Slashdot Mirror
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."
I don't remember if it was BioSphere I or II, but one of them had the concrete leech most of the oxygen out of the air. They eventually had to shut it down way ahead of schedule because they couldn't compensate for the lack of oxygen. Wusses. They probaboly just needed Pauly Shore.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
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.
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.
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.
NEOCA - Custom LED Flashlights
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.
"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..
I was fortunate enough to get to do research there in 2001. The place is absolutely amazing. We didn't actually live inside the Biosphere, there's a trailer/kit house village down past the lungs. The researchers there are literally from all over the globe.
As for the areas you didn't see on the tour, there isn't much to see in the coastal desert, and all of it is visible if you walk around the outside. The agricultural biome was partitioned off into 3 managed forests, since they are not needed for food production. At the time I was there they were ramping up each to different levels of CO2 to see what effect that had (which I guess simulates what would happen if CO2 levels rose significantly on the earth).
The tropical rainforest is sealed off from the tour areas, since that's where the bulk of the 'research' takes place. At the time, we were only allowed to go in twice to check on our experiment, which was a good thing IMO. There's a 'mountain' inside with fans at the top to help air circulate, and yes, the vegetation is very dense, so it is hard to see from the outside. I don't think any significantly sized animals live there anymore. In fact, when they had the first experiment there they had a problem with these primates (I believe they were galagos?) that would climb up the scaffolding in the rainforest biome, slip, and fall to their deaths right next to the outside windows. Of course, the PR people and the tour groups were not impressed when they would see all these dead 'monkeys' pressed up against the glass. So they had to go. I think the only larger animals that did remarkably well were in the oceans.
The AC is right when they say this was a very large "learning experiment" rather than a failed one. Even though they had many problems, they were handled in a controlled way and accounted for in the experiment and the data they took. If anything, the problems helped them learn more, since those are the types of unexpected things colonists in space will deal with.
This site has some good photos of the different biomes and the living/mechanical areas. If anyone has any questions or wants to know more of the 'unofficial history' let me know and I'll try to field them
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.