A Mercury Rover Could Explore the Planet by Sticking to the Terminator

I miss the times when I grew up, where such kind of news would inevitably lead to speculations and very detailed artistic impressions of what a human colony in Mercury's terminator zone would look like.

One of my favourite (dutch) children’s books is “400 degrees in the shade” which explores exactly that. A human colony sticking to the terminator. (It’s quite dystopian though)

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7697564-400-graden-in...

https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2026/pdf/1743.pdf

Absolution Gap[1] has a plot device similar to this. If you like hard sci-fi, Reynolds belongs in your queue.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolution_Gap

Cool - but "A Mercury Rover Could ..." presupposes a soft landing on Mercury.

Try asking an aerospace engineer about the delta-v requirements for that. Mercury has no atmosphere - so you can't aerobrake, as we do on Mars.

How many dumb ideas that we had as kids turn out to be good