
Mercury Colonization - rosser
http://einstein-schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html
======
ef4
> Humans are part of a universe where time is measured in billions of years
> and economics is largely irrelevant.

Only if you have a narrow understanding of "economics".

Economics is the study of scarcity and how to deal with it. For example,
arguing that energy is less scarce on Mercury than Mars is making an
_economic_ argument about which is a more desirable place to be. Given the
myriad constraints on a colony, the only way to make an apples-to-apples
comparison between two possible colonies is to invoke economic concepts.

The survival of the species very much depends on economics. We're in a race
between the capabilities of our growing capital and the risks that could
destroy us.

Much of what we do and have today would seem totally impractical to people
from poorer eras. Likewise, solutions to problems that seem impractical to us
(like geoengineering and space colonies) can become very practical given
enough economic growth.

~~~
jfoutz
It's physicists bias. Economics doesn't make very accurate or precise
predictions. I mean, economic systems are complicated, it's not really
possible to foresee all of the influences on a system. It's not an attack on
economists, it's just how it is.

Physicists, however, expect 5 digits of precision.

~~~
jacques_chester
Physicists are just as stumped by complex and chaotic systems as the rest of
us.

~~~
grinich
At least the physicists' models let you land on Mars.

~~~
jacques_chester
And an accurate, predictable model of economics would pay for the trip.

~~~
grinich
I don't think interplanetary travel will ever make economic sense. It's for
other reasons that we reach for the stars.

~~~
zspade
Depends on your definition of economic success. If you define it as the
ability to distribute resources necessary for survival, and extend that to the
species, then interplanetary travel is the only eventuality that makes
economic sense.

------
speeder
I need to.find.the article.proposing Venus colonization,.but.in short: Venus
has very dense atmosphere, it.was figured out that a balloon filled with Earth
air at 1 ATM will float high enough in Venus to have a reasonable temperature,
and can.be driven as needed to follow sun and shade as required. The only
problem with that setup.is that mining would.require some tether technology we
don't have, but that Venus idea is still.better than mars, because it is
cheaper to do, have more energy available, and the expected conditions of the
balloon is closer to here than anything we can figure on mars

~~~
ekianjo
Isn't Venus described as a "living Hell" ? With very high temperatures, high
speed winds, toxic atmosphere and so on? If Mars is deemed inhospitable, it's
nothing next to Venus.

~~~
mdellabitta
The idea is that one would live in Venus' atmosphere, not on the surface.

~~~
rosser
Conveniently, floating cities would go a long, long way towards ensuring that
we'd survive any Venusian impactors...

~~~
electromagnetic
IIRC Venus doesn't have active plate tectonics, but does have a molten core.
Meaning every so often it undergoes a massive global resurfacing event.
Several things support the theory, and we can't date when or how often it
happens, just a while longer than we've been actively watching it and the next
one is due: well we don't know yet, so whenever. Not to mention the crushing
pressures and temperatures hot enough to have molten lead on the surface.

Floating cities are really the only way to do it on Venus.

~~~
GregBuchholz
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus>

------
nfg
Kim Stanley Robinson's recent ‘2312’ has an interesting colony on Mercury.
Tracks are built encircling the entire planet along a line of latitude, a huge
city—‘Terminator’—rides on these rails like a train. It's pushed along by
thermal expansion of the tracks at dawn, the city slides perpetually ahead of
sunrise. Interesting stuff!

~~~
rosser
2312 is loosely a sequel to his Red/Blue/Green Mars series; Mercury was
colonized, and Terminator built during that era. It's been a while since I've
read the series, so I don't remember if there was any significant discussion
of other kinds of potential settlements on the planet.

~~~
nfg
IIRC Mercury does get a mention in the trilogy!

------
muyuu
Deep underwater colonisation hasn't been properly tried yet and we are
thinking of Mercury and Mars. Sounds a bit unreasonable when the best we've
tried is this <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2>

~~~
hartror
I see it as decoupling our survival as a species from the planet earth.
Growing our access to resources and land is a secondary consideration to me.

~~~
luke_s
Wouldn't a self sustaining underwater colony protect us from all but the worst
asteroid impacts? If you go even 100m down surely you would be protected from
pretty much everything but the earthquakes?

~~~
hartror
Depends on the size and location of the event just like land. Being underwater
didn't protect the water based dinosaurs from the impact that ended the
dinosaur's reign over the earth.

~~~
luke_s
It would have been the biosphere collapsing, that killed off the water based
dinosaurs. But if our hypothetical colony was self sustaining (perhaps as some
sort of precursor to space colonies) it should be ok.

~~~
ericd
Well, access to energy via sunlight is easier in space... otherwise you need
some other unlimited source of energy.

Also, 1 ATM of pressure is a lot easier to build for than 10 or 100.

~~~
luke_s
Well, you could use geothermal energy or make use of the temperature gradient
between the top of the ocean and the 100m down.

Its true the that pressure difference between vacuum and sea level is much
greater than between sea level and deep underwater. However you have the
advantage of not having to lift everything up to orbit. You you can build a
really heavy steel tank using relatively 'simple' construction techniques,
then just tow it out to position, before sinking it and anchoring it to the
seabed.

The more I think about it, the more it sounds like like a self-sustaining
undersea colony would be a affordable and useful way both ensure species
Survivability and act as a prototype for a space colony.

------
adastra
But the goal isn't to just colonize any old planet. It's to colonize a place
we can successfully terraform. Mars is the clear winner in that respect, and
it's not close.

Mercury needs basically a planet's worth of water and atmosphere to be
imported. Mars on the other hand could be (we hope) good to go. The only
question for Mars is whether there are abundant amounts of nitrogen locked up
in the soil. But even if not, the amount of stuff we'd need to import by
bombarding the planet with asteroids would be orders of magnitude less than
for Mercury.

~~~
tjmc
Mars has no magnetosphere which makes it a non-starter due to radiation unless
you live underground or in heavily shielded dwellings.

If you have to do that you might as well start at either the Moon or my
personal favourite Europa - a vast ocean of water kept warm by tidal forces
underneath a thick protective crust of ice. Power would be a challenge, but
there might be a way to harness either those tidal forces or the radiation
from Jupiter.

~~~
adastra
Mars is a non-starter? I think you've received some bad information.

Average radiation on the Mars surface is 10-20 rem/year. With a thicker
atmosphere it will be less. And for people spending 12-15 hours a day indoors
in shielded dwellings it will be a lot less. It's not a showstopper at all.

~~~
mixmastamyk
The low gravity may not be enough to hold a thick atmosphere, no?

~~~
jswhitten
Not for more than 100 million years or so. But then, Earth will also become
uninhabitable within the next few hundred million years.

------
utopkara
Asteroid impacts and stray planets colluding with earth make great movies and
special effects. Yet, P(human environmental damage irreparably damaging the
ecosystem) >> P(10km asteroid hitting earth)

How would you like to spend your money? Based on how often you see one in
movie theaters, or based on reality?

~~~
stcredzero
"colluding?"

~~~
utopkara
Yep, the end of the world :-)

~~~
stcredzero
Thanks for showing your standards so openly and sincerely.

------
aggie
>The magnetic field of Mars is .1% of Earth, and its atmosphere density is 2%
that of Earth, so protection from ionizing radiation would require underground
habitation, the same as on Mercury.

Curiosity has gathered data that suggests radiation on the surface of Mars is
actually tolerable to humans [1], comparable to low-earth orbit, and
presumably not too difficult to deal with for long-term surface habitation. I
presume this article is a few years old due to the mention of Spirit and
Opportunity but not Curiosity.

[1]
[http://www.marssociety.org/home/press/announcements/curiosit...](http://www.marssociety.org/home/press/announcements/curiositydatashowsmarssurfacecosmicrayradiationdoseacceptableforhumanexplorers)

------
ChuckMcM
I like the way this guy thinks about it. The thermal stability is a huge win
from an energy requirement perspective.

------
ekianjo
Instead of thinking how to colonize other planets while we have really low
tech capabilities to do that, it is probably more effective to design
efficient Asteroid defense. There are several interesting ways to do that
(such as having something orbiting around the Asteroid to progressively change
its course).

ANd anyway I seriously doubt people living on Earth are going to be OK with
their politician telling them: "Oh, there's a huge boulder coming our way, but
don't worry! The Human race is safe, we have 10 guys and women living on
Mercury! Aren't you glad we planned for this?".

~~~
rosser
Ten people is an outpost, not a colony, but your point that we should also be
working on impactor defense is well-taken. In fact, colonies _along with_
impactor defense is an example of the concept of "defense in depth".

~~~
ekianjo
Well, you know what I mean. Even if you had 1000, it would still look pretty
bad for the billions of people living on Earth. And let's not talk about
genetic diversity in a population of 1000, oh no, let's not talk about that.

EDIT: since you modified your post. Well, agree with you. Just like everyone
here should have good offline and online backup strategies for their data.

------
rogerbinns
Couldn't we do a practise run on earth? I'd expect an underground colony built
to specs to survive indefinitely on Mars or Mercury could also do so on Earth
even in the event of a large impact (assuming it isn't a direct hit on the
colony itself).

~~~
rosser
An extinction-level impactor on earth would opaque the skies for decades.
Unless you have a power source that's going to last that long without
refueling, and that's sufficient not only to supply the direct needs of the
human occupants, but also their indirect needs, in the form of light for their
crops, then no; probably not.

That's one of the more compelling points about Mercury, according to this
argument: pretty much nowhere else in the solar system is power going to be
that cheap and abundant.

~~~
aaron695
> Unless you have a power source that's going to last that long

Geothermal, nuclear, tidal. Perhaps wind, I'd think heating the upper
atmosphere would still cause turbulence?

I'd say the main reason is that it's not as cool. Which at the end of the day
is why we do stuff. Living on Mercury would be dam cool.

~~~
vec
I've got to say "cool" is not the first word that springs to mind when I think
about setting up shop that close to Sol.

------
wtracy
"Also, concentrated uranium deposits are probably less common [on Mars] than
on Earth because they depend on sedimentary and hydrothermal processes which
are much more prevalent on Earth."

There is some evidence otherwise:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor#Mars)

To me, the obvious reason to look outwards rather than inwards in the solar
system is that it is easier to heat an environment that is too cold than to
cool an environment that is too hot. The possibility of underground areas on
Mercury being the just-right temperature is intriguing, though.

~~~
jaggederest
The thing is, though, to cool something in an airless environment you just put
up some sunshades and suddenly everything is a ridiculous -100 C or so. No
convective or conductive heat transfer to speak of, so it's entirely
radiative, which means a couple layers of tinfoil reduce it to functionally
zero. Assuming your tinfoil doesn't melt, of course.

------
feefie
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://einstein-
schrodinger.com/mercury_colony.html)

------
cookingrobot
This is fascinating and a really compelling argument. He makes a manned Mars
mission sound crazy by comparison.

~~~
rosser
Agreed. I've read a lot of SF, and whenever a Mercury colony has appeared,
it's always been in the context of, "Well, now that we've figured out this
colonization thing on Mars, and some of the gas giants' moons, and the
asteroids, and, and, and... we'll try the hard places, like Mercury."

This article makes a powerful case for that thinking being exactly backwards.

(Well, except the asteroid part. I've thought for a very long time now that
the easiest set-up for an offworld colony, in terms of overall expenditure of
effort and resources, would be to tow an asteroid to a Lagrange point, hollow
it out, and spin it up for centripetal "gravity".)

~~~
terramars
agreed Lagrange point asteroid is much easier than any of the other options.
you don't even need a big one, you just need enough of a continuous supply of
resources to build a really big space station. centripetal gravity really
doesn't work for this scenario though since most practical arrangements for
overcoming bone loss require ~1km radius which means carbon nanotubes.

~~~
guylhem
First, we would need some time to get the experience to reach that rock.

Then, considering the effort spent acquiring experience, it would be better to
focus on a large asteroid.

In fact, it would be even better if we could find a way to spare some of the
effort to put it on a stable earth orbit.

Wait then, couldn't we put this big rock already in stable earth orbit called
"the moon" to some good use?? It's not like we've never been there tens of
years ago!!

EDIT: gravity and chemical composition are valid reasons to mine an asteroid,
you are totally right. Yet if we wanted not to mine but to have a colony to
edge our bets for a meteor strike, IMHO the moon seems to be a better choice.
However, I should have been clearer with my thoughts, I stand corrected :-)

~~~
yew
The biggest strike against the Moon is gravity - its gravity well is deep
enough to make rocketry expensive, even if nowhere near as expensive as on
Earth. Even very large asteroids are mostly much less massive than the Moon.

For the same reason (mass), asteroid mining is probably more lucrative than
Lunar mining (barring materials similar to Helium-3). The Moon seems to have a
less diverse composition, with some useful minerals (which are mostly more
massive) buried beyond easy reach.

The truth is that the Moon is more like a planet than like an asteroid. It
_is_ easier to reach.

------
djmdjm
A substantial problem with a Mercury colony is that the planet is much deeper
into the Sun's gravity well than earth - about a factor of 2.

IANARS, but I think the rocket equation is exponential for the gravitation
that needs to be overcome. So sending anything back from Mercury would require
at least 4x the propellant.

~~~
NamTaf
I decided to do a bunch of numbers about getting off each respective rock:

Using a = G * M/r^2, we get the following: For Mercury:

AMercury = G * 3.29e23/2.44e6 = 3.68 m/s^2

ASun@Merc = G * 1.99e30/5.79e10 = 0.039 m/s^2

Atotal (if you launch off the dark side) = 3.68 + 0.0039 = 3.719 m/s^2

For Earth:

AEarth = G * 5.97e24/6.37e6 = 9.81 m/s^2 (duhh)

ASun@Earth = G * 1.99e30/1.49e11 = 0.0059 m/s^2

ATotal (off the dark side) = 9.81 + 0.0059 = 9.816 m/s^2

So even if you launch the 'hard way' from both planets (shooting away from the
Sun), the gravity well you're in to get off Mercury is less (37%) than that of
Earth, thanks to Mercury's far smaller mass. This isn't surprising, given that
the local body completely dwarfs the influence of the Sun in both cases.

I don't have my lecture notes at work so I can't do it fully, but off the top
of my head this is a rough first pass at the relative difficulty of transfers
between each planet:

Earth orbital velocity: 29.78 km/s

Mars orbital velocity: 24.08 km/s

Mercury orbital velocity: 47.87 km/s

Venus orbital velocity: 35.02 km/s

d(Earth-Mars) = 5.70 km/s

d(Earth-Venus) = 5.24 km/s

d(Earth-Mercury) = 18.09 km/s

So in short, you need to change your velocity by 3x - 3.5x as much to get
between Earth-Mercury, as you would between Earth-Mars or Earth-Venus (which
are quite similar). Given that kinetic energy = 0.5 _m_ v^2, that's a 9x -
12.25x factor of energy to get to Mercury vs. the other two.

In summary, to get off Mercury is easy compared to Earth (duhh) and the Sun
doesn't make any difference there. To get between the planets however is a
huge difference and will be the limiting factor on regular Earth-Mercury
transfers of matter.

Regardless of which way you go (towards or away from the Sun), you need to
either shed or add the respective velocities to change from a circular orbit
at Earth's orbit to a circular orbit at the other bodies' orbits.

~~~
DavidSJ
Most of the "velocity change" in your math is done by the Sun as heliocentric
potential energy converts to kinetic energy or vice versa. The minimum energy
trajectory from Earth to Mercury is about the same delta V as Earth to Mars.

The problem with Mercury is you can't aerobrake, so add either a Venus
slingshot or significantly increased delta V requirements to decelerate and
land.

~~~
NamTaf
Sure, but you still have to shed that kinetic energy, which is what I was
getting at the end. It's no use gaining a huge amount of kinetic energy if it
just means you're on hyperbolic trajectory past the body. You need to still
shed all of that energy with (traditionally) rocket thrust or equivalent which
is completely equivalent to accelerating by that amount.

I was also basing it off a standard Hohmann transfer because sling-shotting
and all of that jazz was out of my reach without my notes :) I am sure you can
get a lower delta-v transfer from more exotic paths than just a Hohmann
transfer but it's been a few years since I've crunched those numbers!

Nevertheless, aerobraking is one option of shedding energy when approaching
smaller-orbit bodies but I neglected it when doing this first-pass analysis.
However I agree with you that approaching smaller orbits gives you benefits
that approaching larger orbits does not, by way of using the Sun's
gravitational well.

~~~
DavidSJ
My point is simply that you can't subtract the velocities of the two planets
and call that your delta V. Delta V is the amount of actual powered
acceleration your rocket does, which is only very indirectly related to the
differences in velocities between the origin and destination planets.

For example, to get from an Earth-like solar orbit to an asteroid orbiting the
sun very far away, at nearly 0 velocity, you'd need nearly solar escape
velocity at 1 AU, or about 42 km/sec, minus the Earth's 30 km/sec. Even
without taking advantage of gravitational slingshots or the Oberth effect, the
delta V requirement is 12 km/sec, not 30 km/sec. So subtracting velocities has
nothing to do with delta V.

------
cletus
I, like many others, find this whole area deeply fascinating. I'm particularly
perturbed by the Fermi Paradox [1]. On that note, another commenter mentions a
KSR book that has a city moving around a latitude to keep a certain place
relative to the Sun. Alastair Reynolds certainly had that earlier (in
_Absolution Gap_ ).

I'm also reminded of Iain M. Banks' Outside Context Problem [2] in a number of
different ways.

The first is that space seems, from the human perspective, to be impossible
big with even the nearest things being almost impossibly distant. The
optimists argue that technology will solve that problem (probably whilst
imagining a Star Trek like future) but the laws of physics paint a far bleaker
picture if you look at just the energy cost to get to our nearest neighbour
even assuming you solve the reaction mass problem and have perfect mass to
energy conversion, the problem that even the smallest piece of matter (and
eventually even _hydrogen atoms_ ) become deadly obstacles at even a modest %c
and so on.

The second is that given the abundance of planetary systems we've already
detected, the size of the galaxy (and its age) and the very real possibility
of constructing self-replicating machines with something not _that_ much
beyond our tech, it seems strange that we haven't seen evidence of this.

Anyway, back to interplanetary colonization... given the relative distance to
Mercury (6-7 years at current tech for an orbital intercept) such a colony
would of course be essentially cut off from the Earth so would need to be
self-sufficient (saying nothing of the problem of building a colony ship that
could even get people there and keep them alive for such a long period).

I think about it this way: what is the "footprint" of a single person in the
developed world? By this I mean we all need food, power, material things and
the like. For each of those things, add in all the people required to produce,
deliver and service those and keep adding those people until you have a group
that is independent and self-sustaining.

Primitive people have a relatively small footprint, requiring a relatively
small group but a large amount of area per person.

In the developed world, to maintain anything like our current existence
seemingly requires a good portion of the planet. That's a problem for any kind
of colonization effort.

But at the same time that interdependence reduces (IMHO) conflict. Imagine a
world where 100,000 people could be self-sufficient and effectively cut
themselves off from the rest of the world? It seems like a recipe for
disaster. It seems like a recipe for creating a technocratic elite and the
kind of social divergence that would ultimately create a new species (at first
culturally).

So for a Mercury colonization effort you'd need to take enough to establish
heavy industry in a hostile environment (assuming you'd mine what you need
rather than carry it there), build habitats, food production and so on. It
quickly spirals into an impossibly large effort.

Colonization in human history to date has happened at far lower technological
levels where transportation and communication were (compared to space travel)
ridiculously cheap.

What we probably need is automated, self-replicating heavy industry. This way
we send an initial package of robots to Mercury. They build energy sources,
habitats, mines, etc without the huge cost of keeping humans alive. Need more
robots? They build those too.

Sound familiar? You're only one step away from the self-replicating robots
that can (and apparently haven't) colonized the galaxy.

So yes investing in impact defense seems prudent. I don't know what we could
really do against something that's 20km across though. That's an awful lot of
mass to move out of our way.

What we really need is something that is a large part of artificial
intelligence and self-replicating machines to do our work for us. This seems
to me like the key to our long term survival and something we'll need to spend
significant effort into developing.

As an aside, I tend to agree that the desire to colonize Mars is somewhat
misguided but, mistakenly or not, Mars shares a lot more in common with us
than Mercury does. It has an atmosphere (although not a terribly useful one).
The cold is something that we, as humans, can and do deal with. It's also
closer to Earth (~8 months at the right time).

I personally find the rover effort to be useful as the basis for building
machiens that can survive in hostile environments for long periods of time, if
nothing else.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox>

[2]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession#Outside_Context_Probl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession#Outside_Context_Problem)

~~~
batgaijin
So basically turn a nearby planet into an AI and hope that it includes us in
its Dyson sphere?

~~~
khafra
Ceteris paribus, it would build its Dyson sphere out of us.

------
danso
If an extinction level event is the justification for colonizing another
planet, I wonder if the scenario we should prepare for should be nuclear
annihilation, and not an asteroid event? Seems like nuclear war would be much
more likely. The relevance to the discussion is that unless the nuclear
annihilation is complete, then the colony only has to survive for 200 years on
its own (or however long it takes for Earth's survivors to rebuild
civilization) rather than forever.

------
antninja
I like to daydream about space colonization too. Each world has its own
challenges:

* Mercury

Advantages: There's rocks we can mine and water, no need for a heating system
in the underground cities, strong-enough gravity and magnetic field.

Inconvenients: Spending over 6 years in a small spaceship is quite insane, the
water may be irradiated, underground cities are extremely expensive to build
compared with surface cities, there's only room for two megacities at the
poles unless we do a Death Star kind of urbanization (then there may not be
enough water).

* Venus

Advantages: less than a year of travel away, good gravity and a big atmosphere
that compensates the lack of magnetic field, rocks we can mine, the high
pressure and heat are manageable with our technology (the Russian probes had
insufficient protections against heat), no need for underground cities.

Inconvenients: No water (there's H and O in the sulfuric acid but the collect
and transform process may be expensive), there may be no nitrogen sources to
cheaply make our air, the cooling system is a critical infrastructure.

* The deep sea of Earth

Advantages: only a few hours of travel away, warm (5 to 0°C), cheap geothermic
energy, extremely resilient to asteroid impacts, more than abundant water and
rocks we can mine, no need to build underground cities.

Inconvenients: much worse pressure than on Venus, total darkness and the layer
of sand/dust make it hard to find potential mines.

* Moon

Advantages: only a few days of travel away, rocks we can mine, gravity may be
sufficient.

Inconvenients: water is expensive to extract from the dust layer, requires
underground cities (or does the Earth act as a shield?), there may be no
nitrogen sources to cheaply make our air.

* Mars

Advantages: less than a year of travel away, water and rocks we can mine, no
extreme temperatures thanks to the atmosphere.

Inconvenients: sand tempests, no magnetic field so underground cities may be
necessary, the heating system is a critical infrastructure as with all worlds
beyond the Earth (but we know how to heat stuff), there may be no nitrogen
sources to cheaply make our air.

* Callisto

Advantages: the only Jovian moon we can colonize (it's away from the
radiations of Jupiter), water and rocks we can mine, would enable the robotic
mining of all Jovian moons.

Inconvenients: several years of travel away (5?), requires underground cities,
extremely cold.

* Titan

Advantages: abundant water, nitrogen and hydrocarbons, a thick atmosphere, no
need for underground cities, may host life.

Inconvenients: at least 7 years of travel away, there may not be rocks we can
mine on its surface (which would make it impossible to build cities),
extremely cold.

Those are the low-hanging fruits of our solar system, and they're all hanging
higher than we would have liked.

~~~
abecedarius
Near-Earth asteroids are the low-hanging fruit, almost literally.

~~~
S4M
But they have no water and it would never be possible to live there.

~~~
abecedarius
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonaceous_chondrite>

------
satori99
A recent novel by Kim Stanley Robinson, 2132, featured an equatorial on city
on Mercury, built on rails that circle the entire planet. The thermal
expansion of the tracks on the day side propel the city permanently into the
night side.

I thought it was a neat idea.

------
meric
Read <http://advancehumanity.com/winter/> and
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11875131>, and you won't feel -40 degrees to
be so bad anymore.

------
bayesianhorse
Food for thought: Rather to colonize another planet, wouldn't it be easier to
build the telescopes to spot a 5-20km sized asteroid and then deflect it?

The deflection would probably need less fuel than putting a colony on mercury
(or mars or the moon) that could survive independently...

~~~
antimagic
Well, the deflection system would still be a single point of failure for the
human species. Colonising another planet of the solar system would reduce
SPOFs to events affecting the entire solar system - the sun becoming a red
giant, a neighbouring sun going supernova, a pulsar setting up shop too close.

Settling on another planet removes species-ending events such as asteroid
strikes, global nuclear war, a really bad virus getting out, nanotech grey goo
getting loose. The deflection system would only remove one of these.

------
larrydag
I'm curious what the affects of the Sun's radiation would have with people on
Mercury. It might not be conducive to vegetation or habitation even if it is
underground.

------
omegant
First time I have heard of the pressence of ice on the surface of Mercury.

------
D_Alex
I'm sold. Lets go for it!

