Orbital elevators and long, long days

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

You've got to have photosynthesis or there will be no atmospheric oxygen. That's what I was getting at.

Not necessarily. Most of the oxygen will be bound up with hydrogen - i.e., water. However, hydrogen is a very light gas and will escape, leaving an excess of oxygen. There was a recent article in Scientific American about how photosynthesis may not have had such an enormous influence on atmospheric chemistry.