How is the atmosphere of Venus differant to that of Mars?
Venus has a very thick atmosphere made up of about 95 percent carbondioxide. The constant cloud cover prevents heat from escaping the atmosphere. This “green house effect” causes the average temperature on venus to be around 872 degrees F! The atmosphere of mars is also made up of 95 percent carbon dioxide…but it is very thin. There isn’t much of an atmosphere to trap heat, so the average temperature is around -81 degrees F.
Mars’s air would be like a soft, cold vacuum of CO2. The final scenes in Total Recall depict it quite well, when Arnold S. fell down the hillside on Mars. His head was expanding fast because of the very low pressure there. Venus’s air would be like a strong, hot, and acidic soup, thicker than any pea-soup fog in London. Your skin would be deep fried and acid etched, while your lungs would be screaming (superlatives fail me here). Why? Venus has much more mass (more gravity) to hold on to this thick atmosphere, and is closer to the sun to have much higher temperatures.
