Posted on 08/07/2016 2:21:25 PM PDT by BenLurkin
While most people wouldn’t suspect it, the closest planet to our Sun is actually a potential candidate for settlement...
Mercury’s very low axial tilt (0.034°) means that its polar regions are permanently shaded and cold enough to contain water ice. In 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.
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.
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).
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 probe during flybys it conducted between 2008 and 2012 led to speculation that stable lava tubes might exist on Mercury as well.
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
Be nice to build a wall around DC and all other major cities and let nature take it’s course.
Real easily. Drill 10 meters down, seal the surfaces with a polymer, install an algae that converts co2 to o2, reclaim water, place food.
You can live anywhere.
Real easily. Drill 10 meters down, seal the surfaces with a polymer, install an algae that converts co2 to o2, reclaim water, place food.
You can live anywhere.
Was she?
send all who hate America
If you are a microbe.
From the Chinese?
This sort of thing is only an option if humans can grow up relatively normally / healthfully in low gravity.
Maybe I missed it, but since when does the moon have water on it?
Learning Moon geology is not high on my to-do list...
It would be a good idea to have someplace to go once the sun grows and starts frying the Earth. Oh, wait...
Democrats.
I would think the radiation (not photons) from the sun would be an issue.
Send all of the liberals, socialists, and muslims there.
Stock up on the Coppertone baby!
I wonder how big the sun looks on Mercury.
Dumb idea.
Elon Musk’s stated purpose for creating PayPal, Tesla, Solar City, and SpaceX is precisely to colonize Mars. All are for making a $#!^load of money to pay for it, and the last also the actual means of getting there.
I think I still have one or two of those bumper stickers around somewhere.
Admittedly I haven’t kept up on this too much but here is what NASA found.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_water#History_of_observations
“The Lunar Prospector probe, launched in 1998, employed a neutron spectrometer to measure the amount of hydrogen in the lunar regolith near the polar regions.[32] It was able to determine hydrogen abundance and location to within 50 parts per million and detected enhanced hydrogen concentrations at the lunar north and south poles. These were interpreted as indicating significant amounts of water ice trapped in permanently shadowed craters,[33] but could also be due to the presence of the hydroxyl radical (•OH) chemically bound to minerals. Based on data from Clementine and Lunar Prospector, NASA scientists have estimated that, if surface water ice is present, the total quantity could be of the order of 1–3 cubic kilometres (0.24–0.72 cu mi).[34][35] In July 1999, at the end of its mission, the Lunar Prospector probe was deliberately crashed into Shoemaker crater, near the Moon’s south pole, in the hope that detectable quantities of water would be liberated. However, spectroscopic observations from ground-based telescopes did not reveal the spectral signature of water.[36]”
“For years, NASA has been toying with the idea of building colonies...”
NASA can’t even field a rocket to get our own people to the ISS. How are they going to ‘colonize’ anything in space? Sadly, they’re a pale ghost of what they once were.
SPF 999,000
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