A few weeks ago, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was likened to a James Bond villain after he announced his idea to nuke Mars on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He said it was the most rapid way to induce climate change on the planet. Now the billionaire has clarified those comments a bit further. He doesn't want to nuke the surface of Mars; he just wants to nuke the sky over the Martian poles every couple of seconds.

The idea, he said, is to create two tiny pulsing "suns" over the regions. "They're really above the planet, they're not on the planet," Musk said at an event for Solar City in New York City's Times Square this morning. Every few moments, he wants to send a large fusion bomb over the poles, to create small blinking suns. "A lot of people don't appreciate that our Sun is a large fusion explosion," he said.

"A lot of people don't appreciate that our Sun is a large fusion explosion."

The tiny suns would then warm up the planet and turn any frozen carbon dioxide into gas. CO2 is a potent greenhouse gas, meaning it absorbs and traps heat. The more of the gas that's in the atmosphere, the warmer the surface of Mars becomes. When asked how difficult this would be to pull off, Musk replied, "Yeah, absolutely, no problem." The comment was met with nervous laughter by the crowd.

Musk has been very vocal about his goal to colonize Mars. At the SolarCity event, Musk also noted that SpaceX is currently working on plans for their Mars transit vehicle. In January, Musk said he would reveal the company's plans for reaching the Red Planet later this year.

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