/sci/ - Science & Math

>>11842113
Neglects to mention

>10000000 bajillion km/s delta v required to match orbits.

>>11842113
sounds too fucking hot
enceladus is the superior choice

>>11842113
Ma Sha Allah Yudim

>>11842119
Not at the poles, and even at the equator heat management is pretty easy by having the colony on stilts and a reflective sunshade over head, because of the lack of a atmosphere

>>11842119

>>11842129
yeah but enceladus is still way cooler than your dumb melted rock

>>11842115
The net delta v is only 6km/s higher than mars but the vast majority of that change in velocity can be for free using gravitational assists from Venus and inwards spiraling solar sails, And the total energy cost is made up by the low energy cost in the reverse direction of travel. Also the fact that period between launch windows is only 3 months to ANY celestial body

>>11842140
>only 6km/s
lol

>>11842113
Sounds too dangerous. At least Mars isn't a hellscape like Mercury or Venus.

>>11842137
>no iron/mineral resources
>multiyear one way trip
>limited energy sources
....
>way cooler
Yeah that’s a no from me

>>11842143
It’s only slightly more than going to Europa, but as I said that 6 km/s is mostly free ( solar sail and Venus gravity assist)

>>11842140
>only 6km/s
>NO AEROBRAKE

Yep sure sounds minimal to me haha.

>>11842162
>freezing cold
>perchlorates shut down you thyroid
>limited energy sources
>abrasive 3 month global dust storms blocking sun and fucking ur solar panels
>no profitable resources to speak of
>not a hellscape
Lmao are you high?

>>11842172
Stop acting like 6km/s is not a big deal. It's a huge deal and -the- reason mercury won't happen for a very long while.

>>11842173
Are you retarded? That 6 km/s is a NET delta v difference meaning it includes having to use retrograde propulsion, what you are also ignoring that heat shielding is required on mars as well as retrograde rocket thrusts to land so the payload efficiency is dog shit for mars. Having a little bit of atmosphere is WORSE than having none

>>11842182
6km/s is NOT a big deal u retard, it’s no different than landing on europa, and the energy gets paid back on the return trip from mercury to earth.

>>11842187
> it’s no different than landing on europa
you mean the place nobody has ever landed on because its a huge fucking pain in the ass to get to unlike mars which is fucking covered in shit we dropped on it?

>>11842113
I'll have a mining colony on Mercury and build a Dyson Sphere.

>>11842183
Can you even read your own diagram?

>>11842187
>it’s no different than landing on europa
Ah, Europa. That place were we land stuff all the time because it's so trivial.

>>11842190
Looks more like a Dyson swarm to me.

>>11842182
Because you’re such a retard I figured it out for you, to send a kilogram to mercury from earth it costs 326146 kilojoules, for a kg to mars it costs 178794 kilojoules, but this is before even using Venus gravity assist or a solar sail which makes up for the difference, also including the lighter launch vehicle because of lack of heat shielding on reentry, and that to send something for mercury to earth it only costs 9031 Kilojoules vs 12650 kilojoules. and that mercury is more resource rich and the life support system needs not be as complex on mercury and the launch window happens 8 times as often. You’re literally a smoothbrained retard if you think mars is makes more sense logistically just because of a puddly 6 km/s delta v difference in a single direction without looking at net energy costs and remediations to that energy cost that you can get a “free lunch “ delta v from ( Venus gravity assist and solar sail)

>>11842191
Yes u dumb fuck the total delta v required is 25,540 km/s for mercury vs 18,900 km/s for mars, Read this comment >>11842211
you gotta account for the 1km/s difference benefit that mercury has over mars and the radiative pressure and the gravity assist from Venus too. And launch mass, and profitability. Mercury has the clear edge

>>11842211
Wow only double the energy assuming your bullshit calculation are correct!

>>11842190
nice stealing from kurzgesagt fag

>>11842211
>>11842182
*32614 vs 17879

>>11842215
Wrong, you have to account for return launch Cost edge mercury has over mars and the free delta v from venus and radiative pressure, and lower launch mass u retard because u don’t need rentry heat shielding and mercury is much more resource rich than mars so more stuff can be made with insitu resources

>>11842225
No one cares, Elon is going to Mars. Cope harder.

>>11842229
>Elon is going to Mars. Cope harder.
cringe

>>11842236
Keep coping my dude, maybe NASA can send one of their toy cars there out of pity for you?

>>11842229
Elon is a hack

>>11842113
Instead of bitching about this on an image board that thinks you're wrong, how about actually starting a business to colonize Mercury. According to you it's low hanging fruit anyways.

>>11842239
i'm sorry, i don't speak reddit man

>>11842215
The net energy cost for sending a kg of matter to mercury and back is 41600 kJ vs 30500 kJ for mars so that’s less than 40% more energy not twice like you concluded, that 40% shrinks to nothing or a net benefit in mercuries favour when u account that net ship weight could be a solid 30% lighter and u get free energy from radiative pressure and a gravity assist

>>11842243
Enjoy colonising Mercury with SLS

>>11842245
Give me 1 billion dollar for inventing PayPal during the dot com bubble and I’ll start...

>>11842254
>I-I could've done it too if I had perfect 20/20 knowledge of the future

Lmao why don't you just invent something worth a billion dollars now? You aren't a brainlet are you?

>>11842263
I was a child during the Dotcom bubble

>>11842310
Yes, and no other business opportunities have existed ever since or will exist ever again. Also getting a billion dollars is a far easier problem than landing on Mercury. If you cannot even solve that problem then don't even bother.

>>11842319
Getting to mercury is a math problem, making 1 billion dollars is 90% luck

>>11842355
>Getting to mercury is a math problem

This is your brain on /sci/. How's your 300k starting going faggot?

>>11842355
>Getting to mercury is a math problem

Let me just bust out my notepad and the colony mission will be en route tomorrow.

>>11842206
it's always a swarm, only retards believe it's a massive sphere

>>11842453
If you aren't building a shell why are you even trying you absolute civilisationlet.

>>11842115
Explain what this means to a brainlet. The extent of my space physics knowledge is limited to knowing the infeasibility of intraplanetary space pipes.

>>11842162
The poles of mercury clearly aren't hellscapes with the craters remaining frozen year round.

>>11842113
>>plenty of water and volatiles
[citation needed]

>>11842252
Hmm, 41,600 kJ
4.18 J per cal, so that’s a little less than 10,000 kcal per kilogram

1 Taco Bell Beefy Fritos Burrito contains 440 kcal and costs $1

So, for an average 88kg anon this would take around 2,000 burritos for a total cost of around $2,000 per person

Sounds very feasible indeed! Even if I messed up my math and forgot to account for a kilo somewhere in the dimensional analysis, $2M per person for a round trip to Mercury is not bad at all

>>11842472
a swarm of solar collectors is an easy way to become a type II civilisation and build a stellar engine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3y8AIEX_dU

>>11843179
Are u fucking retarded? kJ isn’t food u fucking retard, it’s energy to launch a kg of mass to mercury, there is 144,000 kJ in a kg of liquid nitrogen so that’s around 350 grams of liquid hydrogen per kg, Looking at launch efficiency per kg for the falcon heavy that’d be around 400$ per kg or 38,000 for a 75kg man with 20 kg of belongings

>>11843777
*liquid hydrogen

>>11843179
For food, transit times to mercury Would be 150 days or so realistically, and
Jerky has around 2400 calories per kg, the energy intake of a man is 2000 calories recommended so 830 grams of jerky per day or 125 for a trip to mercury or 50,000$ Energy cost for launch. The return trip, costs less, In the reverse direction it costs 7 times less to send a kg from mercury to earth than earth to mercury due to lower delta v requirements. But it doesn’t matter because u probably wouldn’t want to come back

>>11843134
https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www.wired.com/2012/11/water-ice-organics-mercury/amp

https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a8494/mercury-contains-water-ice-at-its-poles-14799501/

Keep in mind the moon has less than 600 million tonnes of water, so 100 billion to 1 trillion tonnes is more than enough. Considering that the moon is organic deficient and contains fuck all in terms of volatiles.
http://astrobiology.com/2020/03/vast-collapsed-terrains-on-mercury-might-be-windows-into-ancient---possibly-habitable---volatile-ric.html
I’m not gonna bother look up the story for it but you can if you don’t believe me but mercury has literally a order of magnitude more abundant volatiles than the moon does

>>11842175
>>not a hellscape
>not making it dystopian aswell

>>11843837
Mars is literally the worst planet in the solar system

>>11842113
Are you the aussie who made this thread on /pol/?

>>11843870
Yes

>>11843873
I enjoy these threads.
Thanks, anon.

>>11842113
>>entire planet made of metal
No? It has a large metallic core, that is completely beyond human ability to access. It's several orders of magnitude deeper than the deepest holes ever dug on Earth.
>>plenty of water and volatiles for farming at the poles (orders of magnitude more than the moon).
That's total conjecture. There was some ice detected in a crater on the North pole, and we can make a rough estimate as to how much should be on the planet total, but no one knows for sure.
>>comfy temperatures and temperature swings in the permanent sunset areas of the poles (20-50 Celsius temp MAX with 50 Celsius swings over 60 day periods)
That's a comparatively small area.
>>more helium 3 than the moon but easier to mine than gas giants and closer
Any increase in accessibility is offset by the massive increase in transport of said Helium-3
>>launch window every 3 months vs 2 years for mars, venus ect.
And 10x more DeltaV required to make it, due to Mercury's fucked up orbit and proximity to the Sun.
>>limitless godlike solar power
Probes bound for Mercury actually have to be very careful not to burn out their solar arrays, because that much solar radiation is seriously damaging. Any Mercury colony will be replacing it's solar cells every couple of weeks.
>>solar sails only need to be realistic sizes to be useful because of light intensity.
Only useful for Mercury orbit. Once you get far enough away from the Sun they become a meme again.
>>could be given a breathable low pressure pure o2 atmosphere that last 60,000 years easily with one small asteroid and passive photolysis.
Conjecture. Also that is a fuckton of work for an atmosphere that will be of limited use
>>eventually we can make a dyson sphere and freeze all the earthniggers
There isn't enough excess matter in the solar system to construct a structurally stable dyson sphere.

Mercury is AN prospect for future colonization, but not even close to the best.

>>11843983
Yeah even the lower end of that rough estimate is more than 700 times more than the moon
>200,000km^2
>small
No
Lmao even the hotter bits are easy and safe to colonise with minimal heat management >>11842132
The delta v is not ten times more lmao, did u even read the thread, >>11842140
>>11842211
>>11842214
>>11842221
>>11842252
Sending a kg to mercury and BACK is only 35% more energy And that’s without even including free delta v from a solar sail or gravity assist from Venus or lower launch weights, or that In the long run more mass would be sent BACK from mercury than TO mercury which will never be the case with mars, helium 3 can be used as a place holder for solar energy to be traded between earth and mercury, it doesn’t even need to produce a net positive in energy on our end

>>11844010
>Yeah even the lower end of that rough estimate is more than 700 times more than the moon
Still conjecture. Come back to me when you can prove it.
>200,000km^2
>small
>No
COMPARATIVELY you fucking ape. Any other colonization possibility in the Solar system has far more available land to build on
>The delta v is not ten times more lmao, did u even
Stop typing like a faggot, it's annoying. I exaggerated, but the point still stands. As others have pointed out and you keep ignoring, 6m/s deltaV is a pretty big increase
>muh solar sails
Only work in a limited area close to the sun
>muh venus assist
Changes your possible launch windows to every 2 years instead of every 3 months, which was one of your key points

Also, no one is planning on colonizing a planet for purely resources at this stage. A Lunar or Martian colony is more about getting permanent boots on the ground off Earth somewhere, resources is still way outside of our grasp.

And if we are going to debate resources there isn't any point setting up a terrestrial colony for resources when humans could spend the next million years mining out the resources in the asteroid belt without ever making an extra-terrestrial colony.

Plus it's closer to Venus than mars when we want to build an atmosphere pipe.

But what about its magnetosphere? Does it have one to protect us like earth?

>>11842113

too hot
too close to the sun.

Great for strip mining though, post capitalism.

>>11844055
Yeah, but it's pretty weak. Interestingly Mercury has an atmosphere as well, but it's so tenuous it's almost non-existent.

>>11844055
It has a magnetosphere 1% as strong as earths but a artificial magnetic shield stronger than earth is pretty easy to make if power isn’t a constraint, to create a magnetic shield for mars it would take 500 MWand a 40tonne magnetic coil, on mercury 500 MWof solar would be the same size as 60 ish MW on earth. Pic related is 50 MW, so definitely doable. And that’s for a planet wide magnetic shield, local ones would take even less

>>11843845
I'm going to backtrace your IP and learn your identity. When I eventually live on Mars, I will take offense that you insulted my adopted home. I will find you, lad, and kill you with the sword.

>>11844719
Lmao

>getting stuck in a gravity well on purpose
Planetcucks need not reply, space for the spacenoids.

>>11842510
You're deeper in the sun's gravity well.
It's a pain in the ass to get into orbit around mercury because the planet itself has a dinky gravity well, so things tend to just fall into the sun instead.
Mercury is also zipping around the sun so fast it experiences relativistic effects.
>>11842137
If you smash some big asteroids into an ice moon you could create enough residual heat to keep it into a balmy ocean-word for a few hundred thousand years.

>>11845097
>spending decades and quadrillions of dollars to construct a spinning tube of death that a single asteroid would obliterate
Space hab cucks need not apply for the final frontier

>>11845131
No you couldn’t lmao

>>11843873
We need those strontium ethnostate super soldiers now

enjoy the cancer lol

If we were to nudge Mercury into the Sun, would anyone really miss it?

>>11848635
U can’t “nudge” mercury into the sun lmao, do u understand the amount of energy u would need to change Mercury’s orbit just a meter closer lmao

>>11849235
Make small alterations to the orbits of comets so they'll slam into Mercury. Do the same with asteroids, maybe slingshot them past a planet or two for momentum.
The Sun god demands a sacrifice and Mercury is the closest.

>>11849244
u realise that wouldnt even cut it. you need to sling more asteroids past mercury that what exist

>>11844092
yes, powering and shielding a Mercury base would be possible

>>11849487
Going to throw all of that at a moon in a weak orbit instead, with it aimed at Mercury.

>Solar flare intensifies.

>>11851790
Solar flares don’t really matter if u have a magnetic shield

>>11851790
>he uses *lectromagnetics
2035 called

>>11842510
grab the game "Kerbal space program" from steam

>>11842113

>>11853088

>>11842119

>>11842113
I would support you if there is any evidence that you could take off from Mercury with a plasma sail. Is this possible?

>>11853106

>>11853122

>>11853125

>>11853128

>>11853131

>>11842190
>Land a few bootstrapping probes on Mercury
>They make automated factories which produce more robots and factories
>Cover the surface with solar panels
>Start raping the planet for materials
>Eventually pumping out hundreds of reflectors per second and several collectors per minute
>Direct energy to Earth and starship launching particles cannons.
>Send probes to other star systems to create a similar setup.
Kino