Here's that interview link if anyone's having problems finding it: ruclips.net/video/OrElrA-Qtio/видео.html There is a second chunk in what the call their "After Dark session" but that's not in that link which is a reupload trimmed of various live production lags and error, you can find that over on our community tab. I noticed it was flagged as unlisted now so didn't want to post that as our link here
21:44 - that's not how gravity works. Planet having high speed is no benefit to interstellar flight. It's nonsense. You're confusing things. Mercury is literally the worst planet in solar system to begin interstellar travel from, it's extremely expensive, it's worse than traveling from Earth to Mars and then back to Earth before going interstellar, that's how much delta-v it takes to get out from Mercury to even Earth's orbit, yet alone further out the solar system. [edit] sorry, but have to point it out: This mistake, repeated again at the end of the video makes the advert of brilliant.org quite hilarious.
Hey Isaac, killer video as always. I didn't manage to watch the one last week, so I'm doing a double feature tonight! Also I've been reading the craziest series, which you would absolutely love! Look up Worldwar by Harry Turtledove, assuming you haven't read it already. The gist of it is that there is an alien invasion in the middle of WW2, but the aliens were expecting us to still be on horseback, since the latest intelligence they had was from 800 years ago. Since their society had been stable for 100,000 years, they assumed everyone else would be the same, and hadn't expected us to develop so quickly.
One thing that always annoys me is the whole "You'd die so quickly on this planet!" sensational BS in popsci media. You'd die rapidly anywhere but Earth in the Solar System with no protection. Fortunately, astronauts use spacesuits and we can build pressurized habitats, cooling systems and so on. That being said, I think when voluntary human genetic modification becomes accepted, mods for low gravity adaptations like higher bone density, adapted blood circulation will become among the first accepted mods, nullifying the need for any artificial gravity. I wouldn't be surprised if humans on such worlds decided to technologically and genetically modify themselves to a point they could walk on Mercury without a spacesuit.
I was not looking forward to this episode. It looked like filler in the middle of an awesome series of episodes when I saw the schedule. I was wrong. This is your best 'colonizing X' video. Great job Isaac
Yeah it got skipped originally for that reason, I didn't want to do any episode that wasn't really introducing new ideas and methods, but as I got asked about it I thought on it more and more, and gave it a tentative 'yes', after brainstorming with the Crew I'm kicking myself for having not had it in the original sequence, so many options
I myself enjoyed Titan episode, learned what Carnot engine is. I enjoyed the Jupiter episode even more, he showed how the diversity of Jovian system's resources is not a hindrance, but an opportunity to emplement different strenghts and weaknesses of each of its bodies, and if we use all of that (combined with hydrogen fuelled propulsion), we could make a mini solar system out of Jovian system itself. Even more, when he went into planet moving, and decided to move Jupiter and its moons on a galactic cruise. It was kinda wholesome, it would be like giving Jupiter a retirement, saying: 'you guarded us from those asteroids for so long, now that we know how to do that ourselves, we will take you to see the universe. Thanks, big bro, here's a free galactic trip for you'.
Isaac Arthur, i'm writing a sci-fi book and I have to thank you for showing how powerful the Sol system can be, both economical, military, and industrial. Thank you for all the work you have done good sir and keep up the good work.
Sometimes I get a bit sad when I think it's Thursday but then realise it's Wednesday. That's how much I love and look forward to your videos Isaac! And I know so many others do so even more than I do! As two examples: You have taught me of ideas I never thought possible - like colonozing Mercury - and so many amazing ideas of space, the future, and humanity's place within them, that go far beyond what's even briefly crossed my mind. And you're a huge inspiration. I'm sure both sci-fi writers and scientific video producers are hugely inspired by your work. As well as science teachers, which I am preparing to become, thanks in no small part to your sustenance and kindling of my interest in science. I also would like to start producing educational and exploratory/speculative biology videos for youtube, very much inspired by your channel - though different in nature and topics, and I don't even remotely hope to attain the same quality of course! You are fantastic Isaac! And your team! We all appreciate you and your work massively, and I wanted to remind you of that ❤
One of my very favorite episodes. Thank you for the special consideration of the ideas that you and many of us feel some comfort with when thinking of Mercury, as well as the concepts you only revisit in the reexamination of your original ideas. I look at the resources Mercury holds with much more colour with the timescale included.
The Part about the orbital speed and launching Starships really got me, did not think about that before, great video as always. Thanks to the SFIA Team.
The orbital speed doesn't actually matter that much. Getting out of a gravity well is all about delta-V. The higher speed is offset by the fact that you are in deep on the Sun's gravity well. On the other hand, he is quite correct that proximity to the Sun makes getting that delta-V from a solar powered laser much easier.
If you launch from Earth and flyby Mercury you will be orbiting the Sun much faster than Mercury is orbiting the Sun. You can fire your engines or use the lasers and have that much extra velocity.
@@raeneshadow haven't read that book, but one of the characters in his mars trilogy series spent some time on Mercury and a city moving along on tracks is mentioned iirc..
Thank you Isaac for another superb video! Didn't think that it was possible but they seem to get better with each episode. Once again kudos to you and your team!
Just out of the Bobiverse trilogy (loved it!) and about a quarter of the way into The Singularity Trap (all in one week). Not only does Isaac makes awesome content, his books recommendations are great! Thanks! Now onto the subject at hand. I am glad Isaac spoke about thermocouples/stirling engines in this episode. I have always seen them as a possibility and I was always disappointed they never got mentioned.
Temperatures aside for a moment, I see a lot of similarities between the Moon and Mercury in the context of space stations, exploration, etc. From what I understand, the fact neither of these bodies having an atmosphere helps out immensely in terms of landing on them. I mean, that's what makes sense to me, you don't have to fight an atmosphere in or out. As for future prospects, the planet has a lot of potential as it is little more than a big ball of metal and 1 of only two planets who's electromagnetic sphere is generated by churning metals. Other than a lot of iron, there's other metals mixed in there as well, not to mention some silicates undoubtedly, and finally some research indicates that Murcery's magnetosphere may have been as strong as Earth's at some point in its history. It'll be a great body to use to build any Dyson Swarm.
When you mentioned temperature differential I immediately thought of Stirling engines. Sure enough a minute or so later they came up. One of the things I love about this channel is it gets me thinking in a problem solving way. Early in the video when you were talking about the day-night cycle I was thinking why not change it. Something I'd never even consider an option until this channel. I had a big smile when you discussed doing just that near the end. Thank you Isaac and team, keep thinking about the extraordinary but possible :)
I write science fiction stories as a hobby. I have been wanting to do a series on the planets of our solar system for quite some time. Thanks to the Outward Bound series and other series on your channel, I have been able to begin that project. The stories aren't long, nor are they that great, but watching your videos has allowed me to provide a through line: Aliens long ago arrived and built structures on each of our solar system's planets utilizing the advanced techniques you cover. Humanity, as they expand out to the other planets in the mid-to-distant future, begin to discover and utilize these ancient monolithic structures. I've already done stories for Venus, Neptune, and Jupiter. Mercury was next on the list. Watching this has given me ideas for how humanity lives on Mercury and what their initial (pre-Alien tech) purpose would have been (went with the factory route: Mercury builds ships and is the staging ground for Dyson satellites). Thank you for all the work you do. Keep it up! I love learning about this stuff, and I'm so happy I discovered your material.
Arthur, after watching every single one of your videos I have had so many things I wanted to say on the journey but I will keep it short and simple. Thank you. Thank you for the education, the positivity about humanities future, your jokes and respect for your viewers. You deserve every success sir.
This is one of your best videos (if not the best), congratulations to you and your crew. * Pros: The music set the tone amazingly while the animations gave a perfect visualization of the idea you were trying to portrait. The content was superb, this is what I liked the most, it was not even close to being repetitive in a half an hour video! I didn't even know the many possibilities for Mercury as you told us in this video. It feels like there's even more content about it to analyze right now, which leads us to the bad part of this video, below. * Cons: it was too short! :)
When I come home from work on Thursdays here on the other side of the pond, SFIA is a sure go-to for me. My mobile device has already informed me around early afternoon that your new video is out, since your channel is one of the few I have notifications turned on for. Today I realized I especially like the Outward Bound and Upward Bound series, they are quite inspiring. I always feel like I am feeding my brain on your channel and get a substantial creative input. Also, congrats to the very good music this time! It seems more lively, it fits this series.
I think there's another by s baxter ? , along with the city on tracks there is a cult of sun walkers staying just ahead of sunrise . cant remember the title..but there is quantum computing intrigue added in
its a kim Stanley robinson book now I remember more ..it had various asteroid environments as well . cant say more or maybe spoiler alert first . ty for reply
Isaac, my sincere thanks to you and your team for putting all that effort in the videos you make. I absolutely love listening to you before I go to sleep. It makes me hopeful for the future, and that is a priceless resource for humanity as a whole. Not just the ones alive today, but all the generations to come.
Just brainstorming but I suppose it could work if you used Lando's city on an imperial walker idea from the Star Wars Thrawn Trilogy. Now time to watch!
It stands out to me because it's one of the first instances in Star Wars of actual engineering skill applied to a problem rather than just 'build it bigger and stronger' which tends to be the sci-fi way when you want to show progress.
Yeah, Star Wars isn't really noted for its focus on scientific accuracy and plausible engineering, but I appreciated Zahn trying to get some realism in that trilogy.
Hello, Isaac, Love the channel; keep it up! I was surprised to see that a certain model for a mercurial colony was not mentioned, since I was very interested in your assessment of its viability: I am referring to the one in Kim Stanley Robinson's "2312" novel. Perhaps you're unfamiliar with it, but it's basically a (permanently) mobile city on equatorial tracks made of metal, which expand as they heat up, creating a slope that constantly accelerates the colony (some energy is produced by braking), keeping it near the "terminator line" (i.e. sunrise area). Would love to hear your thoughts on it, as it is the only colony in mercury I know of in SciFi (I agree with you in the dearth of literature surrounding the subject). Best wishes and, once gain, congratulations on the excellent content.
Truly inspirational. Not lying - you became my #1 source of admiration towards science, tech, space exploration, our possible future out there... Will never regret subscribing to this channel!
I am subscribed to a lot of RUclips channels, but I think you go so far above everyone. Your videos could be a TV series pretty easily. Have you tried to get Netflix to make your videos into a series?
Isaac, I just discovered your channel a little bit ago, from watching Fraser’s channel. I have been binge watching and just wanted to say I really enjoy the content. My curiosity about all these topics is piqued on so many levels. I just wanted to say thanks. Please don’t stop doing what you do.
Love the outward bound series Isaac and I'm looking forward to the whole line up of shows coming over the next month! Great job to you and your team as always. I love the custom animations you guys are putting together for these episodes. This channel continues to remain my favorite channel on RUclips.
This guy need to get to Hollywood. With a good script and him on the cgi and tech. Could make one hell of a movie. A whole series. Probably better than Star wars.
Isaac Asimov’s ‘I Robot’ had one story that took place on Mercury as I recall. When you started talking about the length of a Mercury day and being able to stay mobile and live on Mercury my brain went into recall. A lot of the same information was presented in this video. The mining colony on Mercury in ‘I Robot’ was staffed with robots and only a few humans as overseers. Good job on getting the science right.
It would be better to chase the Sun rather than run away from the Sun. The Sun heats the surface which retains it's latent heat therefore a mobile mining platform which follows sunset would be heated by the stored heat in the surface.
i’m writing a fictional piece with mercury as a setting and came here specifically for some sfia inspiration on the topic, only to find isaac lamenting the lack of mercury-based scifi! nonetheless, isaac has indeed inspired me with this most excellent video and i will do my best to create an awesome vision of mercury in kind 🙏
Not to mention it's place in the belt. Ceres is like the central station in the belt for asteroid mining, there you have the storage and the rest stop while you at the same time build a whole new planet and making it bigger and bigger by dragging in objects from the belt.
Marcus Yrvild -- Creating a new big object in the Asteroid Belt ... that is an intriguing idea. Make it the size you want, in the preferred composition, and give it the position and spin you want.
I heard you mention a number of times you have a speech problem. I am not a native english speaker, since I am dutch, but I can follow your videos without any problem. You speak in a tempo easily followed by any non-english speaker. Even my 7 year old son can follow you with only the enlish lessons I gave him (and he, expectingly, sux in english since I am his dad and not a teacher). You are doing a great job!
Since I was little, I’ve wondered what would happen to the planets if a catastrophe knocked, say, Venus off its orbit, or if a planet was somehow “disappeared” due to some unknown factor, and lately even-as it’s popular here- if we looted Mercury of its stuff. Wouldn’t the gravity of the solar system suffer a disaster, turning some planets rogue, causing collisions, etc?
99.8% of our solar systems mass is in the sun, and most of the remainder is in Jupiter, so unless Venus managed to fly close to us on its way out, I expect any effect would be rather minimal. Some asteroids and comets might be perturbed, some planetary orbits changed slightly, but I don't see it being a catastrophe
Depends which planet. Jupiter would matter a lot. Mercury almost not one bit. Mars would "punch above its weight" in one respect (bombarding earth to rubble) because of its relationship with the asteroids.
I have started to enjoy Arthursday more and more now that I’ve bungee through all of your content. Would you be willing to do an episode that ranks sci-fi universes from the possible for humanity to achieve to outright laughable?
:) Yeah I always think of us a late morning show, in time for lunch, since I'm in Ohio, but I get a lot of folks on the west coast glad it's out in time for the morning commute or off in Europe saying in time for dinner. I hope you're enjoying SF's weather, weirdly, in spite being born just a little north of there in Sonoma, I've naught been to Cali since I was a toddler, barely remember the place.
I found you last weekend while finding different space channels, and i can say that this is one of my new favorite channels on youtube! Great video as always👌
As much as we don't think a lot about how long colonization takes, we also underestimate how exponential growth speeds things up. If we landed a single self-suficient autonomous self-replicating factory at Mercury, and it produces a new factory every year, and that factory another one, we would have close to 1000 factories in 10 years, a million in 20 years, over a billion in 30 years, and a 2^40, almost 1.01 trillion factories in 40 years. We would try to fail-safe the process, starting with 10s or 100s of factories in the first years, so the number would be a bit larger. All that within a 2020s average human lifetime. Someone designing that Dyson teraproject would see the results.
+Isaac Arthur I love Thursdays. As soon as I get the notification and see 'Isaac Arthur' the countdown begins until I can leave work, hurry home, grab my drink and snack, get comfy in my recliner and wind down over the days episode. But today, when I saw that it was an outward bound episode centered around Mercury, I couldn't help myself, and spent my lunch break watching. I've always thought that Mercury gets a raw deal when it comes to science fiction. But the same reasons that many authors simply write off the planet actually make it an incredibly attractive locale. Ive always thought that Mercury could provide much of the power needed by colonies located much deeper into the solar system, on the larger gas and ice giant's moons, where the available solar radiation is too low to efficiently collect on site, for example, using large lasers to beam energy to orbital power stations. Also, as you touched on, it wouldn't be too difficult to create a mobile colony that takes advantage of the drastic temperature gradients. Combined with its resource wealth and incredibly low cost gravity well, Mercury could easily become the most important colony in a solar system wide civilization. Ive read a few hypothesis that Mercury had much of its original crust stripped away by impacts, which is why it has such a large core, relative to its overall size. How does that effect its overall mineral wealth?
Okay, if you haven't read "2312" and are interested in the subject of this video, you TOTALLY need to. I had to stop the video at the "walk around the planet ahead of the sun" part just to say this, because EXACTLY THAT HAPPENS IN THE BOOK. The Sunwalkers! _And_ the city on rails that always travels just ahead of it! That's in _the first chapter_. EDIT: Also the city is called "Terminator". XD It seems not much sci-fi pays proper attention to Mercury, so I figured I'd let people know about a book that really does. Also we have hollowing out asteroids and spinning them to make internal gravity and miniature terraformed worlds (of all kinds), floating colonies in clouds and even a base on _Io_, which has to be doubly shielded against the volcanoes and then its OWN Farraday cage to block out the radiation. Then there's what they're doing on Venus, which is not what I ever would've expected, and what happened to Earth, and...
Yes. I never finished that book, but I really enjoyed the parts about Mercury at the beginning. Also the asteroid terrarium parts were also pretty neat too.
This was my favorite installment in the series so far, though I admittedly have such a strong fascination with Ceres, so it might give this one a run for its money!! Great job on this one, Isaac. You make outstanding videos and I’ll be supporting you all the way for the future.
Not sure if its because I've been subbed for a while now, your recent speech therapy, or both but I honestly cannot hear the slightest speech impediment. Just thought I would mention this. Great work as always sir!
I've noticed this same thing in the beginning videos, I could really hear it but was still able to understand what he was say, as time goes on, It seems to be slowly going away, That's not easy to do as you need to relearn how to pronounce parts of words, and when you get one sounds right, sometimes you mess up one you didn't have problems with, I know from experience, I was very young when I had an accident and split my tongue in half, it took me about 10 years to clear up my speach, I give him lots of credit in improving his speech over the years, its not easy but he's doing a great job improving
Minutes in and 53 views and 51 likes, seems totally legit based on the viewers of this channel. I mean Isaac previously figured out how to colonize the sun, so of course we'll auto like his videos
:) The 'on page' views often lag, YT runs some verification thing to make sure they're real initially, those 53 aren't even real views, its me and the production crew and such popping in to watch it while it was unlisted to check for typos, set the text, and such.
Isaac Arthur there was already 26 comments when I posted that too btw a few minutes after it opened to everyone. I know things are delayed on RUclips view and like count wise, I just found it very humorous in a good way that by chance the views and likes where nearly equal. Most other times I arrive that early the view count is way higher than the like count, you on the otherhand was nearly 1 for 1 in those first minutes. Thanks for the behind the scenes details though. I find it nearly as fascinating as the content of your great videos.
0:37: 🌞 Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, has potential for colonization and various uses. 0:37: Mercury is often neglected in science fiction, despite its potential. 1:16: Mercury is seen as a hot, airless planet that could be used for building supplies and power collection. 1:40: Disassembling Mercury for a Dyson Swarm would take a long time. 2:46: Colonies can have lasting impacts even if they only last a few centuries. 3:22: Mercury's near and mid-term colonization is more feasible to consider. 3:30: Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun but Venus is hotter. 3:41: Mercury has a thin atmosphere and a long day. 4:19: 🌑 Mercury's rotation and orbit result in long days and nights, extreme temperatures, and limited sunlight. 4:19: Mercury rotates on its axis 3 times for every 2 orbits around the Sun. 4:37: Earth's sidereal day is 23 hours and 56 minutes, while the synodic day is 24 hours. 5:13: On Mercury, the sidereal day is 59 days long, while the synodic day is 176 days. 5:31: The day/night terminator on Mercury only moves 87 kilometers a day at the equator. 5:45: At higher latitudes, the movement of the day/night terminator is slower. 6:14: To keep up with the Sun on Mercury, you need to move at a speed calculated using cosine of latitude. 6:40: Mercury's temperature ranges from very hot to very cold, making mobility desirable. 8:42: 🌑 Mercury's unique conditions make it a potential location for mining and manufacturing in space. 8:42: Mercury's proximity to the Sun allows for easy heating and cooling processes for smelting and refining. 9:45: Mercury's lack of air and low gravity make it an ideal location for mass driver tracks for transportation. 10:20: Landing on Mercury is difficult due to the lack of air for aerobraking. 10:34: Building a track around Mercury could provide a means for constant transportation and speed reduction. 11:39: Mercury's surface temperature fluctuates, but there is a spot where the temperature remains constant if dug deep enough. 12:16: 🌑 Options for living on Mercury include underground habitats, mobile bases, and mushroom habitats. 12:16: Mercury's temperature varies by longitude and underground temperatures can be livable. 12:44: Retractable structures could be used to deal with expansion and contraction. 13:35: A Mushroom Habitat with stilts and a mirror shade could protect from heat. 14:28: Spinning habitats could combine centrifugal force with gravity for higher net gravity. 15:13: Power can be obtained from the Sun or through orbital power satellites. 15:39: The temperature difference on Mercury can be used to generate power using thermocouples. 15:53: Building facilities near the poles can make the track around the planet shorter. 16:04: 🪐 Mercury offers abundant raw materials and solar power for potential colonization and industry. 16:04: Solar panels can provide constant sunlight and act as radiators to regulate temperature. 16:29: Long wires or coolant pipes could transport power and regulate temperature for the bases. 17:10: Mercury's abundance of raw materials, particularly silicon, and lack of atmosphere or oceans make industry viable. 17:44: Colonizing Mercury does not necessarily mean making it Earth-like, but living there is feasible. 17:59: Harvesting materials from Mercury would take a very long time without significant impact on its gravity. 18:39: Terraforming Mercury is possible with large mirrors or shades to cool the planet and create a 24-hour day/night cycle. 19:23: Mercury has the resources and industrial capacity to make it a livable place. 20:18: 🌟 Mercury has the potential to be a livable place with various options for energy, raw materials, and manufacturing, as well as serving as a launch point for high-speed spacecraft. 20:18: Mercury could collect and use or sell hydrogen and helium from the solar wind. 20:34: A big mirror or shade could be used as a giant windmill driven by the solar wind. 20:48: Solar wind could be funneled to polar collectors using the Star Wheel concept. 20:48: Nanomaterials could be used to create a pinwheel shape or paddles to let light through in a 24-hour pattern for power generation. 21:28: Mercury's resources could be used to export energy, raw materials, and manufactured goods to the rest of the solar system. 21:57: Mercury's high speed and proximity to the Sun make it a potential launch point for high-speed spacecraft. 23:44: Mercury has been underrepresented in science fiction, but there are opportunities for more stories centered around it. 23:58: 🚀 In this video, the author discusses the concept of escape velocity and recommends a course on Brilliant.org for further understanding. 23:58: The author praises authors Taylor, Bova, and Brin for their knowledge and accuracy in science. 24:12: Mercury's low escape velocity has numerous benefits, such as requiring less energy for exporting materials. 24:29: The author recommends checking out Brilliant.org's course on escape velocity and interplanetary travel. 24:53: The author promotes Brilliant.org's annual Premium subscription with a 20% discount. 25:34: Upcoming topics include Ceres, civilizations rising and falling, and post-scarcity societies. 26:18: The author encourages viewers to subscribe, like, and share the video. Recap by Tammy AI
speaking of which, it would be a better idea to chase the sun rather than constantly move away from it. If your mobile factory breaks down, it's better to have the 88 day night as a buffer rather than getting cooked as soon as you get left behind.
Except you are driving over schorching hot surface. Not ideal. And as explained in the video, a few stilts and a big mirror will let you wait out the day just fine.
You could chase the sun or darkness. There are pros and cons to either route in the event of a loss of mobility, but chasing the darkness would probably be safer. The bright side to getting stuck on the bright side (see what I did there), is you have an abundant supply of solar energy of which you can use to power AC along with external shading (solar panels could serve a dual purpose of providing shade and power). If you get stuck on the dark side you would have to rely on an internal generator/RTG or what not, to heat the vehicle/factory for 88 days.
You can, but I have already declared myself the sovereign of all space within 50 million miles of the sun. Doing so would, therefore, be an invasion and an act of war. You do not want to get into a flame war with me, as I have forged my insults in the crucible of /pol.
Nanotech sounds interesting coming from SFIA. Nanotechnology sounds like a film trope to me. I understand the basics of photoresist and P/N junctions when it comes to silicone technology. I mean it's not too hard to understand: apply fancy rust to a silicone wafer, coat that in fancy plastic, add a Prince backing track w/purple mood lighting, and let it rain (acid) to etch an image. It's pretty easy to understand, in the end your smallest resolution possible is governed by the wave length of the exposure light. Nothing in that setup is really designed structurally as far as I understand it and it's a deposition technology. Plus it's still just applied to wafers the size of a dish plate. How does "nanotechnology" really scale even to Starship Enterprise levels? People have been hyping graphine for several years now. It doesn't appear to be the new cellophane/backlite revolution. Is "Nanotechnology" overhyped special use materials like Aerogel or is there a practical reason to believe it can be mass produced as general industrial materials?
I will only believe a technology is possible after it has been successfullyy prototyped. He may talk about ion drives, but until I hear of a working prototype I aint buying it. Same for nanotech. Don't forget that the military industrial complex has been hyping railguns as being just around the corner since just before WW1.
Well I can't complain, we're at 460-3 like:dislike at the moment, and our worst tend to be about 40:1. I like to think some are accidents where they just hit the wrong button, or were having a rotten day and are just in a bad mood, especially on vids like this where there's really nothing controversial. Still, all feedback is valid, at least the non-profane kind :) and I've disliked a video a few times, though I try never to do that for someone clearly new, lest I discourage them from trying again and improving.
If watching on my phone with it turned sideways, I'll tap the center of the screen to pause. At the same moment, the screen reorients itself... and I inadvertently tap thumbs down. I usually catch myself and retap to undo my mistake, but I'm sure I've failed to notice in the past. On a side note: If someone finds this episode this soon, they surely have to be a subscriber. So, at least the sub numbers are up even if they are a negative person.
well, i never disliked a video consciously and still from time to time i rewatch a video i liked and see i gave it a thumbs down. Guess its something that happens when browsing youtube on a phone while drunk :P
as always, mind-blowing and informative. as always, amazing production value. as always, simultaneously thoroughly enjoyable and existentially distressing.
I agree, there are a lot of uses they are good for but it does limit the market for them and they are not enough more efficient to overcome the limited market unless enthusiasts get industrial Sterling cycle engines into production.
Loved the video! I can't wait to get home on Thursdays for your new episodes! Really nice to see some attention given to Mercury, now I am gonna run my Genesys game on Mercury this weekend (your videos have been really influencing where my weekend table top game goes, lol).
We will probably do Neptune and leave it at that, it's fairly parallel to Uranus anyway and I don't think I could handle all the jokes such a video would result in, I'd probably be cracking up trying to read the script too
As always a stellar episode, but I must say as someone who has been swayed to favor Dyson Swarms over conventional planets from a Sci-Fi stand point from you, I still have a soft spot for planets. And from 18:27 the wonderful positive music and your explanations for what will be done to make Mercury habitable... you managed to paint a beautiful image in my mind. As someone who looked at the idea of colonizing Mercury as impossible, that was beautiful to see made wrong. I look forward to the next episode. :)
Mars has a better press agent. Mars was the main character in some of the earliest, most inspiring science fiction written. It got there first, sold the most books, told the best stories. Mercury and Venus need better representation.
You bring up a lot of good points. What I think would be really interesting would be to do a cost-benefit analysis for each planet/moon and asses the value of the resources it has, the cost of transporting them back, and cost of all the things we would need to live (food, water, air, temperature, energy) and see how far we are away from break-even.
It's cool that you posted this today. Night before last I was pitching my wife on the idea of a story that takes place in a cluster of O'Neill cylinders situated in the L2 LaGrange point of Mercury, wherein the cylinders were made of materials mined from Mercury itself by robots.
Here's that interview link if anyone's having problems finding it: ruclips.net/video/OrElrA-Qtio/видео.html
There is a second chunk in what the call their "After Dark session" but that's not in that link which is a reupload trimmed of various live production lags and error, you can find that over on our community tab. I noticed it was flagged as unlisted now so didn't want to post that as our link here
I cant finish watching your videos without grinning like an idiot by the time I'm done.
Hey Isaac . Unrelated question, but could you link me to the VPN service that you recommended in one of your videos please?. I can't find it. pls halp
Is there a possibility of just sitting and listening to you all in your discord? (Quiet of course)
21:44 - that's not how gravity works. Planet having high speed is no benefit to interstellar flight. It's nonsense. You're confusing things. Mercury is literally the worst planet in solar system to begin interstellar travel from, it's extremely expensive, it's worse than traveling from Earth to Mars and then back to Earth before going interstellar, that's how much delta-v it takes to get out from Mercury to even Earth's orbit, yet alone further out the solar system.
[edit] sorry, but have to point it out: This mistake, repeated again at the end of the video makes the advert of brilliant.org quite hilarious.
Hey Isaac, killer video as always. I didn't manage to watch the one last week, so I'm doing a double feature tonight!
Also I've been reading the craziest series, which you would absolutely love! Look up Worldwar by Harry Turtledove, assuming you haven't read it already.
The gist of it is that there is an alien invasion in the middle of WW2, but the aliens were expecting us to still be on horseback, since the latest intelligence they had was from 800 years ago. Since their society had been stable for 100,000 years, they assumed everyone else would be the same, and hadn't expected us to develop so quickly.
Average science channels: You can't colonize planets outside of the habitabile zone.
Isaac: Hold my coffee.
One thing that always annoys me is the whole "You'd die so quickly on this planet!" sensational BS in popsci media.
You'd die rapidly anywhere but Earth in the Solar System with no protection. Fortunately, astronauts use spacesuits and we can build pressurized habitats, cooling systems and so on.
That being said, I think when voluntary human genetic modification becomes accepted, mods for low gravity adaptations like higher bone density, adapted blood circulation will become among the first accepted mods, nullifying the need for any artificial gravity. I wouldn't be surprised if humans on such worlds decided to technologically and genetically modify themselves to a point they could walk on Mercury without a spacesuit.
dude, no
@@riot2136 What is this response even supposed to mean?
@@michalzustak8846 you'd have to consider quality of life
Michal Zušťák Get robots to do it
Wow, never thought Mercury could be such a cool place to colonize
Maybe "cool" is not necessarily the word you're looking for.
misium Au contraire, Mercury is (one of?) the coldest(?) place(s?) in the solar system. Also nearly the hottest.
@@misium dont be right a the middle of the sun but dont be at the far back...its tidally locked so u have to find a middle ground
@@lilosnitch3247 reading this just as Isaac mentions the fact Mercury /isn't/ tidally locked.
It isn't
Mercury is very underrated as a planet
Eh, I give it a 6/10. Too much sun.
Sunscreen.
Class A, Rank 7; RUclips Hero: Keyboard Warrior your a human, how the heck are you rating a planet?
it's basically a better mars
@@C104-k5ma worse mars
I was not looking forward to this episode. It looked like filler in the middle of an awesome series of episodes when I saw the schedule. I was wrong. This is your best 'colonizing X' video. Great job Isaac
Yeah it got skipped originally for that reason, I didn't want to do any episode that wasn't really introducing new ideas and methods, but as I got asked about it I thought on it more and more, and gave it a tentative 'yes', after brainstorming with the Crew I'm kicking myself for having not had it in the original sequence, so many options
Colonizing the Sun was better. However, this one was a real surprise.
I myself enjoyed Titan episode, learned what Carnot engine is. I enjoyed the Jupiter episode even more, he showed how the diversity of Jovian system's resources is not a hindrance, but an opportunity to emplement different strenghts and weaknesses of each of its bodies, and if we use all of that (combined with hydrogen fuelled propulsion), we could make a mini solar system out of Jovian system itself. Even more, when he went into planet moving, and decided to move Jupiter and its moons on a galactic cruise.
It was kinda wholesome, it would be like giving Jupiter a retirement, saying: 'you guarded us from those asteroids for so long, now that we know how to do that ourselves, we will take you to see the universe. Thanks, big bro, here's a free galactic trip for you'.
I love the outward bound series...Thank you to everyone involved
Stephanie Warren agreed :-)
Same!
How interesting could a topic possibly be on living on hot ball of rock far too close to the sun? ... Very! Great video :)
@BLAIR M Schirmer it can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with, and it absolutely will not stop, even after you're dead.
Might be the second-hottest real estate market in the solar system!
I've got to admit that thought crossed my mind too.
...wanders off to see if Elon Musk will consider a partnership ;)
You forgot the sun. SFIA wants to colonize that too!
Third, technically.
@@hithere5553
Oh yeah. He did cover colonizing the sun.
ruclips.net/video/0Ap4JhPoPQY/видео.html
I always thought Mercury was sadly overlooked and underutilized in sci-fi lore as well, glad to see someone giving it the attention it deserves!
Isaac Arthur, i'm writing a sci-fi book and I have to thank you for showing how powerful the Sol system can be, both economical, military, and industrial. Thank you for all the work you have done good sir and keep up the good work.
Sometimes I get a bit sad when I think it's Thursday but then realise it's Wednesday. That's how much I love and look forward to your videos Isaac! And I know so many others do so even more than I do! As two examples:
You have taught me of ideas I never thought possible - like colonozing Mercury - and so many amazing ideas of space, the future, and humanity's place within them, that go far beyond what's even briefly crossed my mind.
And you're a huge inspiration. I'm sure both sci-fi writers and scientific video producers are hugely inspired by your work. As well as science teachers, which I am preparing to become, thanks in no small part to your sustenance and kindling of my interest in science. I also would like to start producing educational and exploratory/speculative biology videos for youtube, very much inspired by your channel - though different in nature and topics, and I don't even remotely hope to attain the same quality of course!
You are fantastic Isaac! And your team! We all appreciate you and your work massively, and I wanted to remind you of that ❤
Sci-fi authors are fine and all, but let's hope these videos inspire a few engineers too. =)
One of my very favorite episodes. Thank you for the special consideration of the ideas that you and many of us feel some comfort with when thinking of Mercury, as well as the concepts you only revisit in the reexamination of your original ideas. I look at the resources Mercury holds with much more colour with the timescale included.
The Part about the orbital speed and launching Starships really got me, did not think about that before, great video as always. Thanks to the SFIA Team.
KonsulGando I also never thought about it, got me too.
The orbital speed doesn't actually matter that much. Getting out of a gravity well is all about delta-V. The higher speed is offset by the fact that you are in deep on the Sun's gravity well. On the other hand, he is quite correct that proximity to the Sun makes getting that delta-V from a solar powered laser much easier.
If you launch from Earth and flyby Mercury you will be orbiting the Sun much faster than Mercury is orbiting the Sun. You can fire your engines or use the lasers and have that much extra velocity.
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson is also a interesting book set on Mercury.
Grischa _ I'm working on it now. It's very interesting.
Came here to post exactly this. His idea for a mobile city was brilliant and the pebble storm idea also blew my mind.
thanks for the tip!
@@raeneshadow haven't read that book, but one of the characters in his mars trilogy series spent some time on Mercury and a city moving along on tracks is mentioned iirc..
Robinson has his Terminus colony show up in several books. The Mars series, and I think Memory of Whiteness.
Step 1: snacks
Step 2: drinks
Step 3: enjoy Isaac Arthur's video (who deserves 1000000 subs)
Sub number is low by a least a couple orders of magnitude
One 1/4 of the way there already.
Subs? Foot long or 6 inchers.
Dale Martin here is your Reddit gold
Almost 8/10 there
It's the best day of the week. It's Arthurday
Malcador Sigilite you mean arthursday.. right?
Thank you Isaac for another superb video! Didn't think that it was possible but they seem to get better with each episode. Once again kudos to you and your team!
Exellent quality in the animations in this episode. Well done!!!
I guess I'm weird (and a jerk for saying so) but TBH I find the graphics to be mostly distracting and irrelevant.
No SFIA episode goes without showing a cup of coffee
Considering coffee is responsible for most modern accomplishments, it’s not really surprising.
☕🍿
Just out of the Bobiverse trilogy (loved it!) and about a quarter of the way into The Singularity Trap (all in one week). Not only does Isaac makes awesome content, his books recommendations are great! Thanks!
Now onto the subject at hand. I am glad Isaac spoke about thermocouples/stirling engines in this episode. I have always seen them as a possibility and I was always disappointed they never got mentioned.
Temperatures aside for a moment, I see a lot of similarities between the Moon and Mercury in the context of space stations, exploration, etc. From what I understand, the fact neither of these bodies having an atmosphere helps out immensely in terms of landing on them. I mean, that's what makes sense to me, you don't have to fight an atmosphere in or out.
As for future prospects, the planet has a lot of potential as it is little more than a big ball of metal and 1 of only two planets who's electromagnetic sphere is generated by churning metals. Other than a lot of iron, there's other metals mixed in there as well, not to mention some silicates undoubtedly, and finally some research indicates that Murcery's magnetosphere may have been as strong as Earth's at some point in its history.
It'll be a great body to use to build any Dyson Swarm.
This might be my favorite Isaac Arthur video yet. I always love the Outward Bound series but this one was a step above even that.
When you mentioned temperature differential I immediately thought of Stirling engines. Sure enough a minute or so later they came up. One of the things I love about this channel is it gets me thinking in a problem solving way. Early in the video when you were talking about the day-night cycle I was thinking why not change it. Something I'd never even consider an option until this channel. I had a big smile when you discussed doing just that near the end. Thank you Isaac and team, keep thinking about the extraordinary but possible :)
A planet-sized Stirling engine! I imagine they could also be used as giant radiators (bring heat to the cold side, etc)
I write science fiction stories as a hobby. I have been wanting to do a series on the planets of our solar system for quite some time. Thanks to the Outward Bound series and other series on your channel, I have been able to begin that project. The stories aren't long, nor are they that great, but watching your videos has allowed me to provide a through line: Aliens long ago arrived and built structures on each of our solar system's planets utilizing the advanced techniques you cover. Humanity, as they expand out to the other planets in the mid-to-distant future, begin to discover and utilize these ancient monolithic structures. I've already done stories for Venus, Neptune, and Jupiter. Mercury was next on the list. Watching this has given me ideas for how humanity lives on Mercury and what their initial (pre-Alien tech) purpose would have been (went with the factory route: Mercury builds ships and is the staging ground for Dyson satellites).
Thank you for all the work you do. Keep it up! I love learning about this stuff, and I'm so happy I discovered your material.
I love your videos about colonization!
I now recall that Arthur C. Clarke dealt with Mercury as a thriving industrial world in "Rendezvous With Rama".
Big fan of your content thanks again!.
Anton just did a video on Mercury, and he mentioned volatiles. I immediately thought, "I bet there's a video on colonising it!"
Okay, you sold me on the base on wheels. After playing Deserts of Kharak I'm a sucker for these things.
Arthur, after watching every single one of your videos I have had so many things I wanted to say on the journey but I will keep it short and simple. Thank you. Thank you for the education, the positivity about humanities future, your jokes and respect for your viewers. You deserve every success sir.
Nice! My weekly dose of Isaac Arthur, im addicted!
We all are
This is one of your best videos (if not the best), congratulations to you and your crew.
* Pros: The music set the tone amazingly while the animations gave a perfect visualization of the idea you were trying to portrait. The content was superb, this is what I liked the most, it was not even close to being repetitive in a half an hour video! I didn't even know the many possibilities for Mercury as you told us in this video. It feels like there's even more content about it to analyze right now, which leads us to the bad part of this video, below.
* Cons: it was too short! :)
Congrats on the 260k subs Isaac.
When I come home from work on Thursdays here on the other side of the pond, SFIA is a sure go-to for me. My mobile device has already informed me around early afternoon that your new video is out, since your channel is one of the few I have notifications turned on for. Today I realized I especially like the Outward Bound and Upward Bound series, they are quite inspiring. I always feel like I am feeding my brain on your channel and get a substantial creative input. Also, congrats to the very good music this time! It seems more lively, it fits this series.
There is also Charles Stross' Book " Saturn’s Children" with a few chapters taking place on a mobile base on tracks around mercury.
I think there's another by s baxter ? , along with the city on tracks there is a cult of sun walkers staying just ahead of sunrise . cant remember the title..but there is quantum computing intrigue added in
maybe. but i can't remeber and i read almost all of baxter's novels. perhaps one of his short stories?
its a kim Stanley robinson book now I remember more ..it had various asteroid environments as well . cant say more or maybe spoiler alert first . ty for reply
also 2312. The terminator-chasing mobile city trope is a bit commonplace actually
Isaac, my sincere thanks to you and your team for putting all that effort in the videos you make. I absolutely love listening to you before I go to sleep.
It makes me hopeful for the future, and that is a priceless resource for humanity as a whole. Not just the ones alive today, but all the generations to come.
Just brainstorming but I suppose it could work if you used Lando's city on an imperial walker idea from the Star Wars Thrawn Trilogy. Now time to watch!
Yeah we discussed that option, I opted to use a Dune Sand Crawler analogy over the Lando's to avoid igniting any Star Ward canon arguments :)
It stands out to me because it's one of the first instances in Star Wars of actual engineering skill applied to a problem rather than just 'build it bigger and stronger' which tends to be the sci-fi way when you want to show progress.
Yeah, Star Wars isn't really noted for its focus on scientific accuracy and plausible engineering, but I appreciated Zahn trying to get some realism in that trilogy.
Isaac Arthur star wars rebels used that in a episode with tge clones Rex, Gregor, and Wolf living on a converted clone wars era walker.
Something like the moving cities in Mortal Engines might work.
Man this is discovery channel worth work. The editing , the explanation, I actually learned something today
Hello, Isaac,
Love the channel; keep it up!
I was surprised to see that a certain model for a mercurial colony was not mentioned, since I was very interested in your assessment of its viability: I am referring to the one in Kim Stanley Robinson's "2312" novel. Perhaps you're unfamiliar with it, but it's basically a (permanently) mobile city on equatorial tracks made of metal, which expand as they heat up, creating a slope that constantly accelerates the colony (some energy is produced by braking), keeping it near the "terminator line" (i.e. sunrise area).
Would love to hear your thoughts on it, as it is the only colony in mercury I know of in SciFi (I agree with you in the dearth of literature surrounding the subject).
Best wishes and, once gain, congratulations on the excellent content.
Truly inspirational. Not lying - you became my #1 source of admiration towards science, tech, space exploration, our possible future out there... Will never regret subscribing to this channel!
I am subscribed to a lot of RUclips channels, but I think you go so far above everyone. Your videos could be a TV series pretty easily. Have you tried to get Netflix to make your videos into a series?
Isaac, I just discovered your channel a little bit ago, from watching Fraser’s channel. I have been binge watching and just wanted to say I really enjoy the content. My curiosity about all these topics is piqued on so many levels. I just wanted to say thanks. Please don’t stop doing what you do.
Huh, guess Mercury can become a garden world after all
Love the outward bound series Isaac and I'm looking forward to the whole line up of shows coming over the next month! Great job to you and your team as always. I love the custom animations you guys are putting together for these episodes. This channel continues to remain my favorite channel on RUclips.
Time to fire up KSP, install the mining mod and take a giant mining rover and some mushroom habitats to Moho...
This guy need to get to Hollywood. With a good script and him on the cgi and tech. Could make one hell of a movie. A whole series. Probably better than Star wars.
i love your channel, no matter what im doing ill stop it to watch your newest videos
Isaac Asimov’s ‘I Robot’ had one story that took place on Mercury as I recall. When you started talking about the length of a Mercury day and being able to stay mobile and live on Mercury my brain went into recall. A lot of the same information was presented in this video. The mining colony on Mercury in ‘I Robot’ was staffed with robots and only a few humans as overseers. Good job on getting the science right.
It would be better to chase the Sun rather than run away from the Sun. The Sun heats the surface which retains it's latent heat therefore a mobile mining platform which follows sunset would be heated by the stored heat in the surface.
Plus in case of failure, you'd have a much longer time to do repairs before hitting the bright side and cooking
Depends on what is worse
To fry to death or to become ice cube to death
I'm pleased that the SFIA Design Room has refreshments.
A two parter with JMG?! Whoo Hoo! More colabs.
i’m writing a fictional piece with mercury as a setting and came here specifically for some sfia inspiration on the topic, only to find isaac lamenting the lack of mercury-based scifi! nonetheless, isaac has indeed inspired me with this most excellent video and i will do my best to create an awesome vision of mercury in kind 🙏
Outward Bound: Colonizing Ceres!
Ceres might have a lot of water in it, so that right there would give your colony a boost up...
Not to mention it's place in the belt. Ceres is like the central station in the belt for asteroid mining, there you have the storage and the rest stop while you at the same time build a whole new planet and making it bigger and bigger by dragging in objects from the belt.
Marcus Yrvild -- Creating a new big object in the Asteroid Belt ... that is an intriguing idea.
Make it the size you want, in the preferred composition, and give it the position and spin you want.
I heard you mention a number of times you have a speech problem. I am not a native english speaker, since I am dutch, but I can follow your videos without any problem. You speak in a tempo easily followed by any non-english speaker. Even my 7 year old son can follow you with only the enlish lessons I gave him (and he, expectingly, sux in english since I am his dad and not a teacher). You are doing a great job!
Since I was little, I’ve wondered what would happen to the planets if a catastrophe knocked, say, Venus off its orbit, or if a planet was somehow “disappeared” due to some unknown factor, and lately even-as it’s popular here- if we looted Mercury of its stuff.
Wouldn’t the gravity of the solar system suffer a disaster, turning some planets rogue, causing collisions, etc?
Roger G2 that is a hell of a question I've been listening to this channel for over a year and never thought of that.
if we leave it alone, mercury's orbit isn't guaranteed to be stable in the long term, and it just might be ejected anyway
99.8% of our solar systems mass is in the sun, and most of the remainder is in Jupiter, so unless Venus managed to fly close to us on its way out, I expect any effect would be rather minimal. Some asteroids and comets might be perturbed, some planetary orbits changed slightly, but I don't see it being a catastrophe
Depends which planet. Jupiter would matter a lot. Mercury almost not one bit. Mars would "punch above its weight" in one respect (bombarding earth to rubble) because of its relationship with the asteroids.
I read Sun Diver when I was a young man. It is an excellent read. Just about anything Ben Bova writes is good.
I have started to enjoy Arthursday more and more now that I’ve bungee through all of your content. Would you be willing to do an episode that ranks sci-fi universes from the possible for humanity to achieve to outright laughable?
Daaaaaaaamn! The graphics in this series keep getting better and better!
Just moved to SF from Boston, and it's weird seeing arthursday begin at 8am instead of 11
:) Yeah I always think of us a late morning show, in time for lunch, since I'm in Ohio, but I get a lot of folks on the west coast glad it's out in time for the morning commute or off in Europe saying in time for dinner. I hope you're enjoying SF's weather, weirdly, in spite being born just a little north of there in Sonoma, I've naught been to Cali since I was a toddler, barely remember the place.
It's clearly an early evening show^^
I am from boston. What part of Boston are you from? What do you think of California? I was thinking of going out there.
I found you last weekend while finding different space channels, and i can say that this is one of my new favorite channels on youtube! Great video as always👌
The witch from Mercury
As much as we don't think a lot about how long colonization takes, we also underestimate how exponential growth speeds things up.
If we landed a single self-suficient autonomous self-replicating factory at Mercury, and it produces a new factory every year, and that factory another one, we would have close to 1000 factories in 10 years, a million in 20 years, over a billion in 30 years, and a 2^40, almost 1.01 trillion factories in 40 years. We would try to fail-safe the process, starting with 10s or 100s of factories in the first years, so the number would be a bit larger. All that within a 2020s average human lifetime.
Someone designing that Dyson teraproject would see the results.
Once again excited to see what my decedents might get to experience.
Zeke Fartin Eat right and exercise and you might see a lot of it yourself.
Zeke... your last name is EPIC!
+Isaac Arthur
I love Thursdays. As soon as I get the notification and see 'Isaac Arthur' the countdown begins until I can leave work, hurry home, grab my drink and snack, get comfy in my recliner and wind down over the days episode. But today, when I saw that it was an outward bound episode centered around Mercury, I couldn't help myself, and spent my lunch break watching.
I've always thought that Mercury gets a raw deal when it comes to science fiction. But the same reasons that many authors simply write off the planet actually make it an incredibly attractive locale. Ive always thought that Mercury could provide much of the power needed by colonies located much deeper into the solar system, on the larger gas and ice giant's moons, where the available solar radiation is too low to efficiently collect on site, for example, using large lasers to beam energy to orbital power stations. Also, as you touched on, it wouldn't be too difficult to create a mobile colony that takes advantage of the drastic temperature gradients. Combined with its resource wealth and incredibly low cost gravity well, Mercury could easily become the most important colony in a solar system wide civilization.
Ive read a few hypothesis that Mercury had much of its original crust stripped away by impacts, which is why it has such a large core, relative to its overall size. How does that effect its overall mineral wealth?
Okay, if you haven't read "2312" and are interested in the subject of this video, you TOTALLY need to. I had to stop the video at the "walk around the planet ahead of the sun" part just to say this, because EXACTLY THAT HAPPENS IN THE BOOK. The Sunwalkers! _And_ the city on rails that always travels just ahead of it! That's in _the first chapter_.
EDIT: Also the city is called "Terminator". XD
It seems not much sci-fi pays proper attention to Mercury, so I figured I'd let people know about a book that really does. Also we have hollowing out asteroids and spinning them to make internal gravity and miniature terraformed worlds (of all kinds), floating colonies in clouds and even a base on _Io_, which has to be doubly shielded against the volcanoes and then its OWN Farraday cage to block out the radiation. Then there's what they're doing on Venus, which is not what I ever would've expected, and what happened to Earth, and...
Robin Chesterfield who's the author?
The author is Kim Stanley Robinson. He is the author of Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars
Yea, I am rather disappointed there's no mention of 2312 in this video.
Yes. I never finished that book, but I really enjoyed the parts about Mercury at the beginning. Also the asteroid terrarium parts were also pretty neat too.
KSR should have definitely been credited in this episode. Lots of ideas here from 2312.
This was my favorite installment in the series so far, though I admittedly have such a strong fascination with Ceres, so it might give this one a run for its money!! Great job on this one, Isaac. You make outstanding videos and I’ll be supporting you all the way for the future.
Not sure if its because I've been subbed for a while now, your recent speech therapy, or both but I honestly cannot hear the slightest speech impediment. Just thought I would mention this. Great work as always sir!
I've noticed this same thing in the beginning videos, I could really hear it but was still able to understand what he was say, as time goes on, It seems to be slowly going away, That's not easy to do as you need to relearn how to pronounce parts of words, and when you get one sounds right, sometimes you mess up one you didn't have problems with, I know from experience, I was very young when I had an accident and split my tongue in half, it took me about 10 years to clear up my speach, I give him lots of credit in improving his speech over the years, its not easy but he's doing a great job improving
Thanks for all the videos Isaac. I love the real information on RUclips. Very thorough.
Minutes in and 53 views and 51 likes, seems totally legit based on the viewers of this channel.
I mean Isaac previously figured out how to colonize the sun, so of course we'll auto like his videos
:) The 'on page' views often lag, YT runs some verification thing to make sure they're real initially, those 53 aren't even real views, its me and the production crew and such popping in to watch it while it was unlisted to check for typos, set the text, and such.
...I haven't seen that one yet. Terraforming the SUN?! TO THE ARCHIVES!
Isaac Arthur there was already 26 comments when I posted that too btw a few minutes after it opened to everyone.
I know things are delayed on RUclips view and like count wise, I just found it very humorous in a good way that by chance the views and likes where nearly equal. Most other times I arrive that early the view count is way higher than the like count, you on the otherhand was nearly 1 for 1 in those first minutes.
Thanks for the behind the scenes details though. I find it nearly as fascinating as the content of your great videos.
0:37: 🌞 Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, has potential for colonization and various uses.
0:37: Mercury is often neglected in science fiction, despite its potential.
1:16: Mercury is seen as a hot, airless planet that could be used for building supplies and power collection.
1:40: Disassembling Mercury for a Dyson Swarm would take a long time.
2:46: Colonies can have lasting impacts even if they only last a few centuries.
3:22: Mercury's near and mid-term colonization is more feasible to consider.
3:30: Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun but Venus is hotter.
3:41: Mercury has a thin atmosphere and a long day.
4:19: 🌑 Mercury's rotation and orbit result in long days and nights, extreme temperatures, and limited sunlight.
4:19: Mercury rotates on its axis 3 times for every 2 orbits around the Sun.
4:37: Earth's sidereal day is 23 hours and 56 minutes, while the synodic day is 24 hours.
5:13: On Mercury, the sidereal day is 59 days long, while the synodic day is 176 days.
5:31: The day/night terminator on Mercury only moves 87 kilometers a day at the equator.
5:45: At higher latitudes, the movement of the day/night terminator is slower.
6:14: To keep up with the Sun on Mercury, you need to move at a speed calculated using cosine of latitude.
6:40: Mercury's temperature ranges from very hot to very cold, making mobility desirable.
8:42: 🌑 Mercury's unique conditions make it a potential location for mining and manufacturing in space.
8:42: Mercury's proximity to the Sun allows for easy heating and cooling processes for smelting and refining.
9:45: Mercury's lack of air and low gravity make it an ideal location for mass driver tracks for transportation.
10:20: Landing on Mercury is difficult due to the lack of air for aerobraking.
10:34: Building a track around Mercury could provide a means for constant transportation and speed reduction.
11:39: Mercury's surface temperature fluctuates, but there is a spot where the temperature remains constant if dug deep enough.
12:16: 🌑 Options for living on Mercury include underground habitats, mobile bases, and mushroom habitats.
12:16: Mercury's temperature varies by longitude and underground temperatures can be livable.
12:44: Retractable structures could be used to deal with expansion and contraction.
13:35: A Mushroom Habitat with stilts and a mirror shade could protect from heat.
14:28: Spinning habitats could combine centrifugal force with gravity for higher net gravity.
15:13: Power can be obtained from the Sun or through orbital power satellites.
15:39: The temperature difference on Mercury can be used to generate power using thermocouples.
15:53: Building facilities near the poles can make the track around the planet shorter.
16:04: 🪐 Mercury offers abundant raw materials and solar power for potential colonization and industry.
16:04: Solar panels can provide constant sunlight and act as radiators to regulate temperature.
16:29: Long wires or coolant pipes could transport power and regulate temperature for the bases.
17:10: Mercury's abundance of raw materials, particularly silicon, and lack of atmosphere or oceans make industry viable.
17:44: Colonizing Mercury does not necessarily mean making it Earth-like, but living there is feasible.
17:59: Harvesting materials from Mercury would take a very long time without significant impact on its gravity.
18:39: Terraforming Mercury is possible with large mirrors or shades to cool the planet and create a 24-hour day/night cycle.
19:23: Mercury has the resources and industrial capacity to make it a livable place.
20:18: 🌟 Mercury has the potential to be a livable place with various options for energy, raw materials, and manufacturing, as well as serving as a launch point for high-speed spacecraft.
20:18: Mercury could collect and use or sell hydrogen and helium from the solar wind.
20:34: A big mirror or shade could be used as a giant windmill driven by the solar wind.
20:48: Solar wind could be funneled to polar collectors using the Star Wheel concept.
20:48: Nanomaterials could be used to create a pinwheel shape or paddles to let light through in a 24-hour pattern for power generation.
21:28: Mercury's resources could be used to export energy, raw materials, and manufactured goods to the rest of the solar system.
21:57: Mercury's high speed and proximity to the Sun make it a potential launch point for high-speed spacecraft.
23:44: Mercury has been underrepresented in science fiction, but there are opportunities for more stories centered around it.
23:58: 🚀 In this video, the author discusses the concept of escape velocity and recommends a course on Brilliant.org for further understanding.
23:58: The author praises authors Taylor, Bova, and Brin for their knowledge and accuracy in science.
24:12: Mercury's low escape velocity has numerous benefits, such as requiring less energy for exporting materials.
24:29: The author recommends checking out Brilliant.org's course on escape velocity and interplanetary travel.
24:53: The author promotes Brilliant.org's annual Premium subscription with a 20% discount.
25:34: Upcoming topics include Ceres, civilizations rising and falling, and post-scarcity societies.
26:18: The author encourages viewers to subscribe, like, and share the video.
Recap by Tammy AI
This would be the perfect setting and plot for an sci-fi action movie. Now if only the title Sun-Chaser wasn't already taken.
speaking of which, it would be a better idea to chase the sun rather than constantly move away from it. If your mobile factory breaks down, it's better to have the 88 day night as a buffer rather than getting cooked as soon as you get left behind.
Except you are driving over schorching hot surface. Not ideal. And as explained in the video, a few stilts and a big mirror will let you wait out the day just fine.
PROgrammer8
Solar Dancer by way of limelight-
Joan Of Arc Alter...
But you're not chasing the sun, you're chasing the darkness.
You could chase the sun or darkness. There are pros and cons to either route in the event of a loss of mobility, but chasing the darkness would probably be safer. The bright side to getting stuck on the bright side (see what I did there), is you have an abundant supply of solar energy of which you can use to power AC along with external shading (solar panels could serve a dual purpose of providing shade and power). If you get stuck on the dark side you would have to rely on an internal generator/RTG or what not, to heat the vehicle/factory for 88 days.
Yay! Always look forward to watching your vids with my coffee on Thursday!
If I reach Mercury before everyone else, Can I claim to be the Queen of Mercury?
EverlastingSky Yes.
Guess I will just play Kerbal Space Program and find the cheapest way to reach it there. If only I could find 3 dragon eggs there...
Sure who'll stop you
The millenials?
You can, but I have already declared myself the sovereign of all space within 50 million miles of the sun. Doing so would, therefore, be an invasion and an act of war. You do not want to get into a flame war with me, as I have forged my insults in the crucible of /pol.
Yes! I've been waiting for this one since you announced the June schedule.
Notification squad in here
Master Chief Checking in as well :-)
You do an amazing job! Thanks for transmitting your optimism about the future! Keep up the good work :)
Nanotech sounds interesting coming from SFIA. Nanotechnology sounds like a film trope to me. I understand the basics of photoresist and P/N junctions when it comes to silicone technology. I mean it's not too hard to understand: apply fancy rust to a silicone wafer, coat that in fancy plastic, add a Prince backing track w/purple mood lighting, and let it rain (acid) to etch an image. It's pretty easy to understand, in the end your smallest resolution possible is governed by the wave length of the exposure light. Nothing in that setup is really designed structurally as far as I understand it and it's a deposition technology. Plus it's still just applied to wafers the size of a dish plate.
How does "nanotechnology" really scale even to Starship Enterprise levels? People have been hyping graphine for several years now. It doesn't appear to be the new cellophane/backlite revolution. Is "Nanotechnology" overhyped special use materials like Aerogel or is there a practical reason to believe it can be mass produced as general industrial materials?
Silicone? silicon.
Tony Allen
Lol... I'm an idiot...here for all your tiny nano caulking tech banter
I will only believe a technology is possible after it has been successfullyy prototyped.
He may talk about ion drives, but until I hear of a working prototype I aint buying it.
Same for nanotech.
Don't forget that the military industrial complex has been hyping railguns as being just around the corner since just before WW1.
Ion drives are not theoretical they are working now. www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/fs21grc.html
@@sethpaulson2407 Thanks!
I will cross them off the hypothetical list.
I am creating a Space TTRPG and in my universe Mercury is going to be the solar systems factory. Thank you for putting the work in to put this out.
YASS! Been waiting for this for the past 2h!! Need my weekly fix...
Words cannot express how much I love this channel. Thank you Isaac!
Great video as ever.
I wonder what the thumbs down people get from their efforts? Seems a lonely and pointless thing to me. Get a life people :-)
Well I can't complain, we're at 460-3 like:dislike at the moment, and our worst tend to be about 40:1. I like to think some are accidents where they just hit the wrong button, or were having a rotten day and are just in a bad mood, especially on vids like this where there's really nothing controversial. Still, all feedback is valid, at least the non-profane kind :) and I've disliked a video a few times, though I try never to do that for someone clearly new, lest I discourage them from trying again and improving.
True. Thanks for the reply. I never thumbs down. If so mad I'll unsub :-)
If watching on my phone with it turned sideways, I'll tap the center of the screen to pause. At the same moment, the screen reorients itself... and I inadvertently tap thumbs down. I usually catch myself and retap to undo my mistake, but I'm sure I've failed to notice in the past.
On a side note: If someone finds this episode this soon, they surely have to be a subscriber. So, at least the sub numbers are up even if they are a negative person.
well, i never disliked a video consciously and still from time to time i rewatch a video i liked and see i gave it a thumbs down. Guess its something that happens when browsing youtube on a phone while drunk :P
I never thumbs down a video. I might leave and alternate and sometimes snarky comment, but never the less those folks took the effort ...so......
as always, mind-blowing and informative. as always, amazing production value. as always, simultaneously thoroughly enjoyable and existentially distressing.
I would be worried that people from Mercury be a bit... mercurial
The only Channel I'm ever on time for!!
I love Stirling engines. We need more Stirling engines ; - ;
The problem is they don't throttle quickly.
Not a problem for base load power generation!
I agree, there are a lot of uses they are good for but it does limit the market for them and they are not enough more efficient to overcome the limited market unless enthusiasts get industrial Sterling cycle engines into production.
Pepe!!
Loved the video! I can't wait to get home on Thursdays for your new episodes! Really nice to see some attention given to Mercury, now I am gonna run my Genesys game on Mercury this weekend (your videos have been really influencing where my weekend table top game goes, lol).
Can we colonize... uranus?
We will probably do Neptune and leave it at that, it's fairly parallel to Uranus anyway and I don't think I could handle all the jokes such a video would result in, I'd probably be cracking up trying to read the script too
Can we mine Uranus for more than stupid jokes?
As always a stellar episode, but I must say as someone who has been swayed to favor Dyson Swarms over conventional planets from a Sci-Fi stand point from you, I still have a soft spot for planets. And from 18:27 the wonderful positive music and your explanations for what will be done to make Mercury habitable... you managed to paint a beautiful image in my mind.
As someone who looked at the idea of colonizing Mercury as impossible, that was beautiful to see made wrong.
I look forward to the next episode. :)
Sounds like living on Mercury is never going to be peaceful. Always on the move. ;)
Which...kind of fits the planet named after a god known for speed...
Unless you live in a crater or uderground
I just love the outward bound series so much
HUZZAH!
These videos are always a welcome boost to my day.
Why did Venus have to get air conditioning?
Because Mercury moved in
I'm sorry for subjecting you to this horrible joke
I don't get it. Is this a thermometer joke?
Yup. It is. It is unfortunately a thermometer joke. *Sigh*
"Mercury" moved in? Srsly?😦
Mars has a better press agent. Mars was the main character in some of the earliest, most inspiring science fiction written. It got there first, sold the most books, told the best stories. Mercury and Venus need better representation.
Yes!!! More Issac Arthur!
You bring up a lot of good points. What I think would be really interesting would be to do a cost-benefit analysis for each planet/moon and asses the value of the resources it has, the cost of transporting them back, and cost of all the things we would need to live (food, water, air, temperature, energy) and see how far we are away from break-even.
The ingenuity of you and your team never fails to impress. SFIA: Making the impossible not just possible, but reasonable!
this was an immensely interesting video. Mercury... never would have thought. Thank you Isaac and team!!
Also 2312
by Kim Stanley Robinson explores a future where Mercury is colonised! Great read.
It's cool that you posted this today. Night before last I was pitching my wife on the idea of a story that takes place in a cluster of O'Neill cylinders situated in the L2 LaGrange point of Mercury, wherein the cylinders were made of materials mined from Mercury itself by robots.
Sounds like a fun setting