Mercury has a some great advantages for a Dyson swarm:
- It is extremely metals and mineral rich, perfect for building the billions of giant mirrors required for a Dyson swarm.
-It's already really close to the sun, so you don't need as much energy to get your mirrors in a lower solar orbit, compared to earth.
-Because it's close to the sun, it receives a lot more energy too, which can be used to power machine and...
-It has no atmosphere and little gravity, so the swarm can be launched with simple electromagnetic mass drivers.
-It has plenty of water, so the few human operators required to control the machines remotely in real-time can live very comfortably at the poles (or in deep trenches in lower latitudes).
I agree that human colonization of Mercury is going to remain very limited, only because of the trouble of landing there. But you won't find a better planet to mine and launch billions of mirrors.
- It is extremely metals and mineral rich, perfect for building the billions of giant mirrors required for a Dyson swarm.
-It's already really close to the sun, so you don't need as much energy to get your mirrors in a lower solar orbit, compared to earth.
-Because it's close to the sun, it receives a lot more energy too, which can be used to power machine and...
-It has no atmosphere and little gravity, so the swarm can be launched with simple electromagnetic mass drivers.
-It has plenty of water, so the few human operators required to control the machines remotely in real-time can live very comfortably at the poles (or in deep trenches in lower latitudes).
I agree that human colonization of Mercury is going to remain very limited, only because of the trouble of landing there. But you won't find a better planet to mine and launch billions of mirrors.