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I've tried it: http://cowlark.com/flooded-moon/ http://cowlark.com/flooded-moon/ The maths are interesting. I tried figuring out how thick the atmosphere woul
by david-given 10y ago
I've tried it:
http://cowlark.com/flooded-moon/ http://cowlark.com/flooded-moon/
The maths are interesting. I tried figuring out how thick the atmosphere would need to be, but I kept coming up with ludicrous answers --- one model I tried, in order to get breathable pressure on the surface, the atmosphere had to extend out at least two lunar radii. That would have made the moon just a simple white fuzzy ball in the sky, and you'd never see the sun from the surface.
I need to get back to this and see if I can improve the models a bit.
- sytelus 10y agoThis is excellent! I did not see any reference to the math. So you are saying, if there was an atmosphere that extended to two moon radii, it will stay with the moon and you will have breathable pressure on the surface?
- david-given 10y agoI couldn't make the maths work, so the atmosphere in the pictures was picked solely to make them look good. The moon's far too small to hold an atmosphere for geological periods of time; in real life it'll all leak away into space. The reason why my model produced such a huge atmosphere was that the more air I added, the deeper the atmosphere got; but the further away from the surface the lower the gravity, so I ended up with diminishing returns. Once you're a lunar radius away from the surface your air weighs only half as much as it did on the surface, so now you need even more, which makes the atmosphere even thicker, which means the portion up high weighs even less...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]