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For Sale: Biosphere 2
jangobongo writes "The Texas company that built and owns the Biosphere 2 Center near Tucson, AZ has put the property up for sale. Built at a cost of over $200 million, Biosphere 2 was originally used as a a self-sustaining environment for humans with eight "biospherians" sealing themselves in for two years to see if they could survive without outside intervention. The Biosphere 2 campus consists of a 3.1-acre glass terrarium and 70 other buildings on 140 acres, and includes offices, classrooms, laboratories, residential housing, and a hotel and conference center. Because it is a very expensive place to operate, the more than 85,000 visitors last year were not enough to make money on tourism alone. Potential uses for the property: a religious college, spa, golf resort or even a technology park."
Um...isn't Biosphere I the Earth?
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Previously (before September 2003), Columbia University was managing Biosphere 2 and they were using it mainly for research and as a study-abroad program for students. The tourism was aspect was a sideline and you probably couldn't go inside because it would have messed up thier research and learning aspects.
Now you can go inside on the extended tour which lasts 2-3 hours. While I was there, I got to see all the internal areas except one, the "tropical jungle" section of the terrarium, which was completely overgrown because the environment inside was so agreeable with the plants, they just grew like crazy and took over. Our tour got to see the living quarters and the research labs. We went into the terrariums to see the two food garden areas, the section with the "ocean", "savannah", "marsh", and "desert" biomes. We toured under the facility in the basement to see the mechanical aspects, power plant, water recycling, and air handlers. They also took us into one of the two "lungs" of the biosphere, which are a technological feat of engineering designed to accommodate for the expansion and contraction of the internal air as it heats up and cools down.
I came away from the tour very impressed with all the details and a new respect of the whole project, as well as for the eight participants in the 2-year experiment.
This was by no means a "failed experiment", rather a very large learning experiment.
"They eventually had to shut it down way ahead of schedule because they couldn't compensate for the lack of oxygen."
That is an incorrect statement. There were actually two different "missions" where people were sealed in: the first from September 26, 1991, to September 26, 1993, and the second for six months in 1994. Neither mission was ended prematurely.
They did have an oxygen problem and had to correct it by adding pure oxygen to the environment when oxygen levels dropped too low, though.
"microbes were using oxygen to metabolize the excess organic matter that had been added to the agricultural, savanna, and rain forest soils to encourage plant growth."
This info comes from the following link that was included at the end of the Wikipedia article:
http://www.chemistry.org/portal/a/c/s/1/acsdisplay .html?DOC=vc2%2F2my%2Fmy2_biosphere.html
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..