Nature: New evidence of water on Mercury has surfaced, according to three reports published in Science. One team of researchers, using IR laser pulses, has identified bright regions that they believe indicate water ice, inside nine craters near the planet’s north pole; a second team, using thermal modeling based on data collected by the Messenger spacecraft, has located ultracold spots that line up perfectly with those bright regions; and a third team, also using Messenger data, has spotted hydrogen, another indicator of water ice, in the same areas. The researchers suggest that any water on Mercury probably came from comets or asteroids that struck its surface. The reason the water ice ended up in frigid craters at the pole could be that, over time, it migrated there from the blistering hot surface through a process of vaporization and precipitation.
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A good buddy of mine who did engineering work on the F-15, F-16, and F-18 fighter planes R&D had some interesting comments regarding this finding that I must summarize here as I tend to agree with him.
Essentially, the finding of such large water supplies on Mercury may enable colonies to be set up on Mercury. Solar and nuclear energy may be used to power these perpetually shielded colonies such as by PV, thermoelectric, thermo-mechanical dynamos, and nuclear fission reactors. Solar energy may be extracted from the ambient environment near or at the peak of the rims of the craters.
Once the colonies became established, the colonists could build down and into the planetary crust and extent ttheir living quarters to an arbitrary extent limited only by overlaying mass-induced pressure, and planetary bulk material temperatures in regions far away from the crater floors.
Mercurial colonies may thus be easier to develop than Martian colonies.
Since we now have Mars and Mercury as potential places for colonies to be established, we now have another potential means for genetic differentiation of the human species right here in our own solar system.