A Mercury Rover Could Explore the Planet by Sticking to the Terminator(universetoday.com)
universetoday.com
A Mercury Rover Could Explore the Planet by Sticking to the Terminator
https://www.universetoday.com/articles/a-mercury-rover-could-explore-the-planet-by-sticking-to-the-terminator
7 comments
I miss the times when I grew up, where such kind of news would inevitably lead to speculations and very detailed artistic impressions of what a human colony in Mercury's terminator zone would look like.
One of my favourite (dutch) children’s books is “400 degrees in the shade” which explores exactly that. A human colony sticking to the terminator. (It’s quite dystopian though)
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7697564-400-graden-in...
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7697564-400-graden-in...
Absolution Gap[1] has a plot device similar to this. If you like hard sci-fi, Reynolds belongs in your queue.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolution_Gap
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolution_Gap
Cool - but "A Mercury Rover Could ..." presupposes a soft landing on Mercury.
Try asking an aerospace engineer about the delta-v requirements for that. Mercury has no atmosphere - so you can't aerobrake, as we do on Mars.
Try asking an aerospace engineer about the delta-v requirements for that. Mercury has no atmosphere - so you can't aerobrake, as we do on Mars.
How many dumb ideas that we had as kids turn out to be good