Science and Education in Biodomes

Guinnessy writes: "Many of you will remember the excitement around biosphere 2, a project to enclose 8 people in a sealed environment to see if they could survive a year on just the resources produced inside the dome. It failed (although they did discover some interesting data from it). Now, in the UK, a bunch of scientists, engineers and environments have created the Eden Project, a similar scheme (e.g. closed environments mimicking various climate conditions around the world) to biosphere 2 except the general public can walk through the domes to learn about the importance of plant life. Wired News magazine has an excellent article explaining some of the technology used in its construction (it amazed me how far they have come compared to the biosphere 2 design) and how it is educating the public." Hey, according to Mission to Mars all you need is some flapping canvas to keep your habitat secure.

Comments

The two projects are very different

[Maddog Batty]

I live about 30mins from the Eden Project so I can truely say that is has been a very impressive project in both its construction and its finished state. The biomes are gigantic, the pictures really don't give you a feeling of exactly how big they are. The technology is great as well. The glass is in fact a couple of layers of plastic blown up with gas. On UK TV, they recently balanced a car on one of the cells to show its strength even though the plastic itself is rather thin. Its claimed that the structure weighs less then the air it contains though I do find this hard to believe.

However, the comparison with biosphere 2 is rather strange as the two projects are very different. The Eden Project is basically a big green house. It has never been sealed and has never had that intention. It has value as an educational tool and there are some science studies going on but this is minor. Beyond its construction (which is bleeding edge), I found the biosphere 2 project far more interesting.

With the biosphere 2 project, the entire environment had be controlled. As they found, this is very difficult to achieve and needs to be sorted before any attempts for Moon or Mars bases can start. It should be interesting to see what the next attempt at a sealed environment achieves.

A few links from the BBC and from Google for the Eden Project.