Mercury 2.0 (the planet)

Quick review for those who don't know everything about your solar system. Mercury is the smallest planet of the eight remaining. It is the planet that is really close to the sun. at 40% of the diameter of earth and a view of the sun that makes it look 2.5 times as wide. It gets as much sun as all earth because the sun is 6.25 times stronger there at some point in it's eccentric orbit. It does not have much atmosphere to speak of and doesn't hold it's heat making the daily highs and lows swing by 1100 f. Without it's atmosphere it's heat cannot compete with Venus for hottest planet. It has days of 1.5 Mercury years. It has no seasonal irregularity like earth because it's poles are always perpendicular to the sun. It's poles are thought to contain ice in the bottom of craters because they haven't seen sunlight ever. The planet has more gravity than Mars, though it weighs less it is denser with a huge Iron core. It is only second to Earth in density.

I am not especially interested in the presented goals of Nasa. I think the use people's interest in aliens and the search for life to their advantage. I think people want to push for the stars in a never ending search to disprove the absence of life elsewhere. I don't necessarily doubt that their is life out there, I doubt we will ever find any and my interest is very marginal in looking. Also I think they play on people wanting a new earth copy. Mars is just cold! There is nothing there that is useful and if you want to make it useful for something, you will have to go big or stay home. What is the difference between Antarctica and Mars?

I see something more reasonable in the works for Nasa. Keep in mind I never said they were stupid. There is a probe "Messenger" that it working it's way inward and should be in proper Mercury orbit in 2011. Let me tell you how we see Mercury. It was once thought that Mercury was tidally locked like the moon is with earth. That is how I wanted it because that is the most useful way to be. If you want to generate energy you want a big temperature differential. I was thinking steam engines at first and then I thought about how to capture the steam because we don't want it to get ionized in the solar wind and carried off. Then I thought about the condensation end of things and making it take full advantage of the shadow cone of Mercury. There is no use in making the thing complicated, just get it right the first time. Rising steam condenses on the dark side of Mercury and is used to power turbines Dam style. The cooling cone can rise 500 Km. In Mercury's low gravity of .38G you can give the dark side a lot of heat radiation area. This will probably result in an overall egg shaped world. This design Gives few concentrated moving parts and Constant temperature and pressure and no tidal shifts of any significance. A low maintenance dream of Petawatt significance.

How do we get from here to there and what do we do with it when we get there?

The poles are magical stepping stones with both intense sun and abundant heat radiating area both within arm's length. Just dig a little and there is Iron. For all I know it doesn't even need smelted, just like meteorite Iron. First thing is stop the planet from rotating and correct it's orbit. Solar sails are 6.25 times as effective with 6.25 times as much sun. It will take a little time but you can move planets, Mercury easiest of all. Iron rails, Iron rail cars and Iron mirrors can be moved down towards the equator to just sit there reflecting some sunlight towards the approaching dawn. The planet will stop, expanding the poles into a ring of eternal twilight. From there on I am sure you get the picture. fairly normal construction techniques can proceed. Where is the water though? There might be some at the poles, not enough by any means. You can use many other liquids in similar manners. You can use ammonia, you can use hydrocarbons for similar results. You can extract lots of these elements from the crust. You can deionize the ions from the solar wind which is of course much thicker and is also slower kind of near vacuum near the Sun. This is a process that actually generates electricity. This can get you there in some finite amount of time You can build up heat sinking and heat dissipation in parallel.

When you get done what do you have? This would not be some inaccessible source of power on some other planet. You have the four gods of space travel energy. 1.You have access to fissionable material that you don’t have to worry about spreading across earth’s atmosphere accidentally to get into space. 2 You have power for lasers to push things near and far from the sun. 3 You have He-3 imbedded in the crust because of direct ion bombardment from the sun, just like on the Moon. And 4 you have a large power source for generation of Antimatter.

These are things that Matter and make a discernable difference between Antarctica and some other small inhospitable planet. This makes trade, space travel, mining and terraforming all very achievable elsewhere. And if you are interested in science Mercury probably has the best core for study, it is probably solidified and you can examine the core in person. Anyone need a test bed for your science experiment? Cheap energy, controlled environments, No environment that needs protecting. I dislike the false dichotomy of the Moon or Mars. On my list Mars is not even second or third. If you want anything done it takes energy. So no, I am not going to waste energy heating up Mars with lasers. If you want it warmer we will move the thing. If you want a sustainable idea for heat management check out “Venus 2.0” the idea that my title is knocked off from.

I think NASA is thinking along these lines because of Messenger’s surprisingly large budget chunk. I have also run into NASA’s appeal for to the scientific community for directly solar pumped laser specifications. My imagination says that this will involve something like black body cavity and some kind of lasing material that likes being pumped with infrared. These lasing materials can be pumped in closer proximity to each other on Mercury than at our distance from the Sun and will probably be something like the shorter burst lasers but with more power available to make a continuous beam. I am not sure what kind of heat sinking that would require or if that is possible with today’s technology but necessity is the mother of invention. This is certainly one of the necessities for fast and dirty laser light production. I imagine they are not presenting such dreams in a finished publicly accessible and understandable vision format is because historically Both Mars and Venus have been big disappointments when the facts came to light. Mars has a very inhospitable atmosphere with not much that can be processed into atmosphere and no magnetic protection. Venus is just plain hot and is in a nearly irreversible greenhouse. Mercury has only had 45% of it’s surface mapped and we technically know roughly jack squat. People need real numbers but Given the assumptions however it is better than the anything else. Other than some sort of unforeseen whacked out neutron bombardment that makes working there impossible I think this plan should be doable and the next step.