How Do We Colonize Mercury

canada goose factory sale How Do We Colonize Mercury? canada goose factory sale

Welcome back buy canada goose jacket to the first in our canada goose clearance series on Colonizing the Solar System! First up, we take a look at that hot, hellish place located closest to the Sun the planet Mercury!

cheap Canada Canada Goose Parka Goose Humanity has long dreamed of establishing itself on other worlds, even before we started going into space. We’ve talked about colonizing the Moon, Mars, and even establishing ourselves on exoplanets in distant star systems. But what about the other planets in our own backyard? When it comes to the Solar System, there is a lot of potential real estate out there that we don’t really consider. cheap Canada Goose

Well consider Mercury. While most people wouldn’t suspect it, the closest planet to our Sun is actually a potential candidate for settlement. Whereas it experiences extremes in temperature gravitating between heat that could instantly cook a human being to cold that could flash freeze flesh in seconds it actually has potential as a starter colony. However, it has only been since the the mid 20th century that colonization has been dealt with in a scientific fashion. Some of the earliest known examples of this include the short stories of Leigh Brackett and Isaac Asimov during the 1940s and 50s.

Canada Goose Jackets In the former’s work, Mercury is a tidally locked planet (which was what astronomers believed at the time) that has a “Twilight Belt” characterized by extremes in canada goose deals heat, cold, and solar storms. Some of Asimov’s early work included short stories where a similarly tidally locked Mercury was the setting, or characters came from a colony located on the planet. Canada Goose Jackets

Canada Goose Coats On Sale Mercury, as imaged by the Canada Goose online MESSENGER spacecraft, revealing parts of the never seen by human eyes. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of WashingtonThese included “Runaround” (written in 1942, and later included in I, Robot), which centers on a robot that canada goose is specifically designed to cope with the intense radiation of Mercury. In Asimov’s murder mystery story “The Dying Night” (1956) in which the three suspects hail from Mercury, the Moon and Ceres the conditions of each location are key to finding out who the murderer is. Canada Goose Coats On Sale

canada goose black friday sale In 1946, Ray Bradbury published “Frost and Fire”, a short story that takes place on a planet described as being next to the sun. The conditions on this canada goose coats world allude to Mercury, where the days are extremely hot, the nights extremely cold, and humans live for only eight days. Arthur C. Clarke’s Islands in the Sky (1952) contains a description of a http://www.canadagoosecanadaoutlet.com creature that lives on what was believed at the time to Mercury’s permanently dark side and occasionally visits the twilight region. canada goose black friday sale

buy canada goose jacket cheap In his later novel, Rendezvous with Rama (1973), Clarke describes a colonized Solar System which includes the Hermians, a toughened branch of humanity that lives on Mercury and thrives off the export of metals and energy. The same setting and planetary identities is used in his 1976 novel Imperial Earth. buy canada goose jacket cheap

canada goose uk outlet In Kurt Vonnegut’s novel The Sirens of Titan (1959), a section of the story is set in caves located on the dark side of the planet. Larry Niven’s short story “The Coldest Place” (1964) teases the reader by presenting a world that is said to be the coldest location in the Solar System, only to reveal that it is the dark side of Mercury (and not Pluto, as is generally assumed). canada goose uk outlet

canada goose clearance sale “Lava Falls on Mercury” (by Ken Fagg) for If cheap Canada Goose magazine, June 1954. Credit: Public DomainMercury also serves as a location in many of Kim Stanley Robinson’s novels and short stories. These include (1985), Blue Mars (1996), and 2312 (2012), in which Mercury is the home to a vast city called Terminator. To avoid the harmful radiation and heat, the Canada Goose Jackets city rolls around the planet’s equator on tracks, keeping pace with the planet’s rotation so that it stays ahead of the Sun. canada goose clearance sale

In 2005, Ben Bova publishedMercury (part of his Grand Tour series) that deals with the exploration of Mercury and colonizing it for the sake of harnessing solar energy. For example, Mercury’s slow rotational period means that one side of the planet is facing towards the Sun for extended periods of time reaching temperatures highs of up to 427 C (800 F) while the side facing away experiences extreme cold ( 193 C; 315 F). a solar day). Essentially, this means that a single day on Mercury lasts as long as two of its years. So if a city were placed on the night side, and had tracks wheels so it could keep moving to stay ahead of the Sun, people could live without fear of burning up.

uk canada goose Images of Mercury’s northern polar region, provided by MESSENGER. Credit: NASA/JPLIn addition, Mercury’s very low axial tilt (0.034) means that its polar regions are permanently shaded and cold enough to contain water ice. In canada goose outlet the northern region, a number of craters were observed by NASA’s MESSENGER probe in 2012 which confirmed the existence of water ice and organic molecules. Scientists believe that Mercury’s southern pole may also have ice, and claim that an estimated 100 billion to 1 trillion tons of water ice could exist at both poles, which could be up to 20 meters thick in places. uk canada goose

In these regions, a colony could be built using a process called “paraterraforming” a concept invented by British mathematician Richard Taylor in 1992. In a paper titled “Paraterraforming The Worldhouse Concept”, Taylor described how a pressurized enclosure could be placed over the usable area of a planet to create a self contained atmosphere. Over time, the ecology inside this dome could be altered to meet human needs.

Canada Goose sale In the case of Mercury, this would include pumping in a breathable atmosphere, and then melting the ice to create water vapor and natural irrigation. Eventually, the region inside the dome would become a livable habitat, complete with its own water cycle and carbon cycle. Alternately, the water could be evaporated, and oxygen gas created by subjecting it to solar radiation (a process known as photolysis). Canada Goose sale

canada goose clearance Another possibility would be to build underground. For years, NASA has been toying with the idea of building colonies in stable, underground lava tubes that are known to exist on the Moon. And geological data obtained by the MESSENGER canada goose coats on sale probe during flybys it conducted between 2008 and 2012 led to speculation that stable lava tubes might exist on Mercury as well. canada goose clearance

A previous MESSENGER image of hollows inside Tyagaraja crater. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Canada Goose Outlet Institution of WashingtonThis includes information obtained during the probe’s 2009 flyby of Mercury, which revealed that the planet was a lot more geologically active in the past than previously thought. In addition, MESSENGER began spotting strange Swiss cheese like features on the surface in 2011. These holes, which are known as “hollows”, could be an indication that underground tubes exist on Mercury as well.

canada goose uk shop Colonies built inside stable lava tubes would be naturally shielded to cosmic and solar radiation, extremes in temperature, and could be pressurized to create breathable atmospheres. It also has abundant minerals to offer, which could help move humanity towards a post scarcity economy. Like Earth, it is a terrestrial planet, which means it is made up of silicate rocks and canadian goose jacket metals that are differentiated between a iron core and silicate crust and mantle. canada goose uk shop

However, Mercury is composed of 70% metals whereas’ Earth’s composition is 40% metal. What’s more, Mercury has a particular large core of iron and canada goose store nickel, and which accounts for 42% of its buy canada goose jacket cheap volume. By comparison, Earth’s core accounts for only 17% of its volume. As a result, if Mercury were to be mined, enough minerals could be produced to last humanity indefinitely.

The different colors in this MESSENGER image of Mercury indicate the planet’s chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences. This could be gathered by orbital solar arrays, which would be able to harness energy constantly and beam it to the surface. This energy could then Canada Goose sale be beamed to other planets in the Solar System using a series of transfer stations canada goose clearance sale positioned at Lagrange Points.

Canada Goose Online Also, there’s the matter of Mercury’s gravity, which is 38% percent of Earth normal. This is over twice what the Moon experiences, which means colonists would have an easier time adjusting to it. At the same time, it is also low enough to present benefits as far as exporting minerals is concerned, since ships departing from its surface would need less energy to achieve escape velocity. Canada Goose Online

Canada Goose online Lastly, there is the distance to Mercury itself. At an average distance of about 93 million km (58 million mi), Mercury ranges between being 77.3 million km (48 million mi) to 222 million km (138 million mi) away from the Earth. This puts it a lot closer than other possible resource rich areas like the Asteroid Belt (329 478 million km distant), Jupiter and its system of moons (628.7 928 million km), or Saturn’s (1.2 1.67 billion km). Canada Goose online

canada goose coats on sale Also, Mercury achieves an inferior conjunction the point where it is at its closest point to Earth every 116 days, which is significantly shorter than either Venus’ or Mars’. Basically, missions destined for Mercury could launch almost every four months, whereas launch windows to Venus and Mars would have to take place every 1.6 years and 26 months, respectively canada goose coats on sale.