True, but it needn't stick around for geologic time scales. When (and a really big IF) the technology (and the collective will) exists to terraform Mars, it will certainly be able to restock the atmosphere at intervals of hundreds to thousands of years, as needed. Remember Heinlein's "Farmer In The Sky", where the "heat trap" that made Ganymede livable had to be permanently energized from a man-made power source. When the power station was knocked-out, the atmosphere began to freeze up and snow-out. Sci-fi of course, but then so is terraforming Mars at present. On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 8:07 AM, jim Gibson <jimgibson0@gmail.com> wrote:
Roger,
Occasionally I see something on TV where some commentator will suggest we may be able to re-jump-start the atmosphere on mars. For the reasons you mentioned it seems to me, unless I have missed something, it would be fruitless to try to reconstruct or hope for atmospheric conditions as we know them here on earth.