ghgh
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Still trying to make kinetics work.
Posts: 136
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Post by ghgh on Aug 20, 2018 22:38:32 GMT
Mercury is hot, very hot. It has no atmosphere to protect it's surface from the sun (or breath). It is small in size (1/4 the diameter of Earth) and mass (3.3*10^23 kg or 0.055 Earth masses). It has no moons... not one. The days on the planet serve more to spit-roast it then regulate temperature. Water, even in ice form is basically nonexistent. It is without a doubt the most worthless planet in the solar system.
The only purpose such a planet can serve is a testing ground for Petaton munitions (which will be used to send mercury into the sun). Can anyone think of a reason to not reduce our solar system to 7 planets?!
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Aug 20, 2018 22:46:38 GMT
Mercury has a lot of solar power and is likely to have abundance of metals, given that it's essentially a planetary core stripped of most of the mantle. And it does seem to have some water ice in perpetually shadowed polar craters, IIRC.
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Post by anotherfirefox on Aug 20, 2018 22:49:01 GMT
Solarthermal plants. Ores. Planetwide temp diff power plant. Research station for Solar science and relativity, high energy physics. And so on
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Post by The Astronomer on Aug 20, 2018 23:14:32 GMT
Imo Mercury has a good potential to become a single most important rock in the system considering how rich in both energy and materials it is. You can mine resources out of the surface and turn it into products. You can put a solar power generation station in sunsync orbit around it and beam power you generated outwards or synthesize antimatter. You can have an equatorial mass driver and an orbiting laser beam station that beams ships to various other destinations in both the system and interstellar. You can even turn it into a giant computer and do many things with it. Energy is not a problem, because you have a giant ball of light next to you. It has lots of carbon, too. Maybe it is lacking in volatiles, but why does it matter? You can always redirect a properly coated iceball at it. It’s not like lots of humans have to live there to use it.
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ghgh
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Still trying to make kinetics work.
Posts: 136
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Post by ghgh on Aug 20, 2018 23:34:17 GMT
In order to set up solar power you would need to either launch batteries off the planet (not ideal), or beam it off via laser (much better). I believe mercury is 30% silicate matter though I can't find a good source for that figure. If that's the case you will have plenty of raw materials for solar panels. However, the long days could make maintenance of the panels difficult. I don't know how long the usable life would be for electronics but I imagine the cosmic rays would not play nice with robotics. They would have to be well shielded to prevent them from frying. Interestingly enough Mercury actually has higher gravity than Mars due to its density at 0.34 G. Provided 0.34 G is something people could adapt to comfortably, the only real obstacle to overcome would be the Sun, but the Sun is still the main problem anyways. On the dark side of the planet you would go for 2 months without the Sun (could be compensated for with UV). When facing the sun your shields would need to be heavily filtered to allow some sunlight into the colony. There are plenty of craters around that planet that could be roofed to limit the area needed to shield. People who are born and live on Mercury would need to train their bodies heavily if they ever wanted to visit Earth again. As a side not, that would actually make for an interesting concept. Different colonists would be adapted to different G's. As such you couldn't house Martian colonists in the same space colonies as Earthlings. This would provide plenty of room for alienation between peoples. Even though we would be the same species the fact that a Martian would be more comfortable on Mercury due to gravity similarities then on a terraformed Venus (which would be lethal without extensive training due to G's). There would be plenty of room to spark animosity due to physiological differences in addition to societal differences (people riot over sports teams for crying out loud). Sub species would begin to develop and would be unable to reproduce with each other due to adaptation to a certain gravity field. Edit: I had started writing this blurb after the first response. A lot of the things I wrote were already covered by the Astronomer and anotherfirefox, or debunked. It looks like a derp coming after their posts .
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Post by The Astronomer on Aug 20, 2018 23:38:18 GMT
Why are you sending lots of humans to Mercury? Is there any other good reason than 'it's there so we colonize it'? If you insist, why don't you dig a hole into the crust and make a rotating hab in it, then close the lid and light the place up?
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ghgh
Full Member
Still trying to make kinetics work.
Posts: 136
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Post by ghgh on Aug 20, 2018 23:54:48 GMT
Why are you sending lots of humans to Mercury? Is there any other good reason than 'it's there so we colonize it'? If you insist, why don't you dig a hole into the crust and make a rotating hab in it, then close the lid and light the place up? I guess I'd just like to see people on every planet (and would like to blow that planet up if people can't live on it or its moons). I can't even think of a reason to live ON Mercury though It would be cool to imagine a colony of craters linked by tunnels through their ridges. Some of the craters are 2km deep which would provide plenty of shielding until noon which would last about 2.5 days (very) roughly (60 days per sidereal, noon=1hr 24/60=2.5). I think I should apologize to Mercury for my harsh comments above, I had not done enough research into the subject.
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Post by anotherfirefox on Aug 21, 2018 0:07:15 GMT
Why are you sending lots of humans to Mercury? Is there any other good reason than 'it's there so we colonize it'? If you insist, why don't you dig a hole into the crust and make a rotating hab in it, then close the lid and light the place up? I guess I'd just like to see people on every planet (and would like to blow that planet up if people can't live on it or its moons). I can't even think of a reason to live ON Mercury though It would be cool to imagine a colony of craters linked by tunnels through their ridges. Some of the craters are 2km deep which would provide plenty of shielding until noon which would last about 2.5 days (very) roughly (60 days per sidereal, noon=1hr 24/60=2.5). I think I should apologize to Mercury for my harsh comments above, I had not done enough research into the subject. Simple solution: Update my soul to an efficient neural network and call me still human, send replications of me everywhere It's easier, more righteous that human be evolved, organisms are meant to be evolved anyway when ball of rocks don't :/
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Post by apophys on Aug 21, 2018 2:14:40 GMT
Mercury is an excellent source of raw material to start building a Dyson swarm of rotating habitats and power satellites around the sun. There is more than enough material there to set up starlifting, to extract material out of the sun once the planet is completely deconstructed.
I'm expecting all of the planets and other rocks except Earth (for nostalgia reasons) to be eventually deconstructed for parts. You can fit a lot more people in purpose-built space habitats than just on the surface of a solid sphere.
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Post by anotherfirefox on Aug 21, 2018 2:20:21 GMT
Mercury is an excellent source of raw material to start building a Dyson swarm of rotating habitats and power satellites around the sun. There is more than enough material there to set up starlifting, to extract material out of the sun once the planet is completely deconstructed. I'm expecting all of the planets and other rocks except Earth (for nostalgia reasons) to be eventually deconstructed for parts. You can fit a lot more people in purpose-built space habitats than just on the surface of a solid sphere. Why not earth? You don't need it once you transcended into a metal god
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ghgh
Full Member
Still trying to make kinetics work.
Posts: 136
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Post by ghgh on Aug 21, 2018 2:30:10 GMT
Mercury is an excellent source of raw material to start building a Dyson swarm of rotating habitats and power satellites around the sun. There is more than enough material there to set up starlifting, to extract material out of the sun once the planet is completely deconstructed. I'm expecting all of the planets and other rocks except Earth (for nostalgia reasons) to be eventually deconstructed for parts. You can fit a lot more people in purpose-built space habitats than just on the surface of a solid sphere. Why not earth? You don't need it once you transcended into a metal god Keep your hands off my blue marble you damn toaster!!!
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Post by The Astronomer on Aug 21, 2018 3:03:33 GMT
Even without sentimental feelings, Earth is not worth it. It's too big, and it's too small. The planet contains fractions of the system's mass, and is deep in sizable gravwell. There are also people and many other living beings here, and yes, I don't expect you to be able to force every single person to turn into in-computer folks.
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Post by kjakker on Aug 21, 2018 19:55:47 GMT
I thought I would share this video, it being relevant to the topic.
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Post by Apotheon on Aug 24, 2018 21:02:13 GMT
Mercury has a lot of solar power and is likely to have abundance of metals, given that it's essentially a planetary core stripped of most of the mantle. And it does seem to have some water ice in perpetually shadowed polar craters, IIRC. Extreme ice hockey?
I thought I would share this video, it being relevant to the topic. I've watched a few of those and found them to be a mostly philosophical waste of time with a lot of roleplaying and not much hard data. Maybe this one is different.
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ghgh
Full Member
Still trying to make kinetics work.
Posts: 136
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Post by ghgh on Aug 25, 2018 23:01:16 GMT
Mercury has a lot of solar power and is likely to have abundance of metals, given that it's essentially a planetary core stripped of most of the mantle. And it does seem to have some water ice in perpetually shadowed polar craters, IIRC. Extreme ice hockey?
I thought I would share this video, it being relevant to the topic. I've watched a few of those and found them to be a mostly philosophical waste of time with a lot of roleplaying and not much hard data. Maybe this one is different. I like listening to Elmer Fudd describe methods of colonizing the solar system.
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