Talk:Colonization of Mercury

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This article was nominated for deletion on 8/5/2006. The result of the discussion was keep.

Colonization of Mercury is impossible. The average surface temperature is 353.9°F, way too hot for human life, or any kind of life for that matter, to exist. --Revolución hablar ver 01:12, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

The average temperature does not mean anything. There are some places on Mercury in polar areas with eternal ice and no sunlight.--Nixer 01:18, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

How cold are the polar regions? --Revolución hablar ver 01:49, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

167 K in flat areas, less in shaded craters. See http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/ice/ice_mercury.html, which has references to journal articles. Mercury's axis of rotation in almost exactly perpendicular to its orbital plane. That means the solar energy per unit area at latitude L is reduced by cos (L). So temperature goes up gradually as you go away from the poles. Also you can do a lot to manage temperature with simple reflectors.

I edited the article to make it clear that only polar colonies are being considered, added references and removed the verify tag. --agr 05:37, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Sun 2 More information from Mercury Article? 3 What about robot-only colonization ? 4 Ocean colonization

[edit] Sun

Idly, I wonder how much bigger the Sun appears from the surface of Mercury than it does from the Earth's. I know the Earth is four times bigger in the lunar sky than the Moon is in ours. LeoO3 15:16, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Should be a little over six times as big (in area) It's about 0.4 AU from the Sun, so ratio of cross-sectional area would be (1/0.4)^2 = 6.25.

Wait - actually the semimajor axis is about 0.387, so it's a little more: (1/0.387)^2 ~ 6.68 times as big. - Reaverdrop 17:28, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to both! What an overwhelming sight that must be. LeoO3 17:00, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I remember reading somewhere that it would appear about 3.5 (I get about 2.6 times bigger diameter) times as big as on Earth. bob rulz 08:12, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

From inside a polar crator the sun would never be visable (See from Mercury article) but Earth and Earth's moon would occasionally rise above the rim and Venus would usually be brighter than it appears from Earth because most of the disk of Venus would be in full sunlight. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune would typically be almost as bright as they appear from Earth orbit, but would often be below the crater rim. Mars would be signifcately dimmer as it would typically be about twice as far away, as Mars is from Earth. Neil Ccpoodle 22:09, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More information from Mercury Article?

Found the following in the Mercury article talk page... you may be able to merge this into his page, though it is unreferenced... -- Nbound 02:40, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Potential for human colonization

A crater at the North or South pole of Mercury might prove to be one of the best locations for an off-Earth colony, as the temperature would remain almost constant (at around minus 200 degrees Celsius). This is because Mercury has negligible axial tilt and essentially no atmosphere to carry heat from its sunlit portion. It would thus always be dark at the bottom of a crater at the planet's pole, even a shallow one. Human activities could warm the colony to a comfortable temperature, and the low ambient temperature would make waste heat disposal easier than most locations off Earth. I added the above speculation about a year ago and have since posted it on several forums without getting significant rebuttal, nor confirmation. As far as I know this remains an idea originated by me. It seems reasonable, as Mercury has too little atmosphere and perhaps too little magnetic field to allow high radiation levels on the floor of craters near the poles. (The shielded side of Earth could have deadly ionizating radiation, due to our circulating atmosphere and strong magnetic field. Our Sun could blast us with a CME = coronal mass ejection that killed all Earth humans) - Stong sunlight is often available at the top of the polar crater rims, with minus 133 (minus 200?) degrees c on the crater floor which is a condition allowing the harvest of vast amounts of solar energy. Geothermal heat is also likely as little as one meter below the crater floor. One of the largest and most dense planetary core is only a few kilometers below the crater floor. giving protection from radiation less penetrating than nutrinos from about 45% of the galaxy. Supernova are rare, and near term appear to be negligible hazard to Earthling humans, but we might be in for an unpleasent surprise. - The jet of radiation from a black hole or other compact star is also a near term (but low probability) source of killing radiation, which could last several rotations of any planet other than Venus and Mercury. Neil Ccpoodle 20:58, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

A base elsewhere would have to be able to deal with many weeks of continuous intense solar heating followed by many weeks without any external heating at all. This would not necessarily be as difficult as it may first seem. Facilities could be buried under several meters of loose-packed regolith, which in a vacuum would serve as effective thermal insulation as well as a radiation shield. Similar approaches have been proposed for bases on Earth's Moon, which has two-week-long days followed by two-week-long nights. Due to the lack of atmosphere to conduct heat, a thermal radiator hidden in the shadow of a sun screen would be able to reject heat into space even at the height of the Mercurian day. Alternatively, the base could use a heat sink during the day to store up heat for disposal during the night. Protecting mobile vehicles or robots against solar heating might prove much more difficult, however, which may limit the amount of surface activity that could be performed during the day.

[edit] What about robot-only colonization ?

All these "colonization of ... " articles seem to be about colonization with and by humans. Is it just accidental that there is no consideration of colonization with robots or would that be separate articles? When saying robots I'm not thinking of human-like robots from science fiction books but of fully automated factories and minig sites. 84.160.255.160 10:34, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Colonization is by definition by humans. Otherwise it would be exploration. Nixer 12:32, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't dare to call minig, steel milling and the prodution of solar panels, structural components of space stations and the like, done on a permanent base, exploration. 84.160.231.225 14:46, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, without people it is certainly not colonization. siafu 17:15, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ocean colonization

Why is the "space colonization" boxes entry for earth empty? Would it be good if it pointed to Ocean colonization? 84.160.255.160 11:36, 11 November 2006 (UTC)