What will the staff eat on Mercury? Our astronauts will mainly eat fresh food that they grow in a green house located on Mercury along with dried space food.   How will we fund this mission? We will initially fund this mission with private donations and by creating the biggest media event ever.   How will you extract the iron ore? We will use a technique called surface mining which is where you scrape all of the iron off of the surface into big piles then it gets picked up by trucks and is brought to the processing zone.   How will you process the iron? Because all of the water is going to be needed for the staff and plants we will mainly process it by running it through filters, sifters, and then using extremely high-powered magnets to remove it from other dirt or sand particles. Then it will be compressed and some will be turned into iron coil for the 3D printer but most will go into storage for when the supply ship arrives every two years to pick it up.   How many people will go to Mercury? Because most of the mining equipment is remotely operated we will send a crew of five people with different skills such as medical training, engineering, and geology.   How long will they stay there for? The crew will stay there for about two years then the supply ship arrives, dropping off food, water, a new crew, and picking up the ore that has been mined.   How much will this mission cost? We estimate that to get the first crew up there and start mining it will cost 7 billion US dollars. We will raise this money by sponsorships and crowd funding. We estimate that to get the supply ship into orbit with supplies it will be around 500 million US dollars. To vastly cut down on transportation costs we will keep the supply ship in low earth orbit and the crew and supplies will be shipped into orbit with two space elevators lined up with geo-synchronous orbit for that spot on earth. The elevators will be powered by magnets. The rest of the mission costs will be funded by profits.   Will this mission be sustainable? We here Mercury 3 take sustainability as our TOP priority. Hence our name Mercury 3 for the three pillars of sustainability. We think that we are a sustainable mission because it provides jobs, not just for the astronauts but for Earth staff, it makes money and it is a clean project   What are the climate challenges on Mercury? Mercury definitely is not the nicest place to live. On the surface it can be up to 400 Celsius. However the spot we have located to set-up our base is in a crater near the north pole. In these craters, which have little sunlight, temperatures are about those of space, which normal space suits can handle. We will just have to line the space craft with radiation-protective material.   How long does it take to get to Mercury? Using fusion pellets (which are a real thing) it would take about two months or 60 days to get to Mercury. And a fusion pellet the size of a grain of rice is equal to 200 litters of gasoline.   Is there communication to Earth from Mercury? Yes, messages can be sent to and from Mercury and Earth, except there are delays of about 45 minutes to one hour, so live video communication is not feasible.   How long will the astronauts train for? They will take basic astronauts training of about eight years and one to two years of special mining training.