mercury/water

[jtkirk1701]

they say, they see water on mercury. with little or no water on the moon, would it be worth going and getting mercury's water and taking it to the moon?

 

[Boris_Badenov]

The DV required to get from Mercury to Luna in a reasonable length of time would be immense. IMO, it would not be worth it. C2 Clay Matrix type NEO's would be a much better bet for inspace sources of H2O. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <font color="#993300"><span class="body"><font size="2" color="#3366ff"><div align="center">. </div><div align="center">Never roll in the mud with a pig. You'll both get dirty & the pig likes it.</div></font></span></font> </div>

 

[halman]

jtkirk1701,<br /><br />No way. It would be much cheaper to lift it from Earth than to haul it from Mercury. But then, there is probably not going to be a big demand for water, as we will have to learn how to recycle it completely if we are going to venture far from Earth. By the time that industrial processes have created a large demand, we will have several sources available, even if we have to mine the rings of Saturn. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> The secret to peace of mind is a short attention span. </div>

 

[radarredux]

> <i><font color="yellow">would it be worth going and getting mercury's water and taking it to the moon?</font>/i><br /><br />Mercury is down deep the the solar gravity well. Flying down (without flying past) Mercury and then climbing back out of that gravity well would be very expensive.<br /><br />Another problem is that Mercury doesn't have an atmosphere for braking of any type (aerobraking for orbital insertion or for a parachute to ride down on), so extra fuel (or time or both) would be needed to account for this.<br /><br />As an example of the difficulty of rendezvousing with Mercury., the MESSENGER mission to Mercury launched in 2004 and isn't scheduled to enter final orbit until 2011.</i>

 

[barrykirk]

The only bonus to mercury is that rocket engines, if properly designed, can be more efficient in a vacuum than in an atmosphere.<br /><br />Of course Mercury is unbelievably expensive to reach and return from.<br /><br />I think it unlikely we will be sending people there with chemical rockets.

 

[3488]

Sorry to put a dampener on this. I think like the moon, Mercury has no polar crater ice. A pipe dream only.<br />Having said that, the mineral wealth could be considerable tho. Lets wait & see what MESSENGER finds after arrival.<br /><br />Andrew Brown. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>