PB666

They were trying to match the surface pressure of Earth, for whatever reason.

Condense the heat with a focal point parabolic reflector at your enemies space craft or into space. You could use a heat pump to heat up into super heated water and then blast it into space. You could place a big sign on your satellite saying 'out of order, please call again soon' You could have the satellite tethered by several ropes, if a projectile approaches it starts spinning and then spreads out giving the projectile nothing to hit. You could have a big red cape that is deployed and waves at the projectile while the satellite moves then as it passes the satellite will signal in morse code 'Ole'. You could have the satellite suddenly start transmitting in russian or chinese as it was a case of mistaken identity. You could make a cage of chain link fencing, as soon as a projectile is detect the satellites in the area scramble to get inside the nearest chain length cage while the music from Jaws is playing. Finding really dumb ideas on how to protect your satellite is not easy.

Depending on the wavelength of the star and how much light it emits the orbiting planet would not be able to retain heavier elements. Hydrogen, for instance has an adsorption spectrum in the near UV/UV range, this kicks electrons from the s orbital to higher orbitals where they are easily stripped away. If that happens hydrogen fluffs up because of charge repulsion and eventually the protons would be carried into spac. Mercury Shows what happens, the hydrogen can congeal with other elements and condense on the sides of craters, but as soon as the sun shines on they surfaces the material is blown into space. The difference between mercury and venus is that venus is massive enough and far away enough that it can retain sulfur oxides and carbon oxides, nitrogen but not water or elemental hydrogen. Mercury is so hot it cannot even retain sulfur oxides. At the other end of the solar system pluto is so cold it captures water, reactive protons, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen and transiently elemental hydrogen. A very hot blue star could conceivably steal all the gas off of a brown dwarf leaving only a small planet.

HAVOC stands for High Altitude Venus Operational Concept. Note that the temperature at 50km is 75'C about 5'C hotter than the boiling temperature of alcohol. There is no place in the world where humans can survive for any length of time with temperature above 50'C.

YEs and those 500 degree hull temperatures certainly wouldn't cause the gunpower to explode. Then it really would be kerbal style. And to think Nibb was worrying about insulation breaking off and contributing to space junk collision risk, Good ole Jebs arm is nice and soft, certainly kerbonaut body parts are not as dangerous as orange foam insulation. Really, seriously dude you have radioparanoia. That gamma inside of a double hull isnt a risk, certainly no reason to insulate the hull with small game load. Just put the aluminum foil hat on and close your eyes and the pain will go away, I promise.

The foam also insulates from the temperature variations of space.

Well the Orange tank was kind of patterned of the ET. Functionally though they are very different. The ET was a side-mounted tank with side mounted boosters. The 64 is a stack mounted tank with generally engine under tank. The ET was spaced mostly for liquid H2 the 64 was designed for a much more dense fuel (such as Kerosene). Its would not have been a bad idea if you had at the other end and ION drive and some panels to pushed the tanks into a garbage orbit and then collected them, maybe in the future use them. The big problem with the tanks is the shape is not really suitable for station construction. We really don't need a science station or a space hotel, the thing we really need from a station point of view is a factory for assembling bulk ships in space (such as ION driven space craft). The new lightweight panels of the future can be assembled in the factory and attached on ships using robots for appreciable light weight structures. Get the panel weight down to say 0.1 kg per square meter and ION driven space craft really take off.

To be fair the field of sociobiology is pretty self critical, young generations of Ph.D.s can't wait to show how the woes of the older generation, after all thats how you make new grants and get money. As far as the young generation is concerned. If its longer than a tweet then it must be in a foreign language.

I don't have mobile phone, don't face, don't tweet. All of this stuff is brain pollution. As far as psychological behavioral analysis I think the field would agree with you on much of the work done in the past. But now its possible to look in peoples brains. One of the things that they are finding is the areas of the brain triggered by drug use are the same areas of the brain triggered by some of these 'new-age' foods and cell phones and gambling machines. The responses fail to be planned or thought out but more or less tend to be compulsion and even if they don't enjoy the addition these compulsions can be turned on by stimuli within the environment (for example information sent to your cell phone that you are unaware of). The software programmers are very well aware of this, they create games and apps with periodic messaging and rewards there are designed to ping the addition centers in order to retain interest. As far as twilight societies, this always happens, and you don't need cell phones. The growth of wealth and power in society . . frequently has a downer effect. One of the greatest compulsions to learn math if you are poor is to be able to market items in order to stay alive (for instance a street vendor), you don't technically need schools to learn math. These 21st century culture is more or less a method of compelling people to accept what corporate America wants them to be. You don't fix your car anymore, don't know what a spark plug or the oil drain plug is, you buy a cell phone but then you don't actually use the phone, everything is text or face, don't drive the car cause you are busy facing or tweeting (so you need a self-driving car). You store everything on your laptop, which really great for computer industry cause laptops and cell phones get replaced every two years, rather than 6 to 10 years like desktop. Of course you need to bundle your cable with high-speed internet and cell phone service (family of 4 may 250$/month). Ten years ago I paid 40$ a month for internet and phone service. People don't cook, they eat out or buy prepackaged food in which they have no idea how much sugar and salt is in it (More than half of Americans now suffer from some form of diabetes or high blood pressure). Then you have to buy the drugs to treat the illnesses, surgeries to treat carpul tunnel syndrome. Then get gastric bypass surgery to treat the obesity. If we exclude the raw resource price of food and gas/electricity required to cook it, basic cost of TV and telephone service, what we see is the variable costs of living are rising at the same time wages are not rising which explains why people are not saving. People don't do their own gardening, its not even an Americans, its better fit people from Guatamala. When I look at my fellow Americans what I see is people pointing at other people, this is not just one side, its all sides. But often they point at a problem that other group has, that they themselves have, and/or their offspring. Americans are certainly smarter than 100 years ago, but there is a certain social sense that is failing them. Just look at some of the harassment related things in the news, seriously.

Not blimps, there is no internal ballast, fixed gondola, motors or steering structures and they lasted 46 hours. " A blimp, or non-rigid airship, is an airship (dirigible) or barrage balloon[1] without an internal structural framework or a keel. Unlike semi-rigid and rigid airships (e.g. Zeppelins), blimps rely on the pressure of the lifting gas (usually helium, rather than hydrogen) inside the envelope and the strength of the envelope itself to maintain their shape. " To qualify as a blimp it would need to be able to remain viable for months and they would need to be able to maintain altitude (See below). I should point out that the turbulent forces in the atmosphere of venus are so great that one of the landers thought it had landed 20km above the ground. Violent winds are not a place for blimps. Hot-Air blimps rely on the pressure of hot air to keep the ship alot, if the atmosphere is already hot then the air inside the blimp needs to be hotter still. "At this altitude, pressure and temperature conditions of Venus are similar to those of Earth, though the planet's winds moved at hurricane velocity and the carbon dioxide atmosphere is laced with sulfuric acid, along with smaller concentrations of hydrochloric and hydrofluoric acid. The balloons moved swiftly across the night side of the planet into the light side, where their batteries finally ran down and contact was lost. Tracking indicated that the motion of the balloons included a surprising vertical component, revealing vertical motions of air masses that had not been detected by earlier probe missions."- vega page on wiki " Volume changes of the lifting gas due to temperature changes or to changes of altitude are compensated for by pumping air into internal ballonets (air bags) to maintain the overpressure. Without sufficient overpressure, the blimp loses its ability to be steered and is slowed due to increased drag and distortion. The propeller air stream can be used to inflate the ballonets and so the hull." blimp- wikipedia. A example of a test would be to place a space tolerant creature in the B L I M P and have it survive for a period of time. Anyone who thinks a venusian blimp is a serious proposal in the above context . . . . . . . .

Who said anything about easier. I said the idea is to get there on something that already exists. Venusian balloons do not exist, no-one has tested even a tiny blimp on venus. The problem with the mars dream is what is being proposed is hype, its vapor-ware. Its proposed in one week and is not-a-thing the next week. Thing about mercury is we know how to land on a planet without atmosphere (the moon is the same problem), we know how to deal with the sun, we know how to predict where the sun will be catastrophic and where it will be adequate for solar-farming. We know how to build bigger rockets, how to conserve fuel . . . . . . . . . We don't know how to land on a cloud, we don't know how to get a 350 ton ship to land on its feet after several screwball turns in the atmosphere. We don't know how to deal with Martian dust, or turn vapor-ware into electricity that can be used to pump water below the martian surface that we dont know exists. If you can break a most hard problem down into a set of accomplishable steps, even the most hard problem can be solved. But if there are steps that are unaccomplishable because of an acute lack on information, then the problem is no longer an engineering problem but a scientific problem. Mercury is an engineering problem, venus is a scientific problem and Mars is an ambition problem. Its ambitious because what they seek to do they do not yet have the resources to do, and what they can do, they do not seek to do. Mars colonization is a suicide mission pretending to be something else. Mercury project is a suicide mission that is not pretending to be anything else.

SO I think I can answer this debate. Lets go back 150 years ago, in the age of steam, during the age of steam you where either an industrialist who hired people who build things made to harnass steam (such as a press, or a locomotive, . . . .) no one who did not have resources had access to the keys to unlock the power of civilation of the time. The problem in the 1850 to 1900 period was in order to make steam you need a boiler which at the time was made of cast iron/steel it had to be thick, it had to hold pressure, you had to regulate the pressure. There needed to be a coal stream (remember the christmas carol, the worker got a lump of coal . . . .) it was not uncommon for the common man to due his daily business with a handful of coal per day. The came Rudolf Diesel's rather odd observation that if you placed a carbon source (cotton, oil, etc) in a cylinder and compress the surrounding air, that material would spontaneously combust, creating pressure. The pressure was generated whether it was a gallon or an thimble-size in volume. Once the full exploitation of this technology was observed the common man could take a used engine and invent something. Edison had a farm of young people from all walks of life inventing things. A couple of bicycle mechanics used a 4 cylinder engine to create the first powered flight and we enter the American Age. This eventually went from manual to electronics to software. Software was once the sole domain of Ph.Ds working on huge machines that produced more BTU's than actual results, then in the 1970s there was the computer chip, the 808X series most are unaware was not really used first as a CPU for personal computers, but as advancement of the 8008 processor for big machines, displays and equipment, there were like 6 instructions in the instruction set. Then came the Z80 that was really targeting hard programmed devices like cash registers monitors, etc. At the same time the 8086 was released as a competitor to the Z80 in the same market because the better intel chip was delayed. The Z80 was simple enough that anyone who could solder could create a circuit board and hard wire devices into it and create a computer, and the Z80 was cheap enough that it could be done, and a few kids in the bay area decided to build and sell computers. Then came the IBM PC and then the 8088. At that time if you used a computer you learned some aspect of programming you had to.At least one person in every house or company with a computer had to know how to program Dos, and programming in Basic was of great benefit. The Apple II had visicalc (long before excel). Alot of Microsoft apps (eventually part of Dos) where written by users. Microsoft originally sold its windows programming systems for hefty price, but soon after you could get it for free . . . .and that is when Apple got its butt kicked, everybody and their brother was writing software, everybody was stealing software, modifying others software . . . . . . Not only this but the bulletin boards were occupied by pretty much computer savvy, college kids and geeks. There weren't forums per say just mail (NNTP versus SMTP) flying on bulletin boards and no such thing as moderation, it was hardly needed, the intellectual universe was exploding . . . then WWW hit then google. Anyone and his brother could now have access to any bulletin board and the old net started to collapse and those well researched folks started leaving to moderated and then tightly moderated groups. Google brags about how they opened up the Internet, but they opened up the internet to complete chaos, they actually resulted in intellectuals closing off the internet from the common folk. So now what you see on the internet is duck-faced precocious teenager ranting about who tagged them in a photo on someone's facebook page as our equally foulmouthed politicians have moved to twitter to pronounce their general hatred of civility. Now you go to a store, theres a device that any 4 year old can use and probably better than I can, you put the money, you get a sim card and you can then log onto the internet with no knowledge what-so-ever about computers, how they work, . . . . . . . . This is not a genetic outcome, its a poison of my generations crafting. We build all the equipment, worked day and night to get these unfettered connections between people going. But we paid almost no mind about what it became once it got going. And to say we were not warned about Russian meddling in elections or Fake news . . . .All the fate of Twitter and Facebook can easily have been observed on the Usenet between 1994 and 1998. It is the reason I don't face or tweet; it is akin to taking an intellectual bullet and blowing your intellectual mind out. The problem about our society is that there is alot of information in great variety. Eat this, buy this, take this drug, don't eat this, don't buy this, don't take this drug. . . . . . .Our society is undergoing an insideous culture creep in which to keep your wits about you, you almost have to have a Ph.D. to side step all the risk that society creates. The opiod drug epidemic and type II diabetes epidemic are two examples of where you have to pay attention or you can easily get swept into the perils of the modern masses. I can give an example; for a friend that can no longer get out, I was buying a loaf of bread at the store the other day. But its not bread anymore on the shelves, I don't know what it is but its not bread. 25 grams of sugar in once serving of bread, enzymatically modified wheat glutin , . . . . They were selling bread with whole flax seeds on them, you cant digest whole flax seeds, they come out in your poo. I picked up a bag of corn tortillas the first ingredient was wheat, a bottle of soy-sauce . . .same thing. Nothing is what it says it is anymore. And the problem is that all this sugar, excess of animal fat, weird chemicals . . . .Its making people dumb, its literally killing their brains, picking their brains in aldehydes, inflammation is cutting off the blood supply, hormones in the foods are . . . . . . . . . .When I was coming up we never had a test called A1C, people when I was a kid very rarely died from diabetes, it was like #20 on the cause of death list. Now everyone and their brother has a positive score on their A1C. How can there not be something really wrong with the way people behave? And just to make a point, when you have two Ph.D.s in a household its not exactly easy to have kids . . . . .we were working from dawn to dusk for many years, sometimes 4 or 5 years without a vacation. There's no point where the boss comes up and says, 'well we have a time to take a 6 month break'. In fact its the opposite, after you have retired they continue to call you up to do work . . . . .

You don't have to worry about a source of power. You could use a plasma electric generator. lol.

There is no airship of any produced variety that would survive the atmosphere of Venus.

ITs not so much about solving the living part, its about solving the getting there part and shaping current technologies. We assume that living on Mercury is very dumb; very, very incredibly dumb. The thing about Mercury is that we do not need to some vapor-ware to do it (like a fusion reactor or cloud cities). We just need an awful lot of existing technologies. I should make the point that If fusion was a thing, you do not have return windows of very much sooner than those of Venus or Mars. Alternatively one could collect helium gas, or metals for ION drives, provisions of better solar panels. Without nuclear fusion return from mercury is all but impossible (that part making it dumb).

Too many hours of EVA required.

So I created 3 solution space craft. The first was about 63T and used only monopropellant. The second weighed 26T and used a massive number of fixed solar panels and ION drives to carry monopropellant to mercury to finish circularization. The third version was strictly ION drive, has 6700 dV of thrust ISP = 2250 and had alot of solar panels bringing the weight to 9.7 Ton. The burn time was 17 days. The good about this vessel was there was alot of room to increase fuel. the bad aspect is the burn time. BTW it is balanced. Three framed images are the mercurial satellite and of course the forth is from NASA. The illustration is actually a flawed one, NASA reported that relative to the direction of the sun the solar panels needed to be turned about 0-30' eitherwise the solar panels would overheat. IIRC something about decoupling electrons leaving holes that rapidly degraded the solar panels. The weaknesses of this space craft are: Solar panels should be retractable (for launch, and frame is to heavy. Solar panel weight should be decreased and more solar panels need to be added. It gets the job done but way too slowly for maximum oberth effects. If there were more solar panels I could increase the ISP from 2250 to 9000, lower the fuel, This space craft would benefit from 20 fold more solar panel area (ridgid) but no increase in weight or at minum weight in panel gained equals weight in fuel reduced...The basic problem is how also to protect the space craft. Here is the launch vehical. Notice the non-optimal payload configuration Launch and Boosters ~ 4 km/s dV 3.2 mT Third stage - 4.5 km/s dV 0.655 mT Hohmann transfer start - 8.1 km/s dV 0.197 mt Hohmann transfer end - 6.5 km/s dv 0.010 mt There are solutions. Such as increasing the base of the fairing. Ultimately this is only a fix. For some statistics, The primary launch engines are 68A's. The ION drive is a replica (in function) of the high performance 35KW ION drive tested by NASA with ~90000 Exhaust velocity at 80% efficeincy, the claim was that the thruster can operate over a wide range of ISP, thus I chose ~23000 this particular unit has 6 devices and its never operated at full power (about 40% peak rated power due to the limitation of the panels). Hohmann start transfer is performed by RL10b-2 engine (OP since the engine is only rated for 220 seconds, that's a bit of a cheat). The assumption here is that with a proper fairing base I could go with a wider fuel tank on start transfer stage and then use more of the very light-weight RL10b-2 engines. Thus the size of the fairing base is pretty important for multiple reasons. The struts are variable length gas pressurized pipe section (0.15 m outer diameter 0.1075 m inside diameter). This piping will in the future be replaced by carbon fiber but with a highly reflective surface coat of metal. The connectors are just to make assembly easier. Solar panels are offset on both sides in order to balance the shielding panels. There is an alternative on the launch, that being to use no fairing and crawl into a higher elevation of 20,000 meters (64,000 feet between Concorde flight height and SR71 cruising altitude) before beginning a notable gravity then pushing past Mach1. Most of the fuel is wasted but some is saved because subsequent burns closer to the horizon as a consequence of residual vertical momentum.

So the question is why are we @DAL59 feeding Videos of [no longer a thing] here. I was skeptical anyway, the lander burned out 900 dV of thrust but not change weight at all. It was a rather sophomoric video. Let me be specific, the way they are turning the lander while under 5 g of drag force without evidence of thrust input seems like complete fantasy.

350,000 tons of end transfer spaceship, which at present no launch system could put into orbit around earth, let alone transfer from earth Orbit to mars. To leave earth to Mars from LEO requires about 10,200 dV to get to LEO . . .LEO to Mars transfer start of 3884 dV. If the fuel use with Metholox fuel at ISP 375 requires the rocket leaving orbit of 872 kT. At Space X current efficiency they would need a launch of about 8 mT. Here are the current launch systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_orbital_launch_systems Note that Space X has 150 kT with Trans Mars Injection after refueling. Very ambitious, even empty this ship has 175,000 tons so . . . . . .

So how to get a communication satellite to Mercury. There are many options but few are viable. Assuming we have taken off from Earth at the Earth-Sun, Mercury-sun inclination node and have made all the plane changes required in Hyperbolic orbit near the minimum altitude (A big problem to begin with). We have propelled something into a elliptical orbit that crosses the path of Mercury. We will worry about how we created a and e later. The needs of entering orbit around Mercury will dictate all lower stages. We then have to do at least two burns (one to intercept mercury at PE) and one to circularize once insides Mercuries SOI. This one small sentence creates a world of problems. 1. We either need: a. two engines and propulsion systems b. An engine that can be restarted several times. Provided that our intercept is close to mercuries periapsis we can estimate the least dV required. 2. We need at least 5581 dV once having left Earths SOI. Because we will have to spend some dV correcting (Another big math problem) the orbit close to Mercuries PE we should plan on bring 6500 dV of thrust. This then creates the third problem. 3. We can use 475 ISP cryogenic rocket engines but once we get into orbit we do not have a liquid hydrogen storage ability, complicated by proximity of burn points close to the sun. Storage of liquid oxygen is equally problematic close to the sun, if we plan to take liquid oxygen to the sun some of the PL weight must also include oxygen conservation (refridgeration system) which requires additional solar panels, etc. IN addition the RL-10b-2 uses ablative thermoprotective coating on its nozzles to decrease engine weight and gives it a finite duty cycle of 220s at full thrust. This is problematic with regard 6500 dV for optimally power rocket the burn time is significantly longer. We need a high ISP engine that is light weight, but has enough thrust to inject itself into mercuries SOI. 4. The need is to get 2.5 ton (metric all further usage) (Not including fuel tank or engine) into a circular orbit about Mercury. This weight is based on the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_and_data_relay_satellite. Assuming that the antenna itself will be made of highly reflective material capable of withstand the solar temperatures some structure will need to be added to these to protect the electronics and batteries from the deleterious effects of the suns heat. If the end Transfer stage use 250 ISP monopropellant engines then it will need something like 60 tons (mostly monopropellant tanks). This is an awful lot of fuel for a 2 ton rocket. What are the alternatives?

Water has a distance related adsorption of longer wavelength light that makes everything look blue underwater. The problem is that light scattering is the inverse forth power of the wavelength which means the blue spectrum easily scatter. This ultimately limits the travel of light in sea water to about 200 feet. A steam or electricity driven torpedo is an object that maintains a constant speed to its target but whose destructive power is not related to its speed but its payload. Consequently it controls the energy lost though drag created by projectiles in which the projectile is the payload. In WWI and WWII era torpedos had to make a single turn (based on a setting made a launch) and then intercept a target at a given location. All of these steps proved to be problematic. Torpedo's either never turned or never stopped turning, they often (particularly in WWII) went under the target or the charges detonated before they reached their targets. After 1970 the torpedos were guided by a very thin control wire making it one of the most accurate long distance targeting devices underwater. Theoretically torpedos can be guided now by satellite transmission instead of wire, in this case the torpedo would be fired and a set of directives sent to satellites orbiting above the battle area, the satellite would observe the torpedo and targets progress in order to maximize intercept.

I want to make corrections here. If Saturn's relative atmosphere composition is identical to Earth's and the atmosphere is 14.7% that of Earths then the velocities needed for lift is not 6.8 times higher. Lift = 0.5 * kl * p * S * u2 where k is the lift constant for the body, p is the fluid density, S = is the lift surface area, and u is the fluid velocity. Dont get hung of in the word fluid, fluid means something that flows, generally in a laminar fashion such as the air around a wing. The equation can be condensed to deal with only two variables to k2 where k2 = 0.5 k1 S thus L = k2 * p * u2 In the instance where the same body is flowing though two medias on is 0.147 times as dense as the second we can relate the 2 by Lift = k2 * 0.14p * (Xu)^2 = K2 * p * u2 This can be simplified to 6.81 = X2 where X = SQRT(6.81) vsaturn = 2.609 vearth. Correction 2. Saturn does not have a fixed pressure or a fixed surface so its atm pressure is trivial. Correction 3. Titans Insolance, cloud levels and atmosphere make solar based power a no-go. Titans semi-major axis is approximately ten times that of Earths. This means that with any given efficiency Titan would produce about 1/90th the solar power (right not that would be 3 to 4 watts per square meter) on a clear day. Given Titans atmosphere and temperature of -162.9'C. The life expectancy of a solar panel is less than 50 years, the cost of buiding solar panel in watts would not justify its use over that period. This is an easily rebuked technology. A simple plant grow system for three med size food plants (say lettuce) uses 100 watts of power So that would mean that you would need 10 meter square of solar panel for one lettuce plant. Bearings, oil, grease in high liquid methane environments do not perform as they would on earth. The winds and water velocities on titan are driven by the sun. The temperature is so low on Titan it is difficult to see wind as a viable source of energy. Keep in mind that when temperature approaches 0'K by definition it means there is no velocity, all KE in the system has been removed. I would say this. If you don't have fusion power in space, titan is one of the worst of the places you want to inhabit. Since the construction of fusion power is going to be almost entirely off the planet, titan could never sustain its own colony.

Uneconomical is an understatement, the issue is hows of uneconomical. Lets do some starters on the problem. -Its tidally locked but in 3/2 orbit. -Axial tilt is 2.0' however some estimate to be as low as 0.027 degrees. Its tilt may vary because. -As the planet turns the tidal effect of the sun is 17 times greater than at on earth. The surface of equitorial Mercury is not static, it moves. -In addition the sun stops its flight across the sky close to periapsis, the moves again. The low axial tilt means that it is possible to land on mercurial poles however how would one practically deduce a good landing spot. 1. Sending many satellites. 2. Sending on satellite and observing the satellite for several mercurial orbits. 3. Send a surveyor that maps the location of ice. 4. Laser spectrometer that can assess the type of ice and its characteristics. 5. Just send a lander and hope you land on a good spot the first time. Once a good landing spot is obtained then. A. What about the sun, its going to blast the ship from 360' degrees over the course of a year, how to protect. B. Mercury has a magnetic field, how effective will this be without an atmosphere. C. Since there is no atmosphere, the sun's light is unfiltered, even close to termination. D. What about solar panels, where to place, what specific designs are needed. E. Will the panels be fixed or should they be mounted to set between the ship and the sun. These things inform on how to build the lander, and that then tells the magnitude of the economic difficulty. The point about colonizing Mercury is that it exaggerates the problems of reaching other planets. Here's what I would do. First I would send 3 communication satellites. 1 that is in an equitorial orbit and 1 that is has an exactly polar orbit the radial with respect to the sun, the other satellite would be a surveyer also with a polar orbit that crosses the poles. Second I would send 2 or 3 small probes and landing them at a pole, surveying the water as they approach the surface. Each craft would have surface mounted temperature, radiation and cosmic radiation sensors so the radiation exposure it surveyed over at least 3 years.

So we have alot of argument on the colonization discussion of Mars and Venus. Now the conversation has drifted to space colonization and gamma rays. All of these are things are equally fanciful, except for the fact not the better of any of our space agencies are capable of doing any of these and now everyone is on a race to land on the Moon (deja-vu) and colonize it. None of these plans, at the moment are credible. Primarily there has to be the drive to do it, and maybe the chinese have that drive. We need a project of our own, I propose the colonization of Mercury, not because its doable or easy, but because its hard and true kerbanauts are willing to take the risk. THe project is not to get kerbs to Mercury but humans. Each human needs the resources of 8 Kerbanauts. He also needs to eat and breath oxygen (food and mercury have neither) To start off this project is not going to be an overnight thing. And I think people can participate by designing their own 3D space craft and submitting examples of various landers. I will be submitting from time to time to try to stir the debate. ITs not a project that needs to be done in one step, for instance if a colony needs a solar shield before assembly this can be done. The colony is a one way trip (for relatively obvious reasons), and settlers need to come up with ways to harvest resources. Any and all resources can be used from earth, but only existing technologies. Let us assume that Putin has decided to make the Biggest rocket, but has nothing to launch on it, to you create the payload and he will launch it for you (as well as all future profits of your heirs). The problem is that Russians have no Equitorial launch sites. So you will be launching the mega Rocket from S. Kazakhstan. 45°57′54″N 63°18′18″E This the way I see it. Cons. 1. The sun is very hot and carbonization of human flesh is more than a little painful. 2. Mercury is either very hot (surface tempature) or very cold, there are very few places that are mild. 3. Mercury only has a transient atmosphere as nominal solar winds pass around its surface and sublimate along its sides. 4. Exposure to ionizing radiation from the sun and solar storms are at their highest. 5. Surface is hard (vulcanized) and lacks subsurface water. 6. Mercury is not strickly tidally locked. and so static sites on the light termination might be perilous. 7. sensitive electronics, kiss them good-bye. All electronics will need to be shielded. 8. Zero warning for solar storms. 9. Certain commonly used metals and plastics used in space become unstable with high levels of irradiance. Even solar panels have to be tilted to prevent over heating. 10. The dV requirements are insane for anything larger than a satellite the launch required is enormous. Pros 1. You beat out Mexico as the number one sun destination. 2. There is an endless supply of cheap energy for ion drives and habitation. 3. Its easy to land and take off of, and allows precise targeting of landing sites. 4. Nobody else wants to do it, you don't have to compete with hype like "Zubin said" this or "Musk said" that. Everyone will think you are completely insane which means you are free to design and revise in relative peace and quiet. 5. In terms of Hohmann transfer times mercury is close, on average mercury is closer to every planet in the solar system relative to all other planets. 6. Along the termination water and other less volatile gases sublimate. 7. There is more elemental hydrogen in Mercurys very thin surface hugging atmosphere than any other rocky planet in the solar system. Oxygen is also present (both are at very low levels but pockets of these still exist). Mercury is a great place to harvest solar winds. 8. Mercury has the highest differential between daytime and night time temperatures in the solar system, this might be useful. 9. Its a great place to drop dreamy-eyed martian colonist!

Technically its dark gravity; its material nature is an assumption; space time is curved by the composite of matter and energy.