Scott Hedrick wrote:
"Jorge R. Frank" wrote in message
...
The moon will lose an earthlike atmospheare if it is given one.
At the
heat flux rate from the sun it sees the gas will leak off in a
relitivly short amount of time.

"Relatively short" only in a geological sense. The "half-life" of a
lunar
atmosphere is measured in the thousands of years.

I saw that episode of "Space: 1999"! It came and went in a day-
complete
with rain!


I wanted to see more than one or two episodes of that show. Sigh.

Still, the rate of loss of the atmosphere will be governed by physics,
not by the whim of a screen writer. And it will be on the order of
hundreds to thousands of years.

I'll bet *that* played havoc with the corrosion inhibitors on
Moonbase
Alpha's skin!