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Except colonizing Mercury is of relatively little value because of how little surface of it is usable, impossibility of terraforming the planet, how difficult i

Except colonizing Mercury is of relatively little value because of how little surface of it is usable, impossibility of terraforming the planet, how difficult it is to get there or back and that it does not help to reach any other interesting place in our system or outside of it.

bregma 5y ago
We do these things, and the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  No, there are very few people who actually do this. People collectively do hard things when they are profitable. Profitability here in most broad sense possible. US did not send men to Moon because it was hard. It was done because US was in a race with USSR and winning that race was profitable to US. Having public opinion excited about some goal can be profitable, too. If you don't believe, think about it: why has Apollo program been stopped? Because people got used to it and there was nothing further to prove -- further sanding people to Moon after US has demonstrated it can do it repeatedly was extremely expensive but there were no longer any significant profits from it. So while it was still hard it actually became unprofitable to continue to do so. If it was hard that caused US to send people to Moon, they would not stop sending people, they would be sending more, build base on Moon, etc.
Valgrim 5y ago
It has, however, a tremendous value for building Dyson swarms and other megastructures.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  I disagree. Tell me, how putting actual human on Mercury helps building a megastructure? It is not like they will be able to do shit while on the surface of Mercury. They would be just sitting idle in a single polar crater that happens to be shaded from Sun and have access to water. Then if you want to send anything to an orbit where you would want to build Dyson sphere you would actually have to expend more energy than if you tried to send it from surface of Earth. That makes absolutely no sense. I think these types of megastructures will be built by swarms of autonomous drone ships that can collectively gather, transform and deliver resources, use gathered resources to produce more drones and use the rest of resources to build whatever megastructure has been programmed in.
  - Valgrim 5y ago
    Mercury has a some great advantages for a Dyson swarm: - It is extremely metals and mineral rich, perfect for building the billions of giant mirrors required for a Dyson swarm. -It's already really close to the sun, so you don't need as much energy to get your mirrors in a lower solar orbit, compared to earth. -Because it's close to the sun, it receives a lot more energy too, which can be used to power machine and... -It has no atmosphere and little gravity, so the swarm can be launched with simple electromagnetic mass drivers. -It has plenty of water, so the few human operators required to control the machines remotely in real-time can live very comfortably at the poles (or in deep trenches in lower latitudes). I agree that human colonization of Mercury is going to remain very limited, only because of the trouble of landing there. But you won't find a better planet to mine and launch billions of mirrors.
BeefWellington 5y ago
A colony doesn't strictly have to mean "persist humanity indefinitely into the future" -- it can also mean going there, setting up camp and extracting mineral resources, for example.
- lmilcin 5y ago
  Why extract mineral resources from a planet that is so deep within Sun gravitational field that you have to expend more energy to get stuff from there than you would to get stuff from Earth surface? Why do that if you have billions of flying bodies in much more convenient places flying around the Sun waiting to be docked to to extract resources?
  - Denvercoder9 5y ago
    > Why extract mineral resources from a planet that is so deep within Sun gravitational field that you have to expend more energy to get stuff from there than you would to get stuff from Earth surface? Mercury itself is light enough to cancel that out.
    - lmilcin 5y ago
      > Mercury itself is light enough to cancel that out. No, it does not cancel it out. You need about 12km/s delta V to get to Mercury from Earth and then the same to get back. Remember, if you need to lift anything from Mercury, you need to actually transport fuel TO Mercury, before you can use it to lift anything out of Mercury. And you don't just need twice more fuel for twice more delta-V. The fuel requirements grow exponentially. Now imagine, how poor idea it is to transport mountains of fuel to Mercury just to get a tiny bit of what exactly? Raw materials? What kind of raw materials are present on Mercury that would warrant it?
      - Denvercoder9 5y ago
        It depends on your destination. It doesn't make sense to get things on Mercury and bring them to Earth, but if you need them in space, it may make sense. Don't forget that you pay about 12-13 km/s of delta V to get anything from Earth either.

bregma 5y ago

We do these things, and the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard.

lmilcin 5y ago
No, there are very few people who actually do this. People collectively do hard things when they are profitable. Profitability here in most broad sense possible. US did not send men to Moon because it was hard. It was done because US was in a race with USSR and winning that race was profitable to US. Having public opinion excited about some goal can be profitable, too. If you don't believe, think about it: why has Apollo program been stopped? Because people got used to it and there was nothing further to prove -- further sanding people to Moon after US has demonstrated it can do it repeatedly was extremely expensive but there were no longer any significant profits from it. So while it was still hard it actually became unprofitable to continue to do so. If it was hard that caused US to send people to Moon, they would not stop sending people, they would be sending more, build base on Moon, etc.

Valgrim 5y ago

It has, however, a tremendous value for building Dyson swarms and other megastructures.

lmilcin 5y ago
I disagree. Tell me, how putting actual human on Mercury helps building a megastructure? It is not like they will be able to do shit while on the surface of Mercury. They would be just sitting idle in a single polar crater that happens to be shaded from Sun and have access to water. Then if you want to send anything to an orbit where you would want to build Dyson sphere you would actually have to expend more energy than if you tried to send it from surface of Earth. That makes absolutely no sense. I think these types of megastructures will be built by swarms of autonomous drone ships that can collectively gather, transform and deliver resources, use gathered resources to produce more drones and use the rest of resources to build whatever megastructure has been programmed in.
- Valgrim 5y ago
  Mercury has a some great advantages for a Dyson swarm: - It is extremely metals and mineral rich, perfect for building the billions of giant mirrors required for a Dyson swarm. -It's already really close to the sun, so you don't need as much energy to get your mirrors in a lower solar orbit, compared to earth. -Because it's close to the sun, it receives a lot more energy too, which can be used to power machine and... -It has no atmosphere and little gravity, so the swarm can be launched with simple electromagnetic mass drivers. -It has plenty of water, so the few human operators required to control the machines remotely in real-time can live very comfortably at the poles (or in deep trenches in lower latitudes). I agree that human colonization of Mercury is going to remain very limited, only because of the trouble of landing there. But you won't find a better planet to mine and launch billions of mirrors.

BeefWellington 5y ago

A colony doesn't strictly have to mean "persist humanity indefinitely into the future" -- it can also mean going there, setting up camp and extracting mineral resources, for example.

lmilcin 5y ago
Why extract mineral resources from a planet that is so deep within Sun gravitational field that you have to expend more energy to get stuff from there than you would to get stuff from Earth surface? Why do that if you have billions of flying bodies in much more convenient places flying around the Sun waiting to be docked to to extract resources?
- Denvercoder9 5y ago
  > Why extract mineral resources from a planet that is so deep within Sun gravitational field that you have to expend more energy to get stuff from there than you would to get stuff from Earth surface? Mercury itself is light enough to cancel that out.
  - lmilcin 5y ago
    > Mercury itself is light enough to cancel that out. No, it does not cancel it out. You need about 12km/s delta V to get to Mercury from Earth and then the same to get back. Remember, if you need to lift anything from Mercury, you need to actually transport fuel TO Mercury, before you can use it to lift anything out of Mercury. And you don't just need twice more fuel for twice more delta-V. The fuel requirements grow exponentially. Now imagine, how poor idea it is to transport mountains of fuel to Mercury just to get a tiny bit of what exactly? Raw materials? What kind of raw materials are present on Mercury that would warrant it?
    - Denvercoder9 5y ago
      It depends on your destination. It doesn't make sense to get things on Mercury and bring them to Earth, but if you need them in space, it may make sense. Don't forget that you pay about 12-13 km/s of delta V to get anything from Earth either.