Frank, Gene & others were correct, and I was grossly mistaken. If the density for air is at the 50% point at 4-5 miles, then a geosynchronous orbit at 22,200 miles is ~5000 doublings. This means that the density of the air in geosynchronous orbit is ~10^(-1500) of what it is at sea level. This number is 65 orders of magnitude smaller than Avagadro's number. So the chances of finding an air molecule at this height are zero. The number of orders of magnitude may change with the type of molecule, but the answer is the same. This means that no reasonable (or even unreasonable) amount of pumping will cause any amount of gas to be emitted at this height. Yes, some vanishingly small fraction of the molecules may achieve escape velocity, but those velocity distributions involve exponentials, as well. Now that I understand this a little better, I now think we have a much bigger problem: where, when and how did we lose the rest of the Earth's atmosphere ? Even 5 billion years can't put a dent in the numbers above, so how come the Earth's atmosphere isn't a lot bigger, so that the rate of loss today would still be measurable ? This tells me that something fairly dramatic must have happened early in the Solar system's history to pull and/or blast away most of the early atmosphere. At 08:20 PM 8/1/2006, franktaw@netscape.net wrote:
If you keep pumping carbon dioxide into the column, the pressure will increase. If you don't, you won't get a measurable amount of carbon dioxide escaping.
Franklin T. Adams-Watters