Reading a simple sci-fi space opera, humans against space spiders, mindless fun, and then ...
The protagonist's spaceship has to rendezvous with a space station orbiting Mercury. Fair enough. The narrator talks about how the station has to stay in the planet's shadow. OK, that makes sense. Summer's a bitch that close to good old Sol.
They then go on to say that Mercury is tidally-locked to the Sun. ARGH!
It's not. It's rotation period is ⅔ of it's orbit period (88 days), meaning the planet slowly turns to toast it's whole surface. That's been known since the 1960's. Frown.
Then, more egregiously, states that the station orbits at around 1,000 km from the planet's surface. WTAF?
A geostationary orbit for Mercury (needed to stay in shadow) given it's mass and rotation period, would be 240,420 km from the surface. Angry grimace.
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