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But how about the other important element in our atmosphere that we breathe: nitrogen? Among others. Cuz if it’s just pure oxygen I’m pretty sure that’s not sa

• kadoban 5y ago
  You can breathe pure oxygen without issue if it is at lower pressure. I don't know of any other gasses that are actually needed.
  • hutzlibu 5y ago
    Also the nitrogen would not get used up by humans. Only for growing plants, we would have to bring some or extract it somehow?
    • kadoban 5y ago
      Yeah I guess we'd have to bring it as fertilizer. I tried to look up if nitrogen exists on the Moon, seems like it basically does not. I didn't realize how rare carbon is there either. We'd need to bring a _lot_ of things it seems.
• G3rn0ti 5y ago
  Oxygen is actually pretty inert i.e. non-reactive and therefore safe to breathe in pure form (as aquatic divers do, I believe). The reason for that is most of atmospheric oxygen is composed of "triplet oxygen" referring to its outer shell electron configuration being rather stable. For reactions to occur triplet oxygen first needs to be activated and converted into "singlet oxygen" being rather aggressive chemically. This is a "kinetic" barrier that renders gaseous oxygen pretty harmless. This is also the reason why organic matter on earth does not spontaneously catch fire although CO2 + H2O is always energetically more favorable than every CXHXOX composition.