On Colbert last night, Elon Musk, internet tycoon turned electronic car manufacturer turned space entrepreneur wants to colonize Mars, unleashed a literal bombshell:

The billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors appeared on the second episode of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show last night (Sept. 9) to discuss his various business ventures. Colbert asked him about his plan to send people to Mars, which Musk described as a “fixer-up” of a planet. That led to this exchange:

“Eventually you can transform Mars into an Earthlike planet,” Musk said. “By warming it up.”

“With a blanket?” Colbert asked.

No, Stephen, not with a blanket. With a great number of thermonuclear bombs:

Musk has publicly supported this idea for a long time, but we’d wager it’s the first time anyone’s suggested it on a late-night talk show. The idea is that the nukes would melt the Mars’ polar ice caps and kickstart a greenhouse effect—similar to the one we’re currently experiencing on Earth—that would quickly make the planet warmer.

I will make a couple of points here:

• First, you can get the same sort of effect, sans radiation, by dispersing a few tons of carbon black on the poles.  The increased albedo does the rest.
• Second, this really is Bond villain nuts. Batsh%$ insane