Origin and loss of the volatiles of the terrestrial planets

How the terrestrial planets obtained their original endorsement of volatiles and proceeded to lose them selectively is the theme of this paper. Where good and convincing answers to these questions are still not available, the principal issues are becoming better and better understood, and thus many of the decisive measurements and calculations needed to obtain them can be well defined. In this paper our present inventories of volatiles such as the noble gases, hydrogen compounds and atmophiles such as CO2, N2, and O2 will be presented. Careful attention will be given to isotopic ratios and their significance. Escape processes past and present - blow off impact erosion, thermal and non-thermal loss of neutral and ionic species will be discussed, and the contribution of each to volatile loss assessed. It will be argued that our understanding of these processes is adequate to explain the present level of fractionation of many of the noble gases and their isotopes on all the terrestrial planets. It will also be argued that we are close to understanding loss of hydrogen well enough to assess reasonably the early abundance of water on early Venus and Mars.