a treatment center as your ability to sense (very clear) satire seems to be broken.
 
dceremuga said:
Who cares. I can't stand Colbert. He's an asshole
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Y' know... right now... - and I'll accept your statement as true, since everyone can be an asshole - Colbert is so far down on the asshole scale, that's its even amazing you called him an asshole.
 
aShrubbery! said:
Y' know... right now... - and I'll accept your statement as true, since everyone can be an asshole - Colbert is so far down on the asshole scale, that's its even amazing you called him an asshole.
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I give you a 10 for a great comeback, and it was against me. lol :D
 
Elon Musk is much more awkward than I thought he'd be. I kind of thought he'd come off more like Tony Stark.
 
Alfred The Grey said:
From my layman's understanding, you have to have an iron core that's already spinning. Supposedly, Earth has one and Mars does not. At least that's my understanding.

If you aren't sure why an iron core would give you a magnetic field then its time to google my friend. :)
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That's basically correct. Our current understanding is that the mantle of Mars has solidified, which would prevent the core from spinning. This understanding comes from the lack of any volcanic activity visible on the surface of Mars in the past billion or so years. It might be possible to create a large moon out of asteroids that would have sufficient gravity to break up and melt ice in the mantle and to allow the core to spin again. Gravity seems to be driving a lot of volcanic activity in our solar system, so it should work.
 
Draktharbar said:
That's basically correct. Our current understanding is that the mantle of Mars has solidified, which would prevent the core from spinning. This understanding comes from the lack of any volcanic activity visible on the surface of Mars in the past billion or so years. It might be possible to create a large moon out of asteroids that would have sufficient gravity to break up and melt ice in the mantle and to allow the core to spin again. Gravity seems to be driving a lot of volcanic activity in our solar system, so it should work.
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Well I'll take it one step further.
Our basic understanding is that we have a magnetic field due to a solid inner core spinning in a liquid outer core, all that mantle stuff isn't liquid, it's a plasticized solid, kind of like the slow creep lava you always see in Hawaii or what not. Now the kicker here is that the core spins at a different rate than the rest of the planet and this is what makes the magnetic field (hot conductive material spinning in another conductive material).

Mars and every other rocky planet may have had something similar going on at one time, however as time goes on planets lose heat, and the insides cool over time, if this outer core gets too cool then the viscosity will make the inner core spin at the same rate as the planet, and no more magnetic field. Roughly 5 billion years of time have passed and that is definitely enough for Mars to cool off to this point, Mars is roughly 1/2 the diameter and 1/9th the mass of Earth, it simply did not have enough thermal energy to keep it going this long (think a pot of boiling water, removed from the heat, now take 1 drop of water out of the pot, both initially the same temp, the drop of water is going to cool much more rapidly just due to lack of mass). So Earth being much more massive, as well as having an abundance of radioactive materials, have kept the innards quite warm and cozy.

That said, no magnetic field around Mars wouldn't be super duper horrible. While the solar winds do deflect some particles away, the time frame of this happening to such a large amount to be noticeable is extremely large (millions of years perhaps), so if you did melt the poles, get the heavy CO2 atmosphere, then somehow supercharged the conversion of CO2 into O2 so that the atmosphere is somewhat as dense as Earth, then you're good to go, and who knows where technological advancements will take us I'd like to think making a global magnetic field might be doable in a few thousand years :)

That said there really are two large issues at play with the atmosphere that do not involve any sort of magnetic field. First, is atmospheric density, we have the density we have because of the gravity of Earth. Mars at roughly 1/3 the surface gravity means that escape velocity of atmospheric gases is going to be much lower so it'd need to be quite cold for the gases to stick around (I'm too lazy to calculate that temperature now...), so this brings in more issues too dense, gets too warm, air goes away, no longer dense, and too cold, water stays solid, liquid water kind of is important to our atmosphere (hint it's the reason the CO2 level isn't like Venus!). Second, and maybe the most important part, where's all the nitrogen going to come from from melting polar ice? Dry ice is carbon dioxide, water is oxygen and hydrogen. Or atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, too much oxygen, fires would spontaneously start, too much CO2... we die. Basically when people talk about terraforming the atmosphere on Mars they think "oh melt poles, get CO2 in air, CO2 allows greenhouse effect, warming the planet, throw down some plants, and bingo bango we have oxygen to breath" when it's a TINY bit more complicated than that.
 
Teenyman45 said:
I really dislike the comparisons of Musk to any sort of comic book / movie hero or villain. The guy is a slightly less awful version of Steve Jobs or the Koch family... getting the slightly less descriptor because some of what his companies do might have at least a small degree of public good.

Look at his history, he personally has neither built nor invented anything. He was the marketer for a 90's software startup. Took part of the money from selling that to yahoo to become an angel investor for paypal (which wasn't the first e-currency company) and however many companies got no traction or press. Took the money from selling Paypal to ebay and became the ass that nearly destroyed Tesla in the process of forcing out the prior leadership and securing a mix of government subsidies and VC funds to buy time till an IPO. The old blog posts from Eberhard at the time were entertainingly scathing.

Space X came at about the same time it looked like he was going to get a payday from selling Paypal. He hasn't actually built, designed, or invented anything for Space X, but he does make a good public face as a "futurist." The positive press from that feeds back into supporting Tesla and has separately begun to pay off in some sweet, sweet government contracts.

The hyperloop is just a sad joke.

Solar City was actually a really good example to highlight corporate greed and high-end governmental corporate welfare through the gifting of grants, below-cost loans, tax abatements, tax rebates, and other incentives all of which will need to be paid for at the expenses of directly useful social programs.
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Nearly everything Musk has done has been paid for by the government. Space X thru contracts (they sued for), Tesla got a ton of industrial equipment thanks to the Gov't during the recession, all the body stamping machines and most of the industrial robotics were basically gifted to them (and not to fiskar), along with billions in funding.

Musk is like that guy in the yellow suit on the informercial selling the book of gov't handouts.

But credit to him for being a scifi fan. Can't hate.
 
bigdogchris said:
What good is an atmosphere without an adequate magnetosphere to protect it from solar winds?
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I was thinking this as well. The sun would just blow it away.

Alfred The Grey said:
From my layman's understanding, you have to have an iron core that's already spinning. Supposedly, Earth has one and Mars does not. At least that's my understanding.
Click to expand...

Pretty much. Sometime during Mars' history the core solidified, and after a few million years the atmosphere was stripped from the planet, and whatever water didn't boil away into space was either frozen at the poles, or trapped underground.
 
Terra-forming Mars would likely require ...

1) Pulling one moon from the outer planets, heavy in Iron and Uranium, and smash it head on into Mars. To collide and meld into a new planet .... with a newly molten core of iron and uranium to form a magnetic dynamo and strong enough magnetic field to protect an atmosphere.

2) Pull Enceladus out of orbit and bring it in for a soft landing on Mars from behind. This will provide all the water the new planet will need.


Shake then allow to sit for a few 10's of Millions of years, Presto - Earth 2.0

Every time Musk gets on TV, he proves he's a fluke and has no fucking clue, but at least hires the right Igor's to do competent bidding.

Buzz Aldrin was right, it is an INSANITY to allow this idiot or any private operation to conduct our Space operations .... hey fucking Republican aholes FUND NASA. :eek::rolleyes::cool::confused:
 
has he even watched TOTAL RECALL ?

next we'll have the E-Musk Cologne

then i'm dropping a drone on his ass
 
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