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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."

5 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Idea by Rie+Beam · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I just realized something:

    Millionaire + Self-Sustained Environment = Human Hunting Adventure

    This is gonna be fun.

  2. A prison camp totally isolated from the world? by orthogonal · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Potential uses for the property: a religious college, spa, golf resort or even a technology park."

    Or warehousing, for life "enemy combatants" you don't have the evidence to convict, but can't release because they'll hate you forever for torturing them.

    What better for that then a Biosphere literally hermetically sealed from the rest of the world. Perhaps it's even sealed tightly enough to hold in the shame Americans should feel for what's being perpetuated in their names.

    Yes, I'm proud to be an American: after getting to the moon in 1969, 35 years later the closest we've come to a manned landing on Mars is a "Biosphere" in the Arizona desert. Meanwhile, "land of the free" is using medieval tortures on innocent men and proposing to jail them for life without any evidence.

    Here's to you, Mr. Jefferson! Here's to you Mr. Adams!

    This is not the future I dreamt of.

  3. I took that tour a few years ago... by aoasus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It consisted largely of,

    Here's our failed experiment, let's walk around it.
    No you can't go in.

    But you can go in our GIFT SHOP!

    At the time I'm pretty sure there were some college still woring with (read: Funding) the folks there as there aren't too many other places like it on the planet for that kind of biological research. Maybe they ought to seal the thing up & forget about it for a few milennia. Maybe something will evolve its way out.

  4. Reality Show by peu · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It failed because reality shows didn't exist at the time.

    If done today, I'm sure its a smash hit, think of a mix of big brother + truman show.

  5. Re:did it ever actually work? by FuturePastNow · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm just going off memory, too. I'm sure that, back when they built it, I heard it mentioned somewhere that the "II" in the name was because they named it after the original biosphere (the Earth). Then again, I could be full of it.

    I wouldn't worry, there's an awful lot of oxygen out there...

    --
    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.