[anang]

Isn’t atmospheric loss on the scale of millions of years? If we were capable of giving mars an atmosphere, surely we’d be capable of topping that atmosphere off when needed?

So, even if maybe the terraforming and colony project has a life span of a few million years…that’s still longer that’s humanity has existed.

[bilsbie]

You’re correct. Moreover a magnetic field is not needed for a planet to have an atmosphere. For example Venus has no magnetic field, and it has a very thick atmosphere, even though it gets 4 times the solar flux as Mars.