From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Wed Feb 16 2000 - 20:54:39 MST
James Swayze wrote:
> A little off the subject but can someone explain to me why people promoting the
> terraforming of Mars still think it will hold a man made atmosphere despite the
> believed theory that it lost it's atmosphere in the first place due to it's
> diminutive size and thus lack of sufficient gravity?
Zubrin is not always the most patient person. He gets asked that question
a lot. If we could generate an atmosphere on Mars, it would stay around
long enough to be useful. If we generated it once, then stopped, the halflife
of the new atmosphere would be in the millions of years. Theory holds that
it lost its atmosphere over a looong time, and that conditions necessary to
support life existed there longer than here.
Zubrin's Case For Mars, chapter 9 goes into this. Buy the book; its worth
the 10 bucks you pay for a paperback.
I really irritated Zub at a conference once merely by suggesting that candidate
Mars astronauts should be chosen by their size. Please, why do people find
this notion so offputting? {8^D spike
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