Would Elon Musk’s Plan To Nuke Mars Work?

On the "Late Show With Stephen Colbert" SpaceX founder Elon Musk brought up the idea that if we nuked Mars, it could become habitable. Would that work?

"It's a fixer-upper of a planet," Musk told Colbert. "Eventually you could transform Mars into an Earth-like planet.""

Would his plan even work?

Mars at the moment is a dead planet. Its polar ice caps however do contain water and carbon dioxide....even though it's extremely frozen. The plan would use Nuclear weapons to vaporize them, releasing those materials into the atmosphere. Once the atmosphere got thick enough, the greenhouse effect would kick in.

That would continue heating up the planet, releasing more carbon dioxide, setting off a chain reaction until, ideally, the surface pressure of Mars would increase enough for liquid water to exist — making it much more habitable for oxygen-producing plants."

In theory thanks to NBC News, the idea could work. Also though, it could go terrible wrong.