MESSENGER to go to Mercury 6
(arg!)Styopa writes: "NASA agrees that Mercury's worth a mission."
Love may laugh at locksmiths, but he has a profound respect for money bags. -- Sidney Paternoster, "The Folly of the Wise"
Re:Mercurian ice? (Score:1)
Cool, but what about Pluto ? (Score:1)
So, NASA, are you listening ?
Re:Yahoo! or Microsoft. (Score:1)
Re:Mercurian ice? (Score:2)
It was published anyway (I believe Niven actually asked them not to), but the thing to take away is that even though Mercury is close to the sun, it also has no atmosphere and so any parts facing away from the sun will get extremely cold. Anything in space experiences this sort of effect. If something's completely in shadow, there's nothing else that's going to put radiation into it. If the parts of those craters with ice are never hit by sunlight, it's possible there could be ice.
I'm sorry I don't really remember more of the story itself, I just remember that story about the story.
Mercurian ice? (Score:2)
Maybe it radiates heat back into space more efficiently than previously thought.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Re:Cool, but what about Pluto ? (Score:2)
More importantly, if we don't send a mission to Pluto very soon we won't be able to observe its atmosphere easily for another century or so (it will all be frozen out and inaccessible to instruments without a rendezvous and landing).
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