Landing on Mercury on equator at perihelion |
Landing on Mercury on equator at perihelion |
Mar 21 2006, 12:18 AM
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#1
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 40 Joined: 20-March 06 Member No.: 720 |
How will it be to make a manned landing at Mercury at its closest to the sun (perihelion) on its equator when the sun is in the zenith ,what are the dangers of a landing then? Do we need to be protected against the sunheat and radiation then? How strong is the heat and radiation of the sun then ,and is it dangerous when the solaractivity is high then? What kind of spacesuits do we need then? Better protected suits than we have used on the apollo moonlandings i think. Can you explain how a landing on Mercury will be when it is at perihelion and land on its equator with the sun directly overhead? I hope it will ever happen. Lets start discuss about it.
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May 10 2006, 07:27 PM
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#2
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 73 Joined: 14-June 05 From: Cambridge, MA Member No.: 411 |
I know how horrendous the delta-vee requirements are for landing on Mercury, but they're not, even with present technology, impossibly high. If you remember, the lander portion of Beppi-Columbo was not nixed for technological reasons - it was simply deemed too expensive for the program's budget!
I agree that manned landings, when they happen, will probably not occur within our technological horizon, i.e., this century, and only as a "mopping-up" exercise after the rest of the solar system has been thoroughly explored. I remember as a kid reading a SF novel by Alan E. Nourse, called, I think, "Brightside Crossing" (You might want to look it up, Rem31, if you can find a copy; it might answer your questions). It may even have been written before Mercury's true rotation period was known. His characters mounted a surface-crawling manned expedition to traverse Mercury's dayside, timed to arrive at the center right when the planet was at perihelion! The expedition was mounted not for the sake of science, but for the glory, as it was "the last great challenge left in the solar system". This was science-fiction, I know, but I wonder ... Today you have people willing to pay $60,000 and put their lives at great risk to climb Mt. Everest. They do it not for science, nor for the sake of being as high up as they can. (You can, after all, get higher in a aircraft or spacecraft!) They do it for the sheer challenge of it, "because it was there". So the fact that Mercury is, as you say, the most difficult place in the solar system to get to, may not repel people, but may be precisely what makes it an irresistable draw for some. Funny things, these humans... |
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May 10 2006, 08:27 PM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
The expedition was mounted not for the sake of science, but for the glory, as it was "the last great challenge left in the solar system". ... So the fact that Mercury is, as you say, the most difficult place in the solar system to get to, may not repel people, but may be precisely what makes it an irresistable draw for some. Funny things, these humans... I've heard the phrase "last great challenge" before referring to various challenges, but never accurately. Millionaires try to do various things in balloons or on mountains, which is fine, but when they frame some accomplishment in narrow definitions and call it the last great challenge, I laugh. I bid them to accomplish whatever they want, but if they want to have it proven that it wasn't the last great challenge, I'll donate 30 seconds of my time and pitch them one much harder than what they actually accomplished. Mercury subsolar at perihelion? OK, try going to the center of Mercury. Jupiter. The Sun. Rigel. Sail around the world in a balloon? OK, try it on an over-the-poles route. Try going around Venus in a balloon. Neptune. The Sun. Climb Everest without oxygen? OK, try it naked. Try it in 24 hours. Try it walking backwards. Try it on one foot. Try it in January. Olympus Mons. In 24 hours. Swim the English Channel? OK, swim the Pacific. Swim from Anchorage to Venice. Without coming up for air. This whole "last challenge" thing is about using a superlative where a comparative would be accurate. Unless by "last" they mean "latest"... but I think they mean "final". |
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May 10 2006, 08:50 PM
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#4
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Dublin Correspondent Group: Admin Posts: 1799 Joined: 28-March 05 From: Celbridge, Ireland Member No.: 220 |
Absolutely agree with you on this but people are strange as Jsheff pointed out. At some stage some human will just do it so they can say they did it first.
Climb Everest without oxygen? OK, try it naked. Try it in 24 hours. Reinhold Messner has climbed Everest in 4 days, solo and without oxygen in the Monsoon season which isn't quite as extreme as you suggest since he took a bit long and thankfully he wasn't naked as far as we know but it does go to show just how mad people can be. |
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