Questions relating to the planet Mercury.?

Question

What is the distance to Earth?
What is the size?
How long would it take to get there?
What are some physical characteristics?
What would be some activities people could do when visiting this planet?

This is, of course, an imaginary project. The last question has to be something people could do, but if you were doing a planet with rigns you could do something like Ring Surfing or something...

Answer 1

This link you will find useful,,



MERCURY

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/targetFamily/Mercury

Answer 2

Mercury is 36 Million Miles from the Sun.
The Earth is 93Million Miles from the Sun.
At its closest, then, 93 - 36 = 57 Million Miles.
At its fartherest distance, 45.5 + 18 = 65.5 Million Miles

Mercury has a diameter of 3,032 Miles.

Travel to Mercury at a speed of 25,000 Miles Per Hour
would take 95 days to 109 days depending upon the
relative position of Mercury with respect to the Earth.
This time period does not include any orbits around
the Earth or around Mercury and only allows for a
straight shot from here to there which is not very likely.

The temperature on the surface of Mercury varies from
minus 292 Degrees F to plus 806 Degrees F. The surface
of the planet is a hard crusty material consisting mainly of
silica rock. The planet is very heavy and probably has a
lot of iron and other metals in its molten core. However,
the planet's gravity is not strong enough to retain gases
which would form a workable atmosphere. What gases there
are are mostly sodium and helium and need constant replenishment from the solar wind and internal gasing from molten metals within the core.

Since mercury has such a wide fluctuation in surface temperature, visits to its surface by manned missions would
not be recommended. Orbiting the sun at such a close distance without any protection from a thick atmosphere of gases means that the planet is constantly bombarded by lethal X Rays and Gamma Rays. Temperatures rising to almost 900 Degrees F at noon are replaced by frigid temperatures of almost negative 300 Degrees F at night.

Were these temperatures not bad enough, one must also
consider that a single day on Mercury lasts for 59 Earth Days because of its slow rotational speed. A year on the planet only lasts for 88 Earth Days so it is orbiting the Sun at a fairly high speed.

Mercury has been visited by the Mariner 10 Space Probe and in near future times by the Messenger Probe which will orbit the planet in 2008 and 2009 collecting scientific data.

People would probably not visit mercury due to the violent radiation on its surface coming directly from the Sun, and radical temperature swings. It would almost be like moving from a very hot oven directly into a super cold deep freeze
something like a liquid nitrogen tank. This wide range of
temperatures would play havoc with most materials used
in the construction of space garments and related life support equipment. If ever offered the opportunity to visit there, I would certainly pass this one up.

As far as activities go, sun bathing would be out of the question, but you would probably have excellent close up views of the Solar Sun Spots if you were sufficiently protected and had adequate solar filters for your eyes and optical equipment. in the midday heat of almost 900 Degrees F, which probably lasts for about 6 Earth days, all sources of water would have dried up long ago or vaporized into steam and been lost. So any boating, or water skiing, would have to be off of the list also as well as your planned fishing and skin diving activities. Any tan you might have been looking forward to should be avoided at all costs since it would surely produce skin cancer almost immediately. Without special protective clothing you would surely die of radiation exposure well before starting up any olympic marathons or other athletic activities on the surface. I think that your main activity would be trying to stay alive.

Answer 3

mercury is about 48 million miles from us... the innermost planet... mars is 35 million but i digress. it is a rocky planet much like ours, and is also the smallest with a diameter of 4,879 km or 3,032 miles while earth has a diameter of 12,756 km or 7,926 miles it could take 5 and a half months to get there. mercury is also one of the biggest crater faces out there... caloris basin is 800 miles across the impact from this collision was so huge a ripple effect is still visible made up of rocky ridges on the other side of the planet. one day is 88 earth day's so we could try and pull an all nighter! and watch the sun rise twice in one day... i would need a guitar and some energy drinks and i'll be fine.