It's really hot and there's no water or vegetation to speak of.

"From the night, Mercury's surface temperature changes 1130 °F (630 °C), more than any other planet or moon in the solar system. ...

1) Hot 2) Flipping hot 3) No HBO 4) Did I mention hot? 5) No winter sports 6) Lousy cell phone service. 7) And hot. 8) and if you mean the heavy metal, it's poisonous dude.

More importantly.... Why would we want to?

With the delta in temperature, you could really have unlimited power. In time, we will probably be there, but not in my lifetime. Just construct an underground complex and survivability does not seem all that out of the question with a self contained system.

Because studies have shown Mercury to be a neurotoxin subsequently removing from childhood vaccines (it is a preservative).

It's too hot, like my pants! ;)

No food, water, oxygen, intense radiation form the sun, no Answerbag. Thats my top 5 reasons.

It is a very dangerous toxic heavy metal...

it is very small and very hot being the closest to the sun. an average day only lasts a few hours and its mostly hot gases that are posionius. very unstable habat

It is simply uninhabitable, its too close to the sun, and it is a quite poisonous place to be. * Temperature Mercury is a planet of extreme temperature variations. It is hotter on Venus, but with less fluctuations. The temperature on the planet may reach 450 degrees C (840 degrees F) during the day. But at night, the temperature may drop as low as -170 degrees C (-275 degrees F). The sunlight on Mercury’s surface is 6.5 times as intense as it is on Earth due its closeness to the sun. Atmosphere Mercury is dry, extremely hot and almost airless. Planet Mercury is too small for its gravity to retain any significant atmosphere over long periods of time. The weak atmosphere contains hydrogen, helium, oxygen, sodium, calcium and potassium. Due to the heat of the planet, the very thin atmosphere is blasted off its surface by the solar wind and quickly escapes into space. Mercury's atmosphere is constantly being replenished. Mercury does not have enough atmosphere to slow down meteoroids and burn them up by friction. The sun's rays are approximately seven times as strong on Mercury as they are on the Earth. The sun also appears about 2 1/2 times as large in Mercury's sky as in the Earth's.http://www.aerospaceguide.net/planet/planetmercury.html A baked stone of a planet where life would be close to unbearable, Mercury is the planet nearest to the Sun and the eighth largest planet. Even so, the pockmarked globe still is smaller in diameter than Jupiter's moon Ganymede or Saturn's moon Titan. However, it is more massive than those bodies. Closest to the Sun. Mercury orbits very close to the Sun at a distance of only about 36 million miles. That's 0.387 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. In other words, it's only about 39 percent as far away from the Sun as is the Earth. http://www.spacetoday.org/SolSys/Mercury/MercuryBackground.html Mercury is too small for its gravity to retain any significant atmosphere over long periods of time; however, it does have a "tenuous surface-bounded exosphere"[46] containing hydrogen, helium, oxygen, sodium, calcium and potassium. This exosphere is not stable—atoms are continuously lost and replenished from a variety of sources. Hydrogen and helium atoms probably come from the solar wind, diffusing into Mercury’s magnetosphere before later escaping back into space. Radioactive decay of elements within Mercury’s crust is another source of helium, as well as sodium and potassium. Water vapor is present, being brought to Mercury by some combination of processes such as: comets striking its surface, sputtering creating water "where none existed before from the ingredients of solar wind and Mercury rock" (both contain hydrogen and oxygen), and "reservoirs of water ice in small areas of Mercury's poles where local topography creates permanently shadowed spots in crater walls that might trap water over the age of the solar system". MESSENGER found high proportions of calcium, helium, hydroxide, magnesium, oxygen, potassium, silicon, sodium, and water. The detection of high amounts of water-related ions like O+, OH-, and H2O+ was a surprise. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(planet)