14 ms·

Mercury Colonization

232 points by rosser 13y ago

cookingrobot 13y ago
This is fascinating and a really compelling argument. He makes a manned Mars mission sound crazy by comparison.
- rosser 13y ago
  Agreed. I've read a lot of SF, and whenever a Mercury colony has appeared, it's always been in the context of, "Well, now that we've figured out this colonization thing on Mars, and some of the gas giants' moons, and the asteroids, and, and, and... we'll try the hard places, like Mercury." This article makes a powerful case for that thinking being exactly backwards. (Well, except the asteroid part. I've thought for a very long time now that the easiest set-up for an offworld colony, in terms of overall expenditure of effort and resources, would be to tow an asteroid to a Lagrange point, hollow it out, and spin it up for centripetal "gravity".)
  - terramars 13y ago
    agreed Lagrange point asteroid is much easier than any of the other options. you don't even need a big one, you just need enough of a continuous supply of resources to build a really big space station. centripetal gravity really doesn't work for this scenario though since most practical arrangements for overcoming bone loss require ~1km radius which means carbon nanotubes.
    - guylhem 13y ago
      First, we would need some time to get the experience to reach that rock. Then, considering the effort spent acquiring experience, it would be better to focus on a large asteroid. In fact, it would be even better if we could find a way to spare some of the effort to put it on a stable earth orbit. Wait then, couldn't we put this big rock already in stable earth orbit called "the moon" to some good use?? It's not like we've never been there tens of years ago!! EDIT: gravity and chemical composition are valid reasons to mine an asteroid, you are totally right. Yet if we wanted not to mine but to have a colony to edge our bets for a meteor strike, IMHO the moon seems to be a better choice. However, I should have been clearer with my thoughts, I stand corrected :-)
      - yew 13y ago
        The biggest strike against the Moon is gravity - its gravity well is deep enough to make rocketry expensive, even if nowhere near as expensive as on Earth. Even very large asteroids are mostly much less massive than the Moon. For the same reason (mass), asteroid mining is probably more lucrative than Lunar mining (barring materials similar to Helium-3). The Moon seems to have a less diverse composition, with some useful minerals (which are mostly more massive) buried beyond easy reach. The truth is that the Moon is more like a planet than like an asteroid. It is easier to reach.
      - abecedarius 13y ago
        IIRC some asteroids are even less delta-v away than the moon is. It'd be convenient to have one in Earth orbit, but not necessary.
    - wtracy 13y ago
      I also question whether the structural integrity of these things is enough for them to withstand centripetal gravity without ripping themselves apart. We haven't even really confirmed that the large asteroids are really even one solid piece of rock as apposed to being a bunch of debris chunks stuck together.
      - VLM 13y ago
        Then rip them apart by design. There's an artist fixation on making one big non-redundant volume, but other than some surface area to volume vs mass issues there's no reason not to make something that looks more like a sea urchin than a baseball. Once you get over 100 or so little modules chained together you get some interesting dynamic stability problems but it gives the computers something to think about. Worst design I can imagine is one single huge volume like the classic artists interpretation of an oneil cylinder. One hole and they all die and/or the thing rips itself to shreds. "large asteroids are really even one solid piece of rock" You'd be surprised what can be figured out from albedo and rotation measurements. The other thing is the line between asteroid and planet is purely arbitrary, but hovers around the self circularizing point where gravity is intense enough that it has to be more or less spherical. So the biggest asteroids are gravitationally guaranteed to be rounder and smoother, almost like a planet, at least compared to a smaller asteroid. And we've got direct imaging on small asteroids WRT scaling. The reason there are no planets the size of the earth that are cigar shaped or whatever is gravitational. A giant asteroid would be a bit "bumpier" relatively than a small planetary moon, but its not gravitationally possible to be a cigar or a swiss cheese.
    - jacques_chester 13y ago
      > ~1km radius which means carbon nanotubes You can build an 8km diameter O'Neill cylinder[1][2] with titanium. From memory his calculations used a 200% safety margin. Where does the titanium come from? The moon, which absolutely lousy with the stuff. Where does the energy to work titanium come from? Your friendly neighbourhood fusion lamp: the sun. If you have mature carbon nanotech, you can jump up to McKendree cylinders[3]. These are O'Neill cylinders scaled up to a 920km diameter. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ONeill_cylinder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ONeill_cylinder [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Coloni... (worth reading if you can find it) [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKendree_cylinder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKendree_cylinder
      - Pwnguinz 13y ago
        Link [1] is broken :). Need the encoded apostrophe in the URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder
        jacques_chester 13y ago
        Gack! Thanks.
rogerbinns 13y ago
Couldn't we do a practise run on earth? I'd expect an underground colony built to specs to survive indefinitely on Mars or Mercury could also do so on Earth even in the event of a large impact (assuming it isn't a direct hit on the colony itself).
- rosser 13y ago
  An extinction-level impactor on earth would opaque the skies for decades. Unless you have a power source that's going to last that long without refueling, and that's sufficient not only to supply the direct needs of the human occupants, but also their indirect needs, in the form of light for their crops, then no; probably not. That's one of the more compelling points about Mercury, according to this argument: pretty much nowhere else in the solar system is power going to be that cheap and abundant.
  - aaron695 13y ago
    > Unless you have a power source that's going to last that long Geothermal, nuclear, tidal. Perhaps wind, I'd think heating the upper atmosphere would still cause turbulence? I'd say the main reason is that it's not as cool. Which at the end of the day is why we do stuff. Living on Mercury would be dam cool.
    - taproot 13y ago
      +1 for oblivious optimism.
    - vec 13y ago
      I've got to say "cool" is not the first word that springs to mind when I think about setting up shop that close to Sol.
  - robryan 13y ago
    In terms of the situation on earth, you don't need a large amount of survival from an extinction level event. Even if it was a few thousand diverse people in underground nuclear powered bunkers we would eventually build back up.
muyuu 13y ago
Deep underwater colonisation hasn't been properly tried yet and we are thinking of Mercury and Mars. Sounds a bit unreasonable when the best we've tried is this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
- digisign 13y ago
  Not to mention the moon.
  - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
    Moon is a meteorite target.
- hfx 13y ago
  Deep underwater colonisation may be harder to accomplish: > Outer space has -15 psi, extreme temperature swings, and occasional micrometeorite impacts. Five miles subsea has, let's see, 11,800 psi... (http://www.quora.com/International-Space-Station/Given-the-actual-space-station-ISS-would-it-be-cheaper-to-build-the-equivalent-at-3-4-5-miles-deep-underwater-Why/answer/Ryan-Carlyle http://www.quora.com/International-Space-Station/Given-the-a...)
- hartror 13y ago
  I see it as decoupling our survival as a species from the planet earth. Growing our access to resources and land is a secondary consideration to me.
  - luke_s 13y ago
    Wouldn't a self sustaining underwater colony protect us from all but the worst asteroid impacts? If you go even 100m down surely you would be protected from pretty much everything but the earthquakes?
    - babby 13y ago
      Theoretically if said base could hover above the surface of the sea-bed during an earthquake scenario, perhaps it could resist most of the damage, provided it could remain stable.
feefie 13y ago
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
ChuckMcM 13y ago
I like the way this guy thinks about it. The thermal stability is a huge win from an energy requirement perspective.
nfg 13y ago
Kim Stanley Robinson's recent ‘2312’ has an interesting colony on Mercury. Tracks are built encircling the entire planet along a line of latitude, a huge city—‘Terminator’—rides on these rails like a train. It's pushed along by thermal expansion of the tracks at dawn, the city slides perpetually ahead of sunrise. Interesting stuff!
- rosser 13y ago
  2312 is loosely a sequel to his Red/Blue/Green Mars series; Mercury was colonized, and Terminator built during that era. It's been a while since I've read the series, so I don't remember if there was any significant discussion of other kinds of potential settlements on the planet.
  - nfg 13y ago
    IIRC Mercury does get a mention in the trilogy!
omegant 13y ago
First time I have heard of the pressence of ice on the surface of Mercury.
djmdjm 13y ago
A substantial problem with a Mercury colony is that the planet is much deeper into the Sun's gravity well than earth - about a factor of 2. IANARS, but I think the rocket equation is exponential for the gravitation that needs to be overcome. So sending anything back from Mercury would require at least 4x the propellant.
- rosser 13y ago
  Assuming you don't need whatever you're sending back up the slope of the gravity well to arrive all that quickly, a solar sail would probably work quite well. When launched that close to the sun, it would maintain all the momentum imparted from the additional early boost as it traveled further out.
  - luke_s 13y ago
    Also since there is virtually no atmosphere, you could make use of a Mass Driver: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver
    - rosser 13y ago
      For (some) cargo, yes. For passengers, not so much.
- NamTaf 13y ago
  I decided to do a bunch of numbers about getting off each respective rock: Using a = G * M/r^2, we get the following: For Mercury: AMercury = G * 3.29e23/2.44e6 = 3.68 m/s^2 ASun@Merc = G * 1.99e30/5.79e10 = 0.039 m/s^2 Atotal (if you launch off the dark side) = 3.68 + 0.0039 = 3.719 m/s^2 For Earth: AEarth = G * 5.97e24/6.37e6 = 9.81 m/s^2 (duhh) ASun@Earth = G * 1.99e30/1.49e11 = 0.0059 m/s^2 ATotal (off the dark side) = 9.81 + 0.0059 = 9.816 m/s^2 So even if you launch the 'hard way' from both planets (shooting away from the Sun), the gravity well you're in to get off Mercury is less (37%) than that of Earth, thanks to Mercury's far smaller mass. This isn't surprising, given that the local body completely dwarfs the influence of the Sun in both cases. I don't have my lecture notes at work so I can't do it fully, but off the top of my head this is a rough first pass at the relative difficulty of transfers between each planet: Earth orbital velocity: 29.78 km/s Mars orbital velocity: 24.08 km/s Mercury orbital velocity: 47.87 km/s Venus orbital velocity: 35.02 km/s d(Earth-Mars) = 5.70 km/s d(Earth-Venus) = 5.24 km/s d(Earth-Mercury) = 18.09 km/s So in short, you need to change your velocity by 3x - 3.5x as much to get between Earth-Mercury, as you would between Earth-Mars or Earth-Venus (which are quite similar). Given that kinetic energy = 0.5mv^2, that's a 9x - 12.25x factor of energy to get to Mercury vs. the other two. In summary, to get off Mercury is easy compared to Earth (duhh) and the Sun doesn't make any difference there. To get between the planets however is a huge difference and will be the limiting factor on regular Earth-Mercury transfers of matter. Regardless of which way you go (towards or away from the Sun), you need to either shed or add the respective velocities to change from a circular orbit at Earth's orbit to a circular orbit at the other bodies' orbits.
speeder 13y ago
I need to.find.the article.proposing Venus colonization,.but.in short: Venus has very dense atmosphere, it.was figured out that a balloon filled with Earth air at 1 ATM will float high enough in Venus to have a reasonable temperature, and can.be driven as needed to follow sun and shade as required. The only problem with that setup.is that mining would.require some tether technology we don't have, but that Venus idea is still.better than mars, because it is cheaper to do, have more energy available, and the expected conditions of the balloon is closer to here than anything we can figure on mars
- ricardobeat 13y ago
  http://spacemonitor.blogspot.com.br/2007/05/floating-city-on-venus.html http://spacemonitor.blogspot.com.br/2007/05/floating-city-on... There is also a Wikipedia article about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus
- ekianjo 13y ago
  Isn't Venus described as a "living Hell" ? With very high temperatures, high speed winds, toxic atmosphere and so on? If Mars is deemed inhospitable, it's nothing next to Venus.
  - mdellabitta 13y ago
    The idea is that one would live in Venus' atmosphere, not on the surface.
    - rosser 13y ago
      Conveniently, floating cities would go a long, long way towards ensuring that we'd survive any Venusian impactors...
      - electromagnetic 13y ago
        IIRC Venus doesn't have active plate tectonics, but does have a molten core. Meaning every so often it undergoes a massive global resurfacing event. Several things support the theory, and we can't date when or how often it happens, just a while longer than we've been actively watching it and the next one is due: well we don't know yet, so whenever. Not to mention the crushing pressures and temperatures hot enough to have molten lead on the surface. Floating cities are really the only way to do it on Venus.
wtracy 13y ago
"Also, concentrated uranium deposits are probably less common [on Mars] than on Earth because they depend on sedimentary and hydrothermal processes which are much more prevalent on Earth." There is some evidence otherwise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor#Mars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor... To me, the obvious reason to look outwards rather than inwards in the solar system is that it is easier to heat an environment that is too cold than to cool an environment that is too hot. The possibility of underground areas on Mercury being the just-right temperature is intriguing, though.
- jaggederest 13y ago
  The thing is, though, to cool something in an airless environment you just put up some sunshades and suddenly everything is a ridiculous -100 C or so. No convective or conductive heat transfer to speak of, so it's entirely radiative, which means a couple layers of tinfoil reduce it to functionally zero. Assuming your tinfoil doesn't melt, of course.
ef4 13y ago
> Humans are part of a universe where time is measured in billions of years and economics is largely irrelevant. Only if you have a narrow understanding of "economics". Economics is the study of scarcity and how to deal with it. For example, arguing that energy is less scarce on Mercury than Mars is making an economic argument about which is a more desirable place to be. Given the myriad constraints on a colony, the only way to make an apples-to-apples comparison between two possible colonies is to invoke economic concepts. The survival of the species very much depends on economics. We're in a race between the capabilities of our growing capital and the risks that could destroy us. Much of what we do and have today would seem totally impractical to people from poorer eras. Likewise, solutions to problems that seem impractical to us (like geoengineering and space colonies) can become very practical given enough economic growth.
- jfoutz 13y ago
  It's physicists bias. Economics doesn't make very accurate or precise predictions. I mean, economic systems are complicated, it's not really possible to foresee all of the influences on a system. It's not an attack on economists, it's just how it is. Physicists, however, expect 5 digits of precision.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    Physicists are just as stumped by complex and chaotic systems as the rest of us.
    - grinich 13y ago
      At least the physicists' models let you land on Mars.
      - jacques_chester 13y ago
        And an accurate, predictable model of economics would pay for the trip.
adastra 13y ago
But the goal isn't to just colonize any old planet. It's to colonize a place we can successfully terraform. Mars is the clear winner in that respect, and it's not close. Mercury needs basically a planet's worth of water and atmosphere to be imported. Mars on the other hand could be (we hope) good to go. The only question for Mars is whether there are abundant amounts of nitrogen locked up in the soil. But even if not, the amount of stuff we'd need to import by bombarding the planet with asteroids would be orders of magnitude less than for Mercury.
- duaneb 13y ago
  I believe the goal is to survive.
- ekianjo 13y ago
  "Terraforming" is just a concept. We have no idea how to do it and whether it's even possible. And even if it were, it would take hundred of years and would need constant life support from Earth for that time. Hardly a good bet either...
- JamisonM 13y ago
  I think the article makes the case that you do not need to import water, it is supposed to already be there. If you have a ready supply of hydrogen and oxygen (which indications are Mercury does) and an incredible amount of energy that can easily be converted you reduce your import burden substantially. This has always been my doubt about Mars, is the energy available that we need to get anything done over there? (I also agree that Nitrogen availability is a serious issue for any food production, regardless of the strategy, and this is likely a Mercury weak pont.) Terraforming is not the goal, it is a means to an end of making a survivable planet that does not required resources from earth. Limiting your options to terraforming is not required and may not be desirable.
  - adastra 13y ago
    I'd say the goal is to find a survivable planet that can support billions of people. In that sense, the amount of water ice that is in a couple of permanently shadowed craters is really negligible. And on Mercury you're talking about only a narrow zone around the poles that you can support people if you excavate massive amounts of rock underground. If you're talking about the energy required on Mars to change the atmosphere on a planetary scale, is there a source that says that would be a limiting factor? None of the research on this that I've seen considers it to be an issue. Mars receives about 1/3 the incident sunlight that Earth does, measured at vacuum. But the amount of that incident sunlight that will reach the surface will be higher on Mars due to the thin atmosphere and lack of cloud cover.
aggie 13y ago
>The magnetic field of Mars is .1% of Earth, and its atmosphere density is 2% that of Earth, so protection from ionizing radiation would require underground habitation, the same as on Mercury. Curiosity has gathered data that suggests radiation on the surface of Mars is actually tolerable to humans [1], comparable to low-earth orbit, and presumably not too difficult to deal with for long-term surface habitation. I presume this article is a few years old due to the mention of Spirit and Opportunity but not Curiosity. [1] http://www.marssociety.org/home/press/announcements/curiositydatashowsmarssurfacecosmicrayradiationdoseacceptableforhumanexplorers http://www.marssociety.org/home/press/announcements/curiosit...
satori99 13y ago
A recent novel by Kim Stanley Robinson, 2132, featured an equatorial on city on Mercury, built on rails that circle the entire planet. The thermal expansion of the tracks on the day side propel the city permanently into the night side. I thought it was a neat idea.
utopkara 13y ago
Asteroid impacts and stray planets colluding with earth make great movies and special effects. Yet, P(human environmental damage irreparably damaging the ecosystem) >> P(10km asteroid hitting earth) How would you like to spend your money? Based on how often you see one in movie theaters, or based on reality?
- smky80 13y ago
  This x 1000. Seriously, it's like that newspaper photo of the pregnant lady smoking a cigarette while the caption reads "Area woman concerned about the effect of the sound of jackhammers on her baby."
- ericd 13y ago
  A colony would be useful there too...
- stcredzero 13y ago
  "colluding?"
  - utopkara 13y ago
    Yep, the end of the world :-)
    - stcredzero 13y ago
      Thanks for showing your standards so openly and sincerely.
D_Alex 13y ago
I'm sold. Lets go for it!
ekianjo 13y ago
Instead of thinking how to colonize other planets while we have really low tech capabilities to do that, it is probably more effective to design efficient Asteroid defense. There are several interesting ways to do that (such as having something orbiting around the Asteroid to progressively change its course). ANd anyway I seriously doubt people living on Earth are going to be OK with their politician telling them: "Oh, there's a huge boulder coming our way, but don't worry! The Human race is safe, we have 10 guys and women living on Mercury! Aren't you glad we planned for this?".
- rosser 13y ago
  Ten people is an outpost, not a colony, but your point that we should also be working on impactor defense is well-taken. In fact, colonies along with impactor defense is an example of the concept of "defense in depth".
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    Well, you know what I mean. Even if you had 1000, it would still look pretty bad for the billions of people living on Earth. And let's not talk about genetic diversity in a population of 1000, oh no, let's not talk about that. EDIT: since you modified your post. Well, agree with you. Just like everyone here should have good offline and online backup strategies for their data.
- greatguns 13y ago
  I know this is what they are pushing to congress now, and I think it isn't a bad idea to do what we can to defend ourselves, but terraforming is where it is at. We need to be able to terraform and colonize places outside of Earth to survive long-term. Unless you start with 10 guys off-planet you'll never get to a million, or a billion, or...
losethos 13y ago
God says... 16:15 In the light of the king's countenance is life; and his favour is as a cloud of the latter rain. 16:16 How much better is it to get wisdom than gold! and to get understanding rather to be chosen than silver! 16:17 The highway of the upright is to depart from evil: he that keepeth his way preserveth his soul. 16:18 Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. 16:19 Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud. 16:20 He that handleth a matter wisely shall find good: and whoso trusteth in the LORD, happy is he. 16:21 The wise in heart shall be called prudent: and the sweetness of the lips increaseth learning. ---- Would you need an elevated house? Stilts? Need rain? wha? Get a favor from God? Naa.
danso 13y ago
If an extinction level event is the justification for colonizing another planet, I wonder if the scenario we should prepare for should be nuclear annihilation, and not an asteroid event? Seems like nuclear war would be much more likely. The relevance to the discussion is that unless the nuclear annihilation is complete, then the colony only has to survive for 200 years on its own (or however long it takes for Earth's survivors to rebuild civilization) rather than forever.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
cletus 13y ago
I, like many others, find this whole area deeply fascinating. I'm particularly perturbed by the Fermi Paradox [1]. On that note, another commenter mentions a KSR book that has a city moving around a latitude to keep a certain place relative to the Sun. Alastair Reynolds certainly had that earlier (in Absolution Gap). I'm also reminded of Iain M. Banks' Outside Context Problem [2] in a number of different ways. The first is that space seems, from the human perspective, to be impossible big with even the nearest things being almost impossibly distant. The optimists argue that technology will solve that problem (probably whilst imagining a Star Trek like future) but the laws of physics paint a far bleaker picture if you look at just the energy cost to get to our nearest neighbour even assuming you solve the reaction mass problem and have perfect mass to energy conversion, the problem that even the smallest piece of matter (and eventually even hydrogen atoms) become deadly obstacles at even a modest %c and so on. The second is that given the abundance of planetary systems we've already detected, the size of the galaxy (and its age) and the very real possibility of constructing self-replicating machines with something not that much beyond our tech, it seems strange that we haven't seen evidence of this. Anyway, back to interplanetary colonization... given the relative distance to Mercury (6-7 years at current tech for an orbital intercept) such a colony would of course be essentially cut off from the Earth so would need to be self-sufficient (saying nothing of the problem of building a colony ship that could even get people there and keep them alive for such a long period). I think about it this way: what is the "footprint" of a single person in the developed world? By this I mean we all need food, power, material things and the like. For each of those things, add in all the people required to produce, deliver and service those and keep adding those people until you have a group that is independent and self-sustaining. Primitive people have a relatively small footprint, requiring a relatively small group but a large amount of area per person. In the developed world, to maintain anything like our current existence seemingly requires a good portion of the planet. That's a problem for any kind of colonization effort. But at the same time that interdependence reduces (IMHO) conflict. Imagine a world where 100,000 people could be self-sufficient and effectively cut themselves off from the rest of the world? It seems like a recipe for disaster. It seems like a recipe for creating a technocratic elite and the kind of social divergence that would ultimately create a new species (at first culturally). So for a Mercury colonization effort you'd need to take enough to establish heavy industry in a hostile environment (assuming you'd mine what you need rather than carry it there), build habitats, food production and so on. It quickly spirals into an impossibly large effort. Colonization in human history to date has happened at far lower technological levels where transportation and communication were (compared to space travel) ridiculously cheap. What we probably need is automated, self-replicating heavy industry. This way we send an initial package of robots to Mercury. They build energy sources, habitats, mines, etc without the huge cost of keeping humans alive. Need more robots? They build those too. Sound familiar? You're only one step away from the self-replicating robots that can (and apparently haven't) colonized the galaxy. So yes investing in impact defense seems prudent. I don't know what we could really do against something that's 20km across though. That's an awful lot of mass to move out of our way. What we really need is something that is a large part of artificial intelligence and self-replicating machines to do our work for us. This seems to me like the key to our long term survival and something we'll need to spend significant effort into developing. As an aside, I tend to agree that the desire to colonize Mars is somewhat misguided but, mistakenly or not, Mars shares a lot more in common with us than Mercury does. It has an atmosphere (although not a terribly useful one). The cold is something that we, as humans, can and do deal with. It's also closer to Earth (~8 months at the right time). I personally find the rover effort to be useful as the basis for building machiens that can survive in hostile environments for long periods of time, if nothing else. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession#Outside_Context_Problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession#Outside_Context_Probl...
bayesianhorse 13y ago
Food for thought: Rather to colonize another planet, wouldn't it be easier to build the telescopes to spot a 5-20km sized asteroid and then deflect it? The deflection would probably need less fuel than putting a colony on mercury (or mars or the moon) that could survive independently...
- antimagic 13y ago
  Well, the deflection system would still be a single point of failure for the human species. Colonising another planet of the solar system would reduce SPOFs to events affecting the entire solar system - the sun becoming a red giant, a neighbouring sun going supernova, a pulsar setting up shop too close. Settling on another planet removes species-ending events such as asteroid strikes, global nuclear war, a really bad virus getting out, nanotech grey goo getting loose. The deflection system would only remove one of these.
meric 13y ago
Read http://advancehumanity.com/winter/ http://advancehumanity.com/winter/ and http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11875131 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11875131, and you won't feel -40 degrees to be so bad anymore.
larrydag 13y ago
I'm curious what the affects of the Sun's radiation would have with people on Mercury. It might not be conducive to vegetation or habitation even if it is underground.
antninja 13y ago
I like to daydream about space colonization too. Each world has its own challenges: * Mercury Advantages: There's rocks we can mine and water, no need for a heating system in the underground cities, strong-enough gravity and magnetic field. Inconvenients: Spending over 6 years in a small spaceship is quite insane, the water may be irradiated, underground cities are extremely expensive to build compared with surface cities, there's only room for two megacities at the poles unless we do a Death Star kind of urbanization (then there may not be enough water). * Venus Advantages: less than a year of travel away, good gravity and a big atmosphere that compensates the lack of magnetic field, rocks we can mine, the high pressure and heat are manageable with our technology (the Russian probes had insufficient protections against heat), no need for underground cities. Inconvenients: No water (there's H and O in the sulfuric acid but the collect and transform process may be expensive), there may be no nitrogen sources to cheaply make our air, the cooling system is a critical infrastructure. * The deep sea of Earth Advantages: only a few hours of travel away, warm (5 to 0°C), cheap geothermic energy, extremely resilient to asteroid impacts, more than abundant water and rocks we can mine, no need to build underground cities. Inconvenients: much worse pressure than on Venus, total darkness and the layer of sand/dust make it hard to find potential mines. * Moon Advantages: only a few days of travel away, rocks we can mine, gravity may be sufficient. Inconvenients: water is expensive to extract from the dust layer, requires underground cities (or does the Earth act as a shield?), there may be no nitrogen sources to cheaply make our air. * Mars Advantages: less than a year of travel away, water and rocks we can mine, no extreme temperatures thanks to the atmosphere. Inconvenients: sand tempests, no magnetic field so underground cities may be necessary, the heating system is a critical infrastructure as with all worlds beyond the Earth (but we know how to heat stuff), there may be no nitrogen sources to cheaply make our air. * Callisto Advantages: the only Jovian moon we can colonize (it's away from the radiations of Jupiter), water and rocks we can mine, would enable the robotic mining of all Jovian moons. Inconvenients: several years of travel away (5?), requires underground cities, extremely cold. * Titan Advantages: abundant water, nitrogen and hydrocarbons, a thick atmosphere, no need for underground cities, may host life. Inconvenients: at least 7 years of travel away, there may not be rocks we can mine on its surface (which would make it impossible to build cities), extremely cold. Those are the low-hanging fruits of our solar system, and they're all hanging higher than we would have liked.

232 points by rosser 13y ago

cookingrobot 13y ago

This is fascinating and a really compelling argument. He makes a manned Mars mission sound crazy by comparison.

rosser 13y ago
Agreed. I've read a lot of SF, and whenever a Mercury colony has appeared, it's always been in the context of, "Well, now that we've figured out this colonization thing on Mars, and some of the gas giants' moons, and the asteroids, and, and, and... we'll try the hard places, like Mercury." This article makes a powerful case for that thinking being exactly backwards. (Well, except the asteroid part. I've thought for a very long time now that the easiest set-up for an offworld colony, in terms of overall expenditure of effort and resources, would be to tow an asteroid to a Lagrange point, hollow it out, and spin it up for centripetal "gravity".)
- terramars 13y ago
  agreed Lagrange point asteroid is much easier than any of the other options. you don't even need a big one, you just need enough of a continuous supply of resources to build a really big space station. centripetal gravity really doesn't work for this scenario though since most practical arrangements for overcoming bone loss require ~1km radius which means carbon nanotubes.
  - guylhem 13y ago
    First, we would need some time to get the experience to reach that rock. Then, considering the effort spent acquiring experience, it would be better to focus on a large asteroid. In fact, it would be even better if we could find a way to spare some of the effort to put it on a stable earth orbit. Wait then, couldn't we put this big rock already in stable earth orbit called "the moon" to some good use?? It's not like we've never been there tens of years ago!! EDIT: gravity and chemical composition are valid reasons to mine an asteroid, you are totally right. Yet if we wanted not to mine but to have a colony to edge our bets for a meteor strike, IMHO the moon seems to be a better choice. However, I should have been clearer with my thoughts, I stand corrected :-)
    - yew 13y ago
      The biggest strike against the Moon is gravity - its gravity well is deep enough to make rocketry expensive, even if nowhere near as expensive as on Earth. Even very large asteroids are mostly much less massive than the Moon. For the same reason (mass), asteroid mining is probably more lucrative than Lunar mining (barring materials similar to Helium-3). The Moon seems to have a less diverse composition, with some useful minerals (which are mostly more massive) buried beyond easy reach. The truth is that the Moon is more like a planet than like an asteroid. It is easier to reach.
    - abecedarius 13y ago
      IIRC some asteroids are even less delta-v away than the moon is. It'd be convenient to have one in Earth orbit, but not necessary.
  - wtracy 13y ago
    I also question whether the structural integrity of these things is enough for them to withstand centripetal gravity without ripping themselves apart. We haven't even really confirmed that the large asteroids are really even one solid piece of rock as apposed to being a bunch of debris chunks stuck together.
    - VLM 13y ago
      Then rip them apart by design. There's an artist fixation on making one big non-redundant volume, but other than some surface area to volume vs mass issues there's no reason not to make something that looks more like a sea urchin than a baseball. Once you get over 100 or so little modules chained together you get some interesting dynamic stability problems but it gives the computers something to think about. Worst design I can imagine is one single huge volume like the classic artists interpretation of an oneil cylinder. One hole and they all die and/or the thing rips itself to shreds. "large asteroids are really even one solid piece of rock" You'd be surprised what can be figured out from albedo and rotation measurements. The other thing is the line between asteroid and planet is purely arbitrary, but hovers around the self circularizing point where gravity is intense enough that it has to be more or less spherical. So the biggest asteroids are gravitationally guaranteed to be rounder and smoother, almost like a planet, at least compared to a smaller asteroid. And we've got direct imaging on small asteroids WRT scaling. The reason there are no planets the size of the earth that are cigar shaped or whatever is gravitational. A giant asteroid would be a bit "bumpier" relatively than a small planetary moon, but its not gravitationally possible to be a cigar or a swiss cheese.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    > ~1km radius which means carbon nanotubes You can build an 8km diameter O'Neill cylinder[1][2] with titanium. From memory his calculations used a 200% safety margin. Where does the titanium come from? The moon, which absolutely lousy with the stuff. Where does the energy to work titanium come from? Your friendly neighbourhood fusion lamp: the sun. If you have mature carbon nanotech, you can jump up to McKendree cylinders[3]. These are O'Neill cylinders scaled up to a 920km diameter. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ONeill_cylinder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ONeill_cylinder [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Coloni... (worth reading if you can find it) [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKendree_cylinder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKendree_cylinder
    - Pwnguinz 13y ago
      Link [1] is broken :). Need the encoded apostrophe in the URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder
      - jacques_chester 13y ago
        Gack! Thanks.

rogerbinns 13y ago

Couldn't we do a practise run on earth? I'd expect an underground colony built to specs to survive indefinitely on Mars or Mercury could also do so on Earth even in the event of a large impact (assuming it isn't a direct hit on the colony itself).

rosser 13y ago
An extinction-level impactor on earth would opaque the skies for decades. Unless you have a power source that's going to last that long without refueling, and that's sufficient not only to supply the direct needs of the human occupants, but also their indirect needs, in the form of light for their crops, then no; probably not. That's one of the more compelling points about Mercury, according to this argument: pretty much nowhere else in the solar system is power going to be that cheap and abundant.
- aaron695 13y ago
  > Unless you have a power source that's going to last that long Geothermal, nuclear, tidal. Perhaps wind, I'd think heating the upper atmosphere would still cause turbulence? I'd say the main reason is that it's not as cool. Which at the end of the day is why we do stuff. Living on Mercury would be dam cool.
  - taproot 13y ago
    +1 for oblivious optimism.
  - vec 13y ago
    I've got to say "cool" is not the first word that springs to mind when I think about setting up shop that close to Sol.
- robryan 13y ago
  In terms of the situation on earth, you don't need a large amount of survival from an extinction level event. Even if it was a few thousand diverse people in underground nuclear powered bunkers we would eventually build back up.

muyuu 13y ago

Deep underwater colonisation hasn't been properly tried yet and we are thinking of Mercury and Mars. Sounds a bit unreasonable when the best we've tried is this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

digisign 13y ago
Not to mention the moon.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  Moon is a meteorite target.
hfx 13y ago
Deep underwater colonisation may be harder to accomplish: > Outer space has -15 psi, extreme temperature swings, and occasional micrometeorite impacts. Five miles subsea has, let's see, 11,800 psi... (http://www.quora.com/International-Space-Station/Given-the-actual-space-station-ISS-would-it-be-cheaper-to-build-the-equivalent-at-3-4-5-miles-deep-underwater-Why/answer/Ryan-Carlyle http://www.quora.com/International-Space-Station/Given-the-a...)
hartror 13y ago
I see it as decoupling our survival as a species from the planet earth. Growing our access to resources and land is a secondary consideration to me.
- luke_s 13y ago
  Wouldn't a self sustaining underwater colony protect us from all but the worst asteroid impacts? If you go even 100m down surely you would be protected from pretty much everything but the earthquakes?
  - babby 13y ago
    Theoretically if said base could hover above the surface of the sea-bed during an earthquake scenario, perhaps it could resist most of the damage, provided it could remain stable.

feefie 13y ago

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

ChuckMcM 13y ago

I like the way this guy thinks about it. The thermal stability is a huge win from an energy requirement perspective.

nfg 13y ago

Kim Stanley Robinson's recent ‘2312’ has an interesting colony on Mercury. Tracks are built encircling the entire planet along a line of latitude, a huge city—‘Terminator’—rides on these rails like a train. It's pushed along by thermal expansion of the tracks at dawn, the city slides perpetually ahead of sunrise. Interesting stuff!

rosser 13y ago
2312 is loosely a sequel to his Red/Blue/Green Mars series; Mercury was colonized, and Terminator built during that era. It's been a while since I've read the series, so I don't remember if there was any significant discussion of other kinds of potential settlements on the planet.
- nfg 13y ago
  IIRC Mercury does get a mention in the trilogy!

omegant 13y ago

First time I have heard of the pressence of ice on the surface of Mercury.

djmdjm 13y ago

A substantial problem with a Mercury colony is that the planet is much deeper into the Sun's gravity well than earth - about a factor of 2. IANARS, but I think the rocket equation is exponential for the gravitation that needs to be overcome. So sending anything back from Mercury would require at least 4x the propellant.

rosser 13y ago
Assuming you don't need whatever you're sending back up the slope of the gravity well to arrive all that quickly, a solar sail would probably work quite well. When launched that close to the sun, it would maintain all the momentum imparted from the additional early boost as it traveled further out.
- luke_s 13y ago
  Also since there is virtually no atmosphere, you could make use of a Mass Driver: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_driver
  - rosser 13y ago
    For (some) cargo, yes. For passengers, not so much.
NamTaf 13y ago
I decided to do a bunch of numbers about getting off each respective rock: Using a = G * M/r^2, we get the following: For Mercury: AMercury = G * 3.29e23/2.44e6 = 3.68 m/s^2 ASun@Merc = G * 1.99e30/5.79e10 = 0.039 m/s^2 Atotal (if you launch off the dark side) = 3.68 + 0.0039 = 3.719 m/s^2 For Earth: AEarth = G * 5.97e24/6.37e6 = 9.81 m/s^2 (duhh) ASun@Earth = G * 1.99e30/1.49e11 = 0.0059 m/s^2 ATotal (off the dark side) = 9.81 + 0.0059 = 9.816 m/s^2 So even if you launch the 'hard way' from both planets (shooting away from the Sun), the gravity well you're in to get off Mercury is less (37%) than that of Earth, thanks to Mercury's far smaller mass. This isn't surprising, given that the local body completely dwarfs the influence of the Sun in both cases. I don't have my lecture notes at work so I can't do it fully, but off the top of my head this is a rough first pass at the relative difficulty of transfers between each planet: Earth orbital velocity: 29.78 km/s Mars orbital velocity: 24.08 km/s Mercury orbital velocity: 47.87 km/s Venus orbital velocity: 35.02 km/s d(Earth-Mars) = 5.70 km/s d(Earth-Venus) = 5.24 km/s d(Earth-Mercury) = 18.09 km/s So in short, you need to change your velocity by 3x - 3.5x as much to get between Earth-Mercury, as you would between Earth-Mars or Earth-Venus (which are quite similar). Given that kinetic energy = 0.5mv^2, that's a 9x - 12.25x factor of energy to get to Mercury vs. the other two. In summary, to get off Mercury is easy compared to Earth (duhh) and the Sun doesn't make any difference there. To get between the planets however is a huge difference and will be the limiting factor on regular Earth-Mercury transfers of matter. Regardless of which way you go (towards or away from the Sun), you need to either shed or add the respective velocities to change from a circular orbit at Earth's orbit to a circular orbit at the other bodies' orbits.

speeder 13y ago

I need to.find.the article.proposing Venus colonization,.but.in short: Venus has very dense atmosphere, it.was figured out that a balloon filled with Earth air at 1 ATM will float high enough in Venus to have a reasonable temperature, and can.be driven as needed to follow sun and shade as required. The only problem with that setup.is that mining would.require some tether technology we don't have, but that Venus idea is still.better than mars, because it is cheaper to do, have more energy available, and the expected conditions of the balloon is closer to here than anything we can figure on mars

ricardobeat 13y ago
http://spacemonitor.blogspot.com.br/2007/05/floating-city-on-venus.html http://spacemonitor.blogspot.com.br/2007/05/floating-city-on... There is also a Wikipedia article about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Venus
ekianjo 13y ago
Isn't Venus described as a "living Hell" ? With very high temperatures, high speed winds, toxic atmosphere and so on? If Mars is deemed inhospitable, it's nothing next to Venus.
- mdellabitta 13y ago
  The idea is that one would live in Venus' atmosphere, not on the surface.
  - rosser 13y ago
    Conveniently, floating cities would go a long, long way towards ensuring that we'd survive any Venusian impactors...
    - electromagnetic 13y ago
      IIRC Venus doesn't have active plate tectonics, but does have a molten core. Meaning every so often it undergoes a massive global resurfacing event. Several things support the theory, and we can't date when or how often it happens, just a while longer than we've been actively watching it and the next one is due: well we don't know yet, so whenever. Not to mention the crushing pressures and temperatures hot enough to have molten lead on the surface. Floating cities are really the only way to do it on Venus.

wtracy 13y ago

"Also, concentrated uranium deposits are probably less common [on Mars] than on Earth because they depend on sedimentary and hydrothermal processes which are much more prevalent on Earth." There is some evidence otherwise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor#Mars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor... To me, the obvious reason to look outwards rather than inwards in the solar system is that it is easier to heat an environment that is too cold than to cool an environment that is too hot. The possibility of underground areas on Mercury being the just-right temperature is intriguing, though.

jaggederest 13y ago
The thing is, though, to cool something in an airless environment you just put up some sunshades and suddenly everything is a ridiculous -100 C or so. No convective or conductive heat transfer to speak of, so it's entirely radiative, which means a couple layers of tinfoil reduce it to functionally zero. Assuming your tinfoil doesn't melt, of course.

ef4 13y ago

> Humans are part of a universe where time is measured in billions of years and economics is largely irrelevant. Only if you have a narrow understanding of "economics". Economics is the study of scarcity and how to deal with it. For example, arguing that energy is less scarce on Mercury than Mars is making an economic argument about which is a more desirable place to be. Given the myriad constraints on a colony, the only way to make an apples-to-apples comparison between two possible colonies is to invoke economic concepts. The survival of the species very much depends on economics. We're in a race between the capabilities of our growing capital and the risks that could destroy us. Much of what we do and have today would seem totally impractical to people from poorer eras. Likewise, solutions to problems that seem impractical to us (like geoengineering and space colonies) can become very practical given enough economic growth.

jfoutz 13y ago
It's physicists bias. Economics doesn't make very accurate or precise predictions. I mean, economic systems are complicated, it's not really possible to foresee all of the influences on a system. It's not an attack on economists, it's just how it is. Physicists, however, expect 5 digits of precision.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  Physicists are just as stumped by complex and chaotic systems as the rest of us.
  - grinich 13y ago
    At least the physicists' models let you land on Mars.
    - jacques_chester 13y ago
      And an accurate, predictable model of economics would pay for the trip.

adastra 13y ago

But the goal isn't to just colonize any old planet. It's to colonize a place we can successfully terraform. Mars is the clear winner in that respect, and it's not close. Mercury needs basically a planet's worth of water and atmosphere to be imported. Mars on the other hand could be (we hope) good to go. The only question for Mars is whether there are abundant amounts of nitrogen locked up in the soil. But even if not, the amount of stuff we'd need to import by bombarding the planet with asteroids would be orders of magnitude less than for Mercury.

duaneb 13y ago
I believe the goal is to survive.
ekianjo 13y ago
"Terraforming" is just a concept. We have no idea how to do it and whether it's even possible. And even if it were, it would take hundred of years and would need constant life support from Earth for that time. Hardly a good bet either...
JamisonM 13y ago
I think the article makes the case that you do not need to import water, it is supposed to already be there. If you have a ready supply of hydrogen and oxygen (which indications are Mercury does) and an incredible amount of energy that can easily be converted you reduce your import burden substantially. This has always been my doubt about Mars, is the energy available that we need to get anything done over there? (I also agree that Nitrogen availability is a serious issue for any food production, regardless of the strategy, and this is likely a Mercury weak pont.) Terraforming is not the goal, it is a means to an end of making a survivable planet that does not required resources from earth. Limiting your options to terraforming is not required and may not be desirable.
- adastra 13y ago
  I'd say the goal is to find a survivable planet that can support billions of people. In that sense, the amount of water ice that is in a couple of permanently shadowed craters is really negligible. And on Mercury you're talking about only a narrow zone around the poles that you can support people if you excavate massive amounts of rock underground. If you're talking about the energy required on Mars to change the atmosphere on a planetary scale, is there a source that says that would be a limiting factor? None of the research on this that I've seen considers it to be an issue. Mars receives about 1/3 the incident sunlight that Earth does, measured at vacuum. But the amount of that incident sunlight that will reach the surface will be higher on Mars due to the thin atmosphere and lack of cloud cover.

aggie 13y ago

>The magnetic field of Mars is .1% of Earth, and its atmosphere density is 2% that of Earth, so protection from ionizing radiation would require underground habitation, the same as on Mercury. Curiosity has gathered data that suggests radiation on the surface of Mars is actually tolerable to humans [1], comparable to low-earth orbit, and presumably not too difficult to deal with for long-term surface habitation. I presume this article is a few years old due to the mention of Spirit and Opportunity but not Curiosity. [1] http://www.marssociety.org/home/press/announcements/curiositydatashowsmarssurfacecosmicrayradiationdoseacceptableforhumanexplorers http://www.marssociety.org/home/press/announcements/curiosit...

satori99 13y ago

A recent novel by Kim Stanley Robinson, 2132, featured an equatorial on city on Mercury, built on rails that circle the entire planet. The thermal expansion of the tracks on the day side propel the city permanently into the night side. I thought it was a neat idea.

utopkara 13y ago

Asteroid impacts and stray planets colluding with earth make great movies and special effects. Yet, P(human environmental damage irreparably damaging the ecosystem) >> P(10km asteroid hitting earth) How would you like to spend your money? Based on how often you see one in movie theaters, or based on reality?

smky80 13y ago
This x 1000. Seriously, it's like that newspaper photo of the pregnant lady smoking a cigarette while the caption reads "Area woman concerned about the effect of the sound of jackhammers on her baby."
ericd 13y ago
A colony would be useful there too...
stcredzero 13y ago
"colluding?"
- utopkara 13y ago
  Yep, the end of the world :-)
  - stcredzero 13y ago
    Thanks for showing your standards so openly and sincerely.

D_Alex 13y ago

I'm sold. Lets go for it!

ekianjo 13y ago

Instead of thinking how to colonize other planets while we have really low tech capabilities to do that, it is probably more effective to design efficient Asteroid defense. There are several interesting ways to do that (such as having something orbiting around the Asteroid to progressively change its course). ANd anyway I seriously doubt people living on Earth are going to be OK with their politician telling them: "Oh, there's a huge boulder coming our way, but don't worry! The Human race is safe, we have 10 guys and women living on Mercury! Aren't you glad we planned for this?".

rosser 13y ago
Ten people is an outpost, not a colony, but your point that we should also be working on impactor defense is well-taken. In fact, colonies along with impactor defense is an example of the concept of "defense in depth".
- ekianjo 13y ago
  Well, you know what I mean. Even if you had 1000, it would still look pretty bad for the billions of people living on Earth. And let's not talk about genetic diversity in a population of 1000, oh no, let's not talk about that. EDIT: since you modified your post. Well, agree with you. Just like everyone here should have good offline and online backup strategies for their data.
greatguns 13y ago
I know this is what they are pushing to congress now, and I think it isn't a bad idea to do what we can to defend ourselves, but terraforming is where it is at. We need to be able to terraform and colonize places outside of Earth to survive long-term. Unless you start with 10 guys off-planet you'll never get to a million, or a billion, or...

losethos 13y ago

God says... 16:15 In the light of the king's countenance is life; and his favour is as a cloud of the latter rain. 16:16 How much better is it to get wisdom than gold! and to get understanding rather to be chosen than silver! 16:17 The highway of the upright is to depart from evil: he that keepeth his way preserveth his soul. 16:18 Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. 16:19 Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud. 16:20 He that handleth a matter wisely shall find good: and whoso trusteth in the LORD, happy is he. 16:21 The wise in heart shall be called prudent: and the sweetness of the lips increaseth learning. ---- Would you need an elevated house? Stilts? Need rain? wha? Get a favor from God? Naa.

danso 13y ago

If an extinction level event is the justification for colonizing another planet, I wonder if the scenario we should prepare for should be nuclear annihilation, and not an asteroid event? Seems like nuclear war would be much more likely. The relevance to the discussion is that unless the nuclear annihilation is complete, then the colony only has to survive for 200 years on its own (or however long it takes for Earth's survivors to rebuild civilization) rather than forever.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

cletus 13y ago

I, like many others, find this whole area deeply fascinating. I'm particularly perturbed by the Fermi Paradox [1]. On that note, another commenter mentions a KSR book that has a city moving around a latitude to keep a certain place relative to the Sun. Alastair Reynolds certainly had that earlier (in Absolution Gap). I'm also reminded of Iain M. Banks' Outside Context Problem [2] in a number of different ways. The first is that space seems, from the human perspective, to be impossible big with even the nearest things being almost impossibly distant. The optimists argue that technology will solve that problem (probably whilst imagining a Star Trek like future) but the laws of physics paint a far bleaker picture if you look at just the energy cost to get to our nearest neighbour even assuming you solve the reaction mass problem and have perfect mass to energy conversion, the problem that even the smallest piece of matter (and eventually even hydrogen atoms) become deadly obstacles at even a modest %c and so on. The second is that given the abundance of planetary systems we've already detected, the size of the galaxy (and its age) and the very real possibility of constructing self-replicating machines with something not that much beyond our tech, it seems strange that we haven't seen evidence of this. Anyway, back to interplanetary colonization... given the relative distance to Mercury (6-7 years at current tech for an orbital intercept) such a colony would of course be essentially cut off from the Earth so would need to be self-sufficient (saying nothing of the problem of building a colony ship that could even get people there and keep them alive for such a long period). I think about it this way: what is the "footprint" of a single person in the developed world? By this I mean we all need food, power, material things and the like. For each of those things, add in all the people required to produce, deliver and service those and keep adding those people until you have a group that is independent and self-sustaining. Primitive people have a relatively small footprint, requiring a relatively small group but a large amount of area per person. In the developed world, to maintain anything like our current existence seemingly requires a good portion of the planet. That's a problem for any kind of colonization effort. But at the same time that interdependence reduces (IMHO) conflict. Imagine a world where 100,000 people could be self-sufficient and effectively cut themselves off from the rest of the world? It seems like a recipe for disaster. It seems like a recipe for creating a technocratic elite and the kind of social divergence that would ultimately create a new species (at first culturally). So for a Mercury colonization effort you'd need to take enough to establish heavy industry in a hostile environment (assuming you'd mine what you need rather than carry it there), build habitats, food production and so on. It quickly spirals into an impossibly large effort. Colonization in human history to date has happened at far lower technological levels where transportation and communication were (compared to space travel) ridiculously cheap. What we probably need is automated, self-replicating heavy industry. This way we send an initial package of robots to Mercury. They build energy sources, habitats, mines, etc without the huge cost of keeping humans alive. Need more robots? They build those too. Sound familiar? You're only one step away from the self-replicating robots that can (and apparently haven't) colonized the galaxy. So yes investing in impact defense seems prudent. I don't know what we could really do against something that's 20km across though. That's an awful lot of mass to move out of our way. What we really need is something that is a large part of artificial intelligence and self-replicating machines to do our work for us. This seems to me like the key to our long term survival and something we'll need to spend significant effort into developing. As an aside, I tend to agree that the desire to colonize Mars is somewhat misguided but, mistakenly or not, Mars shares a lot more in common with us than Mercury does. It has an atmosphere (although not a terribly useful one). The cold is something that we, as humans, can and do deal with. It's also closer to Earth (~8 months at the right time). I personally find the rover effort to be useful as the basis for building machiens that can survive in hostile environments for long periods of time, if nothing else. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession#Outside_Context_Problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession#Outside_Context_Probl...

bayesianhorse 13y ago

Food for thought: Rather to colonize another planet, wouldn't it be easier to build the telescopes to spot a 5-20km sized asteroid and then deflect it? The deflection would probably need less fuel than putting a colony on mercury (or mars or the moon) that could survive independently...

antimagic 13y ago
Well, the deflection system would still be a single point of failure for the human species. Colonising another planet of the solar system would reduce SPOFs to events affecting the entire solar system - the sun becoming a red giant, a neighbouring sun going supernova, a pulsar setting up shop too close. Settling on another planet removes species-ending events such as asteroid strikes, global nuclear war, a really bad virus getting out, nanotech grey goo getting loose. The deflection system would only remove one of these.

meric 13y ago

Read http://advancehumanity.com/winter/ http://advancehumanity.com/winter/ and http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11875131 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11875131, and you won't feel -40 degrees to be so bad anymore.

larrydag 13y ago

I'm curious what the affects of the Sun's radiation would have with people on Mercury. It might not be conducive to vegetation or habitation even if it is underground.

antninja 13y ago

I like to daydream about space colonization too. Each world has its own challenges: * Mercury Advantages: There's rocks we can mine and water, no need for a heating system in the underground cities, strong-enough gravity and magnetic field. Inconvenients: Spending over 6 years in a small spaceship is quite insane, the water may be irradiated, underground cities are extremely expensive to build compared with surface cities, there's only room for two megacities at the poles unless we do a Death Star kind of urbanization (then there may not be enough water). * Venus Advantages: less than a year of travel away, good gravity and a big atmosphere that compensates the lack of magnetic field, rocks we can mine, the high pressure and heat are manageable with our technology (the Russian probes had insufficient protections against heat), no need for underground cities. Inconvenients: No water (there's H and O in the sulfuric acid but the collect and transform process may be expensive), there may be no nitrogen sources to cheaply make our air, the cooling system is a critical infrastructure. * The deep sea of Earth Advantages: only a few hours of travel away, warm (5 to 0°C), cheap geothermic energy, extremely resilient to asteroid impacts, more than abundant water and rocks we can mine, no need to build underground cities. Inconvenients: much worse pressure than on Venus, total darkness and the layer of sand/dust make it hard to find potential mines. * Moon Advantages: only a few days of travel away, rocks we can mine, gravity may be sufficient. Inconvenients: water is expensive to extract from the dust layer, requires underground cities (or does the Earth act as a shield?), there may be no nitrogen sources to cheaply make our air. * Mars Advantages: less than a year of travel away, water and rocks we can mine, no extreme temperatures thanks to the atmosphere. Inconvenients: sand tempests, no magnetic field so underground cities may be necessary, the heating system is a critical infrastructure as with all worlds beyond the Earth (but we know how to heat stuff), there may be no nitrogen sources to cheaply make our air. * Callisto Advantages: the only Jovian moon we can colonize (it's away from the radiations of Jupiter), water and rocks we can mine, would enable the robotic mining of all Jovian moons. Inconvenients: several years of travel away (5?), requires underground cities, extremely cold. * Titan Advantages: abundant water, nitrogen and hydrocarbons, a thick atmosphere, no need for underground cities, may host life. Inconvenients: at least 7 years of travel away, there may not be rocks we can mine on its surface (which would make it impossible to build cities), extremely cold. Those are the low-hanging fruits of our solar system, and they're all hanging higher than we would have liked.