>>11850050It still won't be a cakewalk to refine metals on another world. Anon, so here's the deal. We still don't know all that much about mercury. We need to send more missions before we can seriously consider colonization. We need to understand cold traps better, we also need to understand mercury's geology better, heck we may even need better maps too. There's a lot that needs to be done. But I think you've shown that mercury colonization's worth investigating.
So far the case is
1. **there's fuck watts of power available**
2. there are regions which are at least some what habitable
3. there are likely materials which may be extracted to make propellant for a return trip. Carbon and hydrogen being interesting here, because there's the possibility to make methane.
4. there are likely materials which may be extracted to support human life and industry
But really 1, is the crux of this. More power makes ISRU and life support easier. I'd say make something like this paper for mercury:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20030022668.pdfThen I'd say show how the costs of getting stuff to mercury stack up with say Mars or provide compelling enough reasons that Mercury's better than Mars. Building a propellant plant will probably be a key part of decreasing transit cost to mercury. But this has a cost to set up.
