Time to Eat the Dogs
On Science, History, and ExplorationArchive for October, 2008
Mission to Mercury
Regard fleet-footed Mercury, Roman god of travel and trade, the one-man postal service of Mt Olympus. It’s ironic that he has come to represent the solar system’s densest planet, an object consisting of 70% nickel and iron. Still Mercury is quick, speeding around the sun at a rate of 47 km/second, faster than any other planet.
This week Mercury Messenger will pay a visit to this world of metal. Messenger lifted off on 3 August 2004 in hopes of, among other things, figuring out why Mercury is as dense as it is. It will also measure the planet’s geology, magnetic field, atmosphere, and core composition. After a brief fly-by this week, Messenger will prepare for its final insertion into Mercury’s orbit in 2011.
Messenger’s price tag comes in at $446 million, a steep price when compared to other terrestrial transport vehicles of the same name. One Mercury Messenger would buy 15,379 Mercury Sables, fully loaded with satellite radio and heated front seats. But Messenger is actually rather cheap when placed up against the leviathan craft of the Constellation Program developed for travel to the Moon and Mars. At slightly under half a billion dollars, Messenger works out to $1.50 for each U.S. resident, about the same cost per person (accounting for inflation) as Mariner 10 in the 1974. Indeed, this seems a reasonable price for a planet that has only received one visit in 35 years.
2008 Mercury Sable
Happy travels Messenger.
See more here at the NASA Messenger Website
The Dust-Free Blog
Posts seem tidy things when they see the light of day, capped by neat titles, tucked into single columns. But bloggers everywhere share a dirty secret: this sort of writing is a messy business, profligate in its use of words and images, throwing off bits and scraps faster than the butcher’s apprentice. Seventy posts have left me with all sorts of unfinished business: links that never make it to the right hand column, half-written posts that remain unpublished, category listings that do not get updated. So I have done some housecleaning today. Mostly you can see the work on column to the far right. There is a new category of links: Online Archives which have primary source materials on travel and exploration. There are a number of Library of Congress collections here, some travel writings by Isabella Bird, the NOAA archive on 19th century oceanography books, and some visual archives including David Rumsey’s online map collection and the JPL’s NASA image archive. The “Complete List of Posts” has been updated through yesterday and I’ve added some links to my online research and talks on the “About” page.
