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

Go see it!

[PhilHibbs]

It's totally breathtaking. It's just the most awesome theme park I've ever been to. The story does exaggerate slightly, it makes it seem like they are working ecosystems, but in fact they are just big greenhouses. Really big greenhouses, wrapped in the world's largest sheets of bubble-wrap. Hands off, no popping it!

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.

First-Hand View

[BSDevil]

I went down to Cornwall in September and spent a day at the Eden Project - let me tell you, it's one hell of a place and a hell of a design. It's essentially two big domes in the bottom of an old Quarray with the walls made out of adjustable air pockets made of clear plastic. It's also not what you'd really call 'sealed' in the sense of Biosphere2 - if you look up to the top of the domes, there are some huge heating and cooling systems in there, and a fairly advanced system of windows that open and shut depending on conditions and (I assume) visitors.

As for the biospheres themselves, one is a Tropical biome, and the other was Mediteranien (I think that's what they called it); the Tropical one is the big dome on the left, and the Med is the smaller one on the right. Of the two, the tropical one is better (as of now). It takes about half an hour to walk through the thing, and (especially the higher up you go in the dome) it gets bloody hot and humid in there. I went on a September day where I was wearing pants and a fleece outside, and within about ten minutes of beingin the Tropical dome I had ditched the fleece and rolled my pants into shorts. Its got all sorts of funky plants in there (including baby pineapples growing, bananas, and these odd frying-pan water lillies), a big waterfall that runs into a stream, to both add make it look pretty and keep the humidity up. What was really nice was that they didn't chintz the place up like many museums do - there were a few things like that, but for the most part they let the plants speak for themselves, and the small signs explain them - you can see a manilla plant that the paper for manila envelopes comes from.

The Med biome, on the other hand, kinda sucks. It's not really hot enoungh in there, and as Med climate plants don't grow as fast as Tropical ones, it seems a bit sparse in places - but they do a very nice job of decorating that half of the place.

The thing that needs to be remembered about the Eden Project is that the thing is really new. It's been open for about eight-to-ten months, and needs more time to grow. All the trees planted outside arn't ready, and the biomes need more time to grow and flourish. And they need to get anew supplier of Ice Cream in the Cafe. Having said that, Eden was a very pleasant weekend out. The train was like four hours or so from London, so you could do it in a day if you're hardcore. I personally went down for the weekend, doing Eden on one day and the Lost Gardens of Heligan (another gardening project) the other day. The place is cool now, and will be amazing in a few years. And it looks bloody cool when you arrive by car, coming around the corner and you just see these domes down there - and you just know it's gonna be in a James Bond movie sometime :P I highly recomend the place if you're in London and have time to get down to Cornwall.