> But for the vast majority of the lost Mar's atmosphere the kinetic energy needed to achieve escape velocity is not from impact with solar wind ions or other s

> But for the vast majority of the lost Mar's atmosphere the kinetic energy needed to achieve escape velocity is not from impact with solar wind ions or other solar wind related/magnetic field means. Source? That's in direct contradiction with the article stating: > In addition to determining that solar wind was responsible for depleting Mars' atmosphere, these probes have also been measuring the rate at which it is still being lost today. You seem to be forgetting that Mars has a very thin atmosphere, so there is no appreciable bow shock created. The upper atmosphere will protect itself only if it's dense enough to create sufficiently strong eddies to deal with peak solar wind. Mars' atmosphere is not dense enough. Venus' is, maybe that's what you're thinking of? Adding a synthetic magnetosphere to Venus will not accomplish much due to the effect you're describing. And besides, do you really think the Director of Planetary Science of NASA, who recently launched MAVEN to study exactly this topic, somehow missed the core assumption of this project? You're making a very strong claim, so please provide strong proof of the following: - Show that "But for the vast majority of the lost Mar's atmosphere the kinetic energy needed to achieve escape velocity is not from impact with solar wind ions or other solar wind related/magnetic field means" -- NASA seems to disagree - Show that photoionization accounts for "the majority of kinetic energy needed" - Show that bow shock in Mars' thin atmosphere is sufficiently strong to deflect peak solar wind activity I don't believe any of those three points are provable for Mars. I believe you can show that bow shock is sufficiently strong on Earth and Venus, but not Mars. I believe you can show that Jeans escape is small on Venus because of the composition of the atmosphere, but not Mars.