Hi, Raoul!

I don't want to speak for Phil :) but I don't believe that he is against the mission, just that the getting there should be done cheaper: Phil's comments on new Mercury Mission

Another Mercury mission... great, but I agree with Phil.

As for Mercury's 'icy caps'... this may be the reason why:

Although Mercury is not tidally locked to the Sun, its rotational period is tidally coupled to its orbital period. Mercury rotates one and a half times during each orbit. Because of this 3:2 resonance, a day on Mercury (sun rise to sun rise) is 176 Earth days long as shown by the following diagram.

Seems that we already know about Mercury.

Chronology of Space Exploration.

Marcia