Re: Mercury
- From: BradGuth <bradguth@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 17:33:10 -0700 (PDT)
Good grief. You just can't get enough medicated to focus upon
anything that isn't of 100% Mook to start with, much less help others
to polish a perfectly good idea or even that of any iffy idea which
isn't 10% as weird or as off-world spendy notions suggested by the all-
knowing bipolar Mook mindset.
Of course, since Mercury has such little atmosphere to work with, as
well as having no significant magnetosphere and no moon for creating
internal geothermal considerations via gravity/tidal inter action is
why most every watt of local energy for processing whatever on behalf
of sustaining humans is going to have to be derived via imported
energy, or at least the technology for converting all of that
unobstructed solar energy. That plus you'll need loads of banked bone
marrow and stem cells in order to repair/replace those portions of
your frail body as having DNA damaged beyond the point of no return.
.. - Brad Guth
Williamknowsbest wrote:
I recently posted a comment on the colonization of Venus in our own
time. Basically, at an altitude of 55 km above the Venusian surface,
you have a largely carbon-dioxide atmosphere at Earth normal pressure,
and temperature. Since an oxygen nitrogen atmosphere at this pressure
and temperature masses 1.26 kg/m3 - and since a carbon-dioxide
atmosphere at this pressure and temperature masses 3.86 kg/m3 - a
spherical pressure vessel containing an oxygen nitrogen atmosphere
would have over 2.6 kg/m3 of buoyancy under these conditions. So,
something like Buckminster Fuller's 'cloud nine' city concept could be
massively beefed up, and turn into something like Star Wars' fictional
'Cloud City' - as a space colony.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Cloud_City
Supported by a solar powered industrial ring, similar to the one I
have proposed for Earth, built of captured asteroid fragments, and
powered by solar pumped lasers from orbit, an interesting alternative
is possible to orbiting colonies and colonies built on planetary
surfaces.
This would permit colonization even while the atmosphere was being
processed.
H2SO4 ---> H2O + S + 3/2 O2
CO2 ---> C + O2
into water and oxygen. The sulfur and carbon is combine with some
extra oxygen to form thiosulfates which are dropped from the sky, burn
back into CO2 and H2SO4 and bring more material up from the lower
atmosphere.
The colonization of the moon has been extensively studied as has the
colonization of Mars and the asteroid belt.
What has not been covered is the colonization of Mercury.
So, I'd like to discuss this briefly here.
Mercury orbits an average 57.9 million km from the Sun. This is 38.7%
the distance of the Earth from the Sun. That means that the sun is
6-2/3 times as bright as it is on Earth, illuminating the surface with
9.12 kilowatts per square meter.
Its diameter is 4,880 km and masses 38.29% of Earth. It has 74.8
million square km of surface area - about 1/3 Earth's land mass. It
has 60.83 billion cubic kilometers of volume. About 1/18th that of
Earth. It masses 330.22 billion trillion kg 1/18th that of Earth
again. Surface gravity is 37.6% that of Earth Its mean density is
5.4 times that of water, significantly higher than Earth. Probably
has had all the volatiles removed. It rotates once every 58.6 days.
Temperatures range from 100K at night to 700K during the day near the
equator. From 80K to 380K near the pole - throughout the day. This
implies there is little to no atmosphere.
So there's a lot of sunlight and probably a lot of metals at Mercury.
Asteroidal fragments would be imported here as they are at Earth or
Venus. Again, they enter orbit above the terminous of the planet,as
in the previous two cases. Also, fragments are deployed at L1 and
L2. At L1 a large 5,000 km diameter disk chaped sun shiled is built
around the line connecting the centers of gravity of the Sun and
Mercury. A hole in the center of the sun sheild 1,890 km in diameter,
reduces the apparent diameter of the sun on the Mercurian surface,
reducing the sunlight to Earth normal conditions. Mercury begins to
cool. The sheild intercepts 16,886,060 sq km of sunlight possesing
9.12 gigawatts per square kilometer. This is 154 million billion
watts of power. More energy than intercepts by Earth. The sheild/
powersat beams energy to large lenses dozens to hundreds of miles in
diameter, orbiting above the terminus of Mercury, These lenses send
laser energy to a large lens array at L2 above Mercury, which
redirects beams throughout the solar system and beyond.
At $0.10 per megawatt-hour - $15.4 billion per hour is earned. This
is a little around $8 million per sq km per year, implying each square
meter costs $8. At $100 per ton this means that 1/80th of a ton - or
12.5 kg per sq meter - is the mass budget of the sun sheild.
Once the surface of Mercury is cool enough, it may then be mined by a
variety of methods.
One interesting possibility is the production of He3 on the surface.
He3 has been capture by the lunar regolith in the amount of 0.01 ppm.
On Mercury is may be 0.06 ppm or higher. At 5.4 tonnes per cubic
meter - a square km of Mercury's surface mined to a depth of 10 meters
would yeild 3.2 tonnes per sq km. 254 million tonnes may exist on
Mercury. Using 500 tons per year this supply could last 500,000
years.
Of course He3 may be produced by neutron bombardment of lithium boron
or nitrogen, which produces tritium which then decays natrually into
helium-3 among other things. It takes 18 tons of tritum to produce 1
ton of He3 by this method. Neutron bombardment cancels the advantage
of terrestrial use of He3 since the fission reactors to produce the
neutrons are larger than the He3 reactors supported by the He3.
Once cooled, the surface would be terraformed as on the moon, by
importing volatiles.
I've intentionally top-posted for the ongoing benefit of others.
.. - BG
.
- References:
- Mercury
- From: Williamknowsbest
- Mercury
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