/sci/ - Science & Math

>>11849489
>ib4 "reee i cant read it"
you have to click the image file to view the full sized image

your other thread is still on the front page

>>11849489
hey bruh mercury doesn't really have that much water. So Mercury could have 100 billion tons of water at it's north pole.
https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/11/29/frozen-water-on-mercury-nasa-confirms/
And according to wolfram alpha that's like 2.3 times as much water as the Three Gorges Dam holds. For something on the scale of a planet that's really not much. Fuck reading your image too. It's too goddamn big. Plus we only have remote confirmation of said water. We don't know much about said water. For all we know if could be loaded with fucking cyanide asbestos.

>>11849508
it has 100 billion MINIMUM, to 1 trillion tonnes. and thats just what we can see in craters on the surface, thats ignoring the massive subterreans systems on mercury which have year round temps of 0-50 Celsius, its ignoring hydrated rock ect ect, its likely to be 10 times more than we an even see
ps distilation is easy asf ( ESPECIALLY on mercury lmao) it doesn't matter whats in the water. for reference the moon only has 600 MILLION tonnes of water, even bare minimum estimate thats 200 times more water than the moon lmao

I take it back, your image is ok, still hard to read though. Absolute comedy gold for everything past ceres. And really Venus' problem is that there's barely any water/hydrogen. I'd make some joke about getting pussy wet. Carbon monoxide part is completely false, atmosphere is mainly CO2. The acid danger is a complete joke because of how fucking dry venus is. The heaviest expected precipitation events on Venus are likely on the order of the weakest precipitation events on earth. I say precipitation rather than rain, because it's much, much, much weaker than earth rain. Light drizzle doesn't even cover it.

>>11849525
the carbon monoxide is nearly as abundant as water vapor on venus, while 17 ppm isnt enough to kill you straight away, it will give u headaches and if there is a malfunction and it accumulates you definitely could die. and yeah i know the acid isnt THAT much but over years slow accumulation of acid burn will be a thing

>>11849489
the high IQ take is that there need to be massive colonial trade network for everyone to prosper
>the intrepid fusion torchship space mariner

>>11849549
no if you're mercury ;)

>>11849524
we know fuck all about volatiles in permanently shadowed cold traps, there's a lot of uncertainty here. Uncertainty does not lend it self to planning colonization. Yeah there could be water, or there might not be, we have no fucking clue at all. Our understanding could completely change once we get some actual data. Take for example what happened with asteroid Ryugu and asteroid Bennu the first carbonaceous asteroids we've visited. We thought that due to space weathering that they should have a layer of fine regolith on their surface, but there was none at all!
>>hydrated rock
I doubt it. Don't ya understand the proposed way that volatiles get in the crater in the first place? Comets crash into the surface, you get some hydrogen from solar wind, these volatiles go zip-zop-bippity-bop till they stop boppin' in the dark crater. So how the fuck are those volatiles gettin' in the rock homie? Unless you mean something like the water trapped in something like the lunar orange soil glass. And oh boy that sounds like it will be cheap to liberate water from, having to melt fucking glass to get water. Now support the VIPER mission so we can actually get some goddamn data on cold trap volatiles.

>>11849545
oh wow it's fucking nothing. If you have a leak, you'd detect the CO2 sooner. And by detect, I mean you'd be in physical pain. You know what's also fucking nothing? Water. 20 ppm water is way lower than CO2 is in earth's atmosphere. Imagine trying to extract something less abundant than CO2 is in earth's atmosphere. That's the real problem with Venus.

>>11849553
you need light elements - hydrocarbons, nitrogen and probably bunch of others

>>11849489
Enceladus is the best daughter colony. And the best slingshot.

>>11849557
weve looked at neutron absorption maps of mercury, we KNOW its water.
the hydrated rock got there the same way it got into our mantle? during planetary formation. what we now see as mercury used to be much larger and volcanically active planet, the crust is basically what used to be the mantle

>>11849489
why should we only focus on one planet? Why don't we just yeet colonist everywhere in the solar system? If you yeet enough people some will stick somewhere.
>>11849562
OP add this to the image cause it's a nice meme. It's basically the same as Triton. I mean we should still yeet people to it because it might be a cool place to visit. The geysers are one of the neatest places in the solar system and a robot mission to one would be kickass. From what we understand the geyser behaves basically like a rocket engine, so you need a supersonic climbing robot to explore said place. If you don't think that's cool as fucking hell there's something wrong with you.

But is Callisto good for you?

>>11849566
>>we KNOW its water
sure homie, we don't know how much or how easy it is to extract. Pic related, you need to know how the water's distributed so you can mine it. A couple of Ice cubes on the surface vs. a thin layer of frost will require different extraction systems. Also, yeah you really do need to know about the impurities in said water. IIRC LCROSS had some weird spectral signature that may have indicated mercury in said water ice. Mercury(element) could fuck yo shit up. Ain'tcha ever see what it does to aluminum?
>>the hydrated rock got there the same way it got into our mantle?
now homie have fun melting fucking glass to get water. Moon gots a bunch of water locked up that way too. But you better have some good real good shit to smoke so you can sell novelty bongs with all that waste glass ur making.

The bonkers asteroid sailor
>beats his days to Eurobeat
>clinges onto the weak ass gravity like a maniac
>abundant resources he gets to sell if he makes it out alive
>lives off of sponsorships from energy drink companies
>absolute legend

>>11849588
I accidentally put Sedna there. That dwarf could be an interesting experience, and maybe a slingshot to some more extreme distances.

>>11849489
Well shit, can’t refute it. Somebody get this to Elon immediately.

>>11849588
fact: Venus is a great staging point for asteroid mining. Delta V requirements are more, but transfer opportunities occur more often than at Mars and Earth because phasing between asteroids is a fucking bitch. Thus it's possible to reach a given asteroid sooner from Venus than it is from Earth or Mars. Plus there's an atmosphere for aerobraking. There's plenty of solar power too, so you can put a big ass laser to boost stuff up out there fast to make up for the higher delta V cost. None of this requires 'landing' on Venus.

>>11849597
that looks pretty spooky

>>11849561
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012JE004178

it has plenty of each of those, all the craters in the poles are covered by close to a meter of what thought to be hydrocarbons and complex organic molecules, and there is actually heaps of nitrogen on mercury, 50 ppm just on the surface soil that MUST be much higher deeper. because it constantly resupplies the nitrogen in its thin atmosphere

>>11849489
Earth is denser than Mercury, btw.

>>11849628
>50 ppm just on the surface soil
lol

>>11849632
no its not, sure its COMPRESSED density is higher, but thats only because its larger and therefore has more internal pressure, its UNCOMPRESSED density is MUCH MUCH lower

>>11849637
https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=9&tid=2#:~:text=Soil%20typically%20contains%20about%201,as%20from%20season%20to%20season.&text=After%20fertilizer%20containing%20ammonia%20is,levels%20in%20a%20few%20days.

you realise 50 ppm is more than 10 times the concentration of nitrogen in soil on earth? nitrogen is NOT in short supply.

>>11849637
there is literally so much nitrogen in soil on mercury wed have to REMOVE nitrogen

>>11849637
and there is heaps of carbon, mercury is seen as if a carbonaceous asteroid became a planet

>>11849659
soil nitrogen is ammonia and nitrate nitrogen, nitrogen from air is omitted
if we included that (as we would, when we are measuring with gamma spectroscopy), it would be 200 000 ppm
There isn't enough nitrogen on Mercury

>>11849678
plants dont use nitrogen from the air retard, they only use nitrates and ammonia in solid form IN THE SOIL. im not talking about making an nitrogen atmosphere over mercury im talking about using the soil to grow fucking food in retard, there is MORE than enough nitrogen on mercury to grow food. and thats just surface depleted levels, a few meters down i guarantee u that percentage is even higher

>>11849678
Carbon and organic molecules- check
water - check
nitrogen- check
metals- check
volatiles ( sulfur, phosphorus, sodium, potasium) -check
sunlight- CHECK
areas with year round temperatures above freezing point but lower than protein denaturation- check
mercury has literally everything it needs to be self sufficient

>>11849689
You don't get this
the spectroscopy measurement didn't distinguish between forms
"nitrogen in soil" isn't total nitrogen
it's dissolved mineral nitrogen ONLY
not including undissolved nitrogen and not including atmospheric nitrogen

what the probe measured was total nitrogen in the rocks and maybe even some solid nitrogen frost and adsorbed or clathrated gas
for comparison - a solid granite has 200 ppm of nitrogen in it
good luck with getting nitrogen out of rocks

>>11849729
its actually easy asf. the soil temp at noon at the equator is 450 Celsius. just using a regular toy magnifying glass is enough to liquefy fucking stone lmao. getting nitrogen from rock, or soil isnt going to be a problem

>>11849729
the same way heating regolith to 600 Celsius to release trapped helium 3 is going to be easy. the sheer power of the sunlight at mercury is its greatest asset

>>11849754
yeah, nah
I'd just pay Tritonian virgins to scoop couple megatons in exchange for some metals

>>11849700
>>carbon
from here>>11849628, it seems that carbon's at about 50 ppm.
>>11849662
[CITATION NEEDED]

>>11849489
So... how are we gonna reliably send rockets there?

>>11849774
https://theconversation.com/discovery-of-carbon-on-mercury-reveals-the-planets-dark-past-55940
theres graphite covering the surface, and a meter covering the craters on the poles made from organic molecules

>>11849774
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1712/1712.02187.pdf
>The measurement of ~1–5 wt% C associated with specific geologic units on Mercury’s
surface (Section 2.3.3) indicates that C was likely available in Mercury’s interior during the
formation of Mercury’s core
there is heaps of carbon

>>11849774
>>11849821
>>11849830
when a magma ocean covered the planet. Assuming the planet had the same chemistry as it does today, nearly every mineral that formed in the ocean would have sunk to the bottom. “There’s only one mineral that would float, and it’s graphite,” Peplowski says.

As it cooled, Mercury would have been covered in a shell of graphite perhaps 1 kilometre thick. Later lava flows would have buried this darker layer.

That would mean that today, the darkest material on Mercury should show up in craters where the original surface has been gouged out – exactly what Peplowski’s team found.

“I think it’s pretty convincing, at least for these spots of very dark material,” says Simone Marchi, at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

there is so much carbon on mercury there is likely thick layer of graphite tens of meters thick covering the entire planet just below the surface

>>11849774
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/mercury-covered-pencil-lead

>>11849869
>>11849863
>>11849830
>>11849821
Still seems pretty speculative. Said carbon may not be available in the permanently shadowed crater's. A full percentage point of carbon is something else though. Carbon's pretty useful as a reducing agent, making it possible to extract metals from dirt. If mercury really does have this and nitrogen + hydrogen, then yeah I'd say the case for mercury is pretty strong. Barring delta V requirements to get there.

>>11850005
yeah its thought that mercury is the most carbon abundant terrestrial planet in the solar system, even if u turned 100% of venus's atmosphere into graphite u'd still only get 100 meters of graphite. mercury has a kilometre or more of pure carbon. the polar ice caps are also covered in a 1 meter thick organic molecule/ hydrocarbon layer. there is carbon fucking everywhere on mercury.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576509001088
the delta v requirements arent really that big of a deal because alot of it comes for "free" from venus and a solar sail

>>11850005
but yeah, a 1 km thick layer would be super useful for reducing metal from dirt, easy as too because of the light intensity solar smelting is a cinch

>>11850016
>>11850027
We've never sent a lander to mercury, so there's still a huge number of unknowns about the geology.
>>of the light intensity solar smelting is a cinch
I wouldn't consider it to be a cinch. There's no atmosphere so you still need to dispose of waste heat via radiators to keep everything from melting
>>solar sail
that was only ever one successful solar sail.

>>11850041
youre trying to melt the dirt though?
and as for radiators no you dont, you just set up your colony in an area with a average temperature above 0 but below 50 >>11849524
millions of square kilometers to choose from. the ground a few meters under the surface is the same temperature year round. you just circulate air or water through a underground heater/ cooler

Lmfao. The combination of clearly putting lots of effort into this, extreme racism, being genuinely really knowledgeable about the solar system, and having such a ridiculous meme idea is just, lol

>>11850050
It still won't be a cakewalk to refine metals on another world. Anon, so here's the deal. We still don't know all that much about mercury. We need to send more missions before we can seriously consider colonization. We need to understand cold traps better, we also need to understand mercury's geology better, heck we may even need better maps too. There's a lot that needs to be done. But I think you've shown that mercury colonization's worth investigating.

So far the case is
1. **there's fuck watts of power available**
2. there are regions which are at least some what habitable
3. there are likely materials which may be extracted to make propellant for a return trip. Carbon and hydrogen being interesting here, because there's the possibility to make methane.
4. there are likely materials which may be extracted to support human life and industry
But really 1, is the crux of this. More power makes ISRU and life support easier. I'd say make something like this paper for mercury:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20030022668.pdf

Then I'd say show how the costs of getting stuff to mercury stack up with say Mars or provide compelling enough reasons that Mercury's better than Mars. Building a propellant plant will probably be a key part of decreasing transit cost to mercury. But this has a cost to set up.

>>11850104
something which is good about mercury is that there are parts with really high average temperatures and really low temperatures. you could store liquid methane at cryogenic temperatures a few kilometres away from your base which has a average temperature of 26 Celsius

>>11850104
oh and helium 3 potentially being even more concentrated on mercury

>>11849489
>Ignoring the problems faced with colonizing Mercury while focusing on the problems with all other colonization
You're basically saying 'don't colonize space at all'.

>>11850149
Literally what problems?

>>11849489
>no power sources at outer planets

True for now. However it is only a matter of century at most until fusion power is available. Then you can fuse deuterium/tritium which is really abundant out there. Suddenly outer solar system goes from the most power-poor to the most power-rich place in the solar system.

>>11850162
You’re literally just trying to replicate what the sum does, except ya know the sun is right next door to mercury so you don’t need fusion, and even if you do you can mine helium 3 easier than the outer solar system

>>11850162
Even if you invent fusion mercury will be more power rich because the sun is 100x the mass of Jupiter fusing already lol

>>11850126
That's nice, but I think the hard vacuum might be a better sell. The hard vacuum makes it easier to produce solar cells. On the Moon you can pave solar cells right on to the ground through vacuum deposition:
http://www.niac.usra.edu/files/studies/final_report/433Ignatiev.pdf
Having lots of power available may make it possible to bootstrap a huge solar plant with a small initial plant. In the polar region you probably want to put solar panels on towers which will have some mass cost. ISRU made solar cells will also be shittier and showing that they can work at high flux is important. Really what you want to show is how long it takes for the solar panel plant to make as much power as an equivalent mass of non-shitty solar panels would make.
>>11850134
helium 3's an absolute joke.

>>11850180
The helium 3 isn’t for energy production on mercury. It’s for energy production on eearth, even if the net energy cost is higher per gram of processed Regolith than what you get out, it’s potentially a way to trade with earth. It could be produced using solar power on mercury then transported back on earth to produce power without taking up as much space. That way we are really just using helium 3 as a medium to trade solar energy from mercury to earth

>>11849489

The most important aspect of space exploration will be mining for the foreseeable future

>>11849489
>the chad PLANET X colonist

>>11850443
>just made the trip on a dare with his bros, stumbled upon the planet by pure luck
>all the best females are with the colony
>most exotic planet with cool sight on all the inner celestial bodies and on the Oort cloud both
>its position makes it an ideal trade point with visiting ayyys
>huge super earth with plenty of space to thrive
>powered by mining the infinite resources of high apex comets
>far away from earth to become totally autonomous and bargain its abundant resources to its starved mother planet, effectively becoming the dominant human faction
>all colonists are gigachads with the best genes of all the human race ever

Terraforming Venus is a real cool idea. Imagine Inverted Earth, previously Hell.

Earth is more dense than Mercury, dumbass.

>>11849649
Retard

>silicate
>iron
>carbon
>argon
>sulfur
>oxygen
>other useless shit
remind me again. why is space mining profitable? the only exceptions i can think of are titanium on the moon, maybe uranium too on the moon and some shitty asteroids/comets that are near impossible to land on. and yes i know that it was done before but it took more than 20 years and a lot of resources and a t shirt

>>11849489
>Starting two threads about mercury just to shit on mars
If you want a say in where we go, start a business. Seeing as you're the biggest brain, it'll be easy mode.

>>11851502
hint

>>11851502
>Doesn't understand that most resources are owned or protected on earth.
>Can't imagine how abundance of resources means cheaper production widening the current bottleneck in publicly available technology.
>Doesn't want to glorify his own civilization just for the sake of glorification like the ancients did with pyramids or grand temples.
>Will proceed to shit over other boards about the degeneration of society.
If you have the rights to a lithium mine on mars you're going to be very rich one day.

>>11851486
>>11851449
Mercuries uncompressed density is much higher than earths this is a fact

>>11851821
Lol no, lithium isn’t even that much more abundant on mars, and transportation costs from mars to earth is crazy lmao. Lithium costs 10$ per kg, transportation from mars to earth is gonna cost hundreds of dollars per kg minimum even other spaces elevators and shit lmao

>>11850900
We aren’t going to be terraforming Venus anytime soon, we’d need to import quintillionsof tonnes of hydrogen to do so

>>11851486
>>11851449
You’re a brain let

>>11851901
Lithium is used for everything anon.
The phone industry alone consume it at an insane rate and throws it away en masse to top it off.
Stay primitive though. Luddites get left behind, if it makes you happy then that's ok but i don't see the amish preaching against technology to non-amish.
Fighting against the wave is a waste of time, either float with it or go back to the beach.

>>11851921
Lmao are you actually retarded? I’m not against lithium being used lol, I’m just saying it will NEVER be profitable to mine lithium for mars because it would require lithium to cost 20-50 times as much for launch costs to be economically justifiable. Btw lithium will be replaced with another material there isn’t enough lithium on the planet for 50 million cars, it’ll be replaced with fuel cells and with non lithium ion batteries

>>11850213
we don't have fusion that works so helium 3 is still an absolute joke. It's easier to obtain from gas giants anyway.

>>11851821
>If you have the rights to a lithium mine on mars you're going to be very rich one day.
Not when asteroid mining bottoms out the market.

>>11853575
We absolutely do have fusion which works, it’s just not a net positive energy production, helium 3 would be much easier to get a net positive from because unlike normal fusion where 80% of the energy is in neutrons, 80% of the energy is in the form of protons and alpaca particles, both of which can be confined electromagnetically and converted to electricity DIRECTLY. The problem is we don’t have helium 3 on earth. Helium 3 is not a meme brainlet

>>11853575
Also no it’s not easier to obtain on gas giants, you’d need to fucking float above a gas giant and IN SITU enrich isotopes, which normally require whole power plants for. And then the massive gravity well and delta v to and from Jupiter. All in super sonic winds. It’s definitely not easier than heating soil to 600 Celsius and collecting helium 3 released

>>11853947
>alpaca particles
lel

>>11853947
>>11853959
I had to

>>11853959
>>11854047
Lmao fucking autocorrect

>>11849489
>>11849508
>>11849524
>>11849525
>>11849545
>>11849557
>>11849562
>>11849566
>>11849569
>>11849586
>>11849615
>>11849628
>>11849656
>>11849662
>>11849678
>>11849689
>>11849700
>>11849729
>>11849754
>>11849757
>>11849821
>>11849830
>>11849863
>>11850005
>>11850016
>>11850041
>>11850104
>>11850126
>>11850161
>>11850162
>>11850180
>>11850213
>>11850900

>debating something that won't be feasible for about 200 years and extrapolating only space tech into that imagined future without extrapolating how humans will move to non biological substrates by then thereby rendering planetary colonisation trivial and largely irrelevant

Space autists are the fucking worst. This is like the Victorians debating the feasibility of steam powered horses to get to the moon or something.

>>11856611
>This is like the Victorians debating the feasibility of steam powered horses to get to the moon or something.

>>11856611
and why is colonizing mercury infeasible for centuries? What makes mercury interesting for human colonization is the higher solar flux. Having more power available makes it easier to carry out life support and process locally available materials into machines necessary to keep people alive. Solar flux at mercury is something like 10 kw/m^2, which is huge.
>>without extrapolating how humans will move to non biological substrates
that may not necessarily happen in that time frame. Mercury is also attractive from a non-biological perspective because of the high solar flux, an interesting mix of available elements, and hard vacuum environment. A hard vacuum environment being useful for a wide variety of manufacturing processes and transit to other parts of the solar system.