Mercurian Colonies

prompt: mercury with city lights on it

TL;DR: Mercury similar to the Moon so we should colonize it instead of just using it as a mine.

Sources: https://www.universetoday.com/130109/how-do-we-colonize-mercury/ ↗️

Why would anyone actually live on Mercury? I'll show you why! While most people wouldn’t suspect it, the closest planet to our Sun is actually a potential candidate for settlement. Whereas it experiences extremes in temperature – gravitating between heat that could instantly cook a human being to cold that could flash-freeze flesh in seconds – it actually has potential as a starter colony. ...Another possibility would be to build underground. For years, NASA has been toying with the idea of building colonies in stable, underground lava tubes that are known to exist on the Moon. And geological data obtained by the MESSENGER probe during flybys it conducted between 2008 and 2012 led to speculation that stable lava tubes might exist on Mercury as well.