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Biosphere II: An experiment in enclosed environmen
IN SOUTHERN ARIZONA, A BAND OF dedicated mavericks are quietly erecting the
most gutsy science experiment since the days of the first moon landing. It's
a brilliant, bold, hair-brained, and completely gonzo undertaking: A sealed,
self-sustaining ark for human living. The Arizona group calls it Biosphere
II, a bonsai version of Biosphere I, our Earth. Small compared to Earth,
this self-contained terraquarium is awesome at the human scale. Biosphere 11
[Bio2] is a gigantic glass ark the size of an airport hangar. Think of an
inverted ocean liner whose hull is transparent, a greenhouse as big as a
sports dome. Inside is wilderness. It's airtight to the outside. Sealed at
the bottom, too, with a stainless-steel tray 25 feet under the soil to
prevent seepage of air from below. In September 1990, eight volunteers -
four men, four women - will walk through the airlocks and seal themselves in
for two years. Inside there is a soaking-wet rain forest at one end, a
desert savanna at the other, and a coral reef and marsh in the middle. Off
to one side is an intensive-agriculture area where the eight will grow all
their own food for two years. Like Noah's place there will be animals
aboard: some for meat, some for pets, and some on the loose: lizards, fish,
birds and bats roaming about the wild parts. There are honey bees, papaya
trees, a beach, TV and a laundromat. The Biospherians las they call
themselves) will recycle 100 percent of what they breathe, drink, and eat.
For two years they will live in a closed mini-world, a dramatic surrogate of
our home planet. They see Bio2 as a double-sided investigation: how to live
off the Earth and how to live on the Earth. Who are these folks? A former
theater group; beyond that they are not saying much. Will they wear clothes?
Usually. Will there be sex? Maybe. Will there be babies? They claim not.
What happens if it all goes to green slime? There will be lots of snails,
and lots learned. What will they do if someone dies? Compost'em, goes the
inside joke. Where does the money come from? It will cost about $100
million, a for-profit investment made primarily by Texan tycoon Ed Bass, who
plans to recoup his money (and more) from the technological spin-offs, and
from tourism to the site. There is a green faction within the Bio2 group
that sees this experiment as an emblem of Gaian awareness, an icon with as
much spiritual power as the image of the whole Earth from space. And there
is a space-cowboy faction within Bio2 that sees this as a pragmatic step on
a spiritual journey off the planet into the galaxies. Both spirits are
really manifestations of the same metamorphosis best described by Dorian
Sagan in his book Biospheres: The "man-made" ecosystems known as biospheres
are ultimately "natural" - a planetary phenomenon that is part of the
reproductive antics of life as a whole.... We are at the first phase of a
planetary metamorphosis, a breaking of the biontic wave. By "biontic" I
refer to a biont, a biological unit; by "wave" I mean the cresting and
reappearance of individuality at a hitherto unsuspected scale: not of
reproducing microorganisms, or plants or animals, but of the Earth as a
living whole. . . . Yes, human beings are involved in this reproduction, but
are not insects involved in the reproduction of many flowers? That the
living Earth now depends upon us and our engineering technology for its
reproduction does not invalidate the proposition that biospheres, ostensibly
built for human beings, represent the reproduction of the planetary
biosystem.... What is definitive success? Eight people living inside it for
two years? How about ten years, or a century? In fact, biosphere
reproduction, the building of dwellings that internally recycle all that is
needed for human life, begins something whose end we cannot foresee. AT THE
END of September, 1990, the first planetary seed pod will be launched. The
following scenes depict its development as of February 1990. A biosphere is
an evolving system of ecologies. A meta-ecosytem, if you will. The only
biosphere operating until recently was the Earth - Biosphere One. Earth, as
a biosphere, is materially closed 99.9 percent of all matter is recycled),
and energetically and informationally open (sunlight pours in, and
information comes and goes). Biosphere 11 likewise is materially closed and
energetically open. Attempts to concoct an even smaller, portable biosphere
have been only partially successful. The late Carl Folsum dabbled in making
materially closed ecosystems in laboratory flasks. He called these
ecospheres, and came up with dozens. Some, like these on display, are still
living after 20 years. Unlike biospheres, ecospheres capture only a single
ecology, leaving little room for ecological evolution. Mesocosms are another
type of synthetic ecology. Mesocosms are scaled-down replicas of natural
systems, but are not necessarily closed. A native wildflower garden could be
thought of as a very open-ended type of mesocosm. Some exotic aquariums are
sophisticated mesocosms. A mesocosm sealed like an ecosphere becomes a
biosphere. Each one is an experimental lab for ecology. "The biosphere,"
says john Allen, a co-founder of the project,, "is a cyclotron for the life
sciences." Seven biomes The rock wall in this picture separates two of the
seven biomes enclosed under the glass canopy being erected. On top of the
cliff will be the African thornshrub savanna; at the base of the cliff, the
ocean with Caribbean coral reef. (An underwater viewing port is being
constructed in the foreground.) Under the framework lies the future Baja fog
desert. At the junction where framework shown is over the cliff, a waterfall
drops to an Florida mangrove swamp. The water will come from a tropical
cloud forest, out of the picture to the right; its highest point will be
five stories tall. In the background are the domes of the agricultural area.
And the seventh biome, an urban human habitat, will house Homo sapiens
Americanus with conventional materials. Small-time plate tectonics Bio2 is
the largest example of a closed, man-made living system. One of the smallest
examples to date is the commercially available ecosphere (see WER #45). It
holds a special combination of water, air, algae and living shrimp in a
scaled glass globe. This one, sitting on ecologist Peter Warshall, s
bookshelf, may, in a Gaian sense, be manufacturing land. On Earth, the
deposit of sedimentary rock is in a dynamic equilibrium with the composition
of the atmosphere, and the rate of life. Carbon and minerals circulate not
only through air and water into life, but into land and rocks, and back
again. In Warshall's ecosphere which has lain undisturbed for years),
minerals are precipitated into a layer of solid crystals on the globe's
roof. Warshall sees two lessons here. One is that Bio2 might expect to have
troublesome mineral deposits accumulate on its glassy roofs. And second,
that turbulence is an essential catalyst in ecology, although a somewhat
costly" one to replicate in a man-made environment like Bio2. Bio-diplomacy
"It's a sticky problem," says Bio2 ecologist Peter Warshall, here checking
out a cactus. "It's a pretty impossible job to pick 100 living things, even
from the same place, and put them together to make a wilderness."'
Ecologists experience all the competitiveness rival organisms do while
designing a biome. And as they bicker for water or sunlight rights, it's as
if they were ambassadors protecting their borders from encroachments. I
need as much fruit as possible dropped from trees for my turtles to eat,"
says Bio2 desert ecologist Tony Burgess, "but the turtles would leave none
for the fruit flies, which Warshall's hummingbirds need. Should we have more
trees for leftover fruit, or use the space for bat habitat?" So negotiations
take place: If I can have this flower for the birds, you can keep the bats.
Or open subversion, like the debate on whether the marsh-man should have his
pick of sawgrass, which Warshall didn't like because it would invade the
drylands.
Warshall: "Oh, it won't make any difference because I'm just gonna plant
taller elephant grass to shade out his stuff, anyway." The marshman
retaliated by planning acacia trees, taller than either. Warshall is
currently scheming a border defense of guava trees, which don't grow any
taller, but grow much faster, staking out the niche early. Dirt first! The
key to creating ecological regions from scratch is to have the right soil.
The ecologists building the wilderness areas of Bio2 are of the school that
says: soil makes the ecology. To have the kind of tropical rainforest you
want, you need to have the right kind of jungle dirt. And to get that in
Arizona you are probably going to have to make it from scratch. Take a
couple of bulldozer buckets of basalt, a few of sand, and a few of clay.
Sprinkle in the right microorganisms. Mix in place. in the wild, soils erode
or build up, presenting a new soil composition on the surface. This is one
reason why the variety of species will vary in one location over geological
time, as the mix of species adjusts to new soils. In a highly erosive place
like a desert, it is natural for stands of cactus to change in as little as
25 years. Without the turbulence of wind and storms, the soil of Bio2 will
be in an enforced stability. Disturbing the atmosphere with your fingers
Much of the evidence that convinces the e Bio2 group that their ark will
support eight people for two years bas come from extended manned and
unmanned runs in this test module. It is crammed with a spectrum of diverse
plants, and a microbial water-recycling apparatus similar to the one in
Bio2. A whiff of the air inside is overwhelming - shockingly moist, thick
and "green." Linda Leigh, biologist and Bio2 candidate, volunteered to solo
test-drive it for 21 days. Says she, "At first I was concerned whether I'd
be able to stand breathing in there, but after two weeks I hardly noticed
the moisture. In fact I felt invigorated, more relaxed, and healthier,
probably because of the aircleansing and oxygen-producing nature of close
plants. The atmosphere even in that small space was stable. I felt that the
test module could have gone on for the full two years and kept its
atmosphere right." Sophisticated monitoring equipment indicated no build-up
of gases either from building materials or biological sources. Although the
atmosphere was stable overall, it was sensitive to perturbations which
caused it to vacillate easily. While digging sweet potatoes out of their
beds, Leigh's disturbances Of C02-producing soil organisms temporarily
altered the C02 concentration in the module's air. It's unknown what effect
tilling the Bio2's larger garden will have. Instant ocean This truck pulls
up to the Bio2 office, and the truck driver wants to know where they want
their ocean. He's been hauling a full load of ocean salt and would like to
unload it before dark. They point down to a very large hole in the center of
the project. That's where Walter Adey from the Smithsonian Institution is
building a one-million-gallon ocean, coral reef and lagoon. Growing an
artificial self-regenerating coral reef of any size has only been done twice
before, both times by Adey. This one is huge; it has its own beach. There's
an expensive wave-making pump at one end to supply the turbulence coral
love. The same machine will create a half-meter tide on a lunar cycle. The
trucker unloads the ocean; stacks of 50-lb. bags of Instant Ocean, the same
stuff you buy at tropical aquarium stores. A starter solution harboring all
the right micro-beasties (sort of the yeast for the dough) will be hauled in
on a different truck from the Pacific Ocean. Shake together well, and pour.
The diversity pump It is hard to crash an ecosystem, but that's not to say
there won't be extinctions. A certain attrition rate is essential for
evolution. Walter Adey had about I percent extinctions in his two coral
reefs. He expects about a 30- to 40-percent drop-off in species within the
whole of Bio2 during the first "closure" [the first two-year run). "What we
are doing is cramming more species in than we expect to survive. So the
numbers drop. Particularly the insects and lower organisms. At the beginning
of the next run we overstock it again, injecting slightly different species
- our second guesses. What will probably happen is that there will still be
a large loss again, maybe one-quarter, but we re-inject again next closure.
Each time the numbers of species will stabilize at a higher level than the
first. The more complex the system, the more species it can hold. We keep
doing that, building up the diversity If you loaded up Biosphere Il with all
the species it ends up with, it would collapse at the start." it's a
diversity pump that grows complexity. Animals, by 3 and 5 Tony Burgess
ordered dune sand to be trucked in for the desert biome because river sand,
the only kind on hand, is too sharp for land turtles; it cuts their feet.
"You've got to take care of your turtles so they will take care of you."
Animal support will be thin in Bio2 at first because there won't be enough
wild food to support many of them. This galago from Africa probably won't
make it in Bio2 until the second round, after it has been trained to cat
fruit from the acacia trees now being planted. The first Rio2 wild animal
occupants will include Texas tortoises, blue-tongued skinks (because they
are generalists" - not picky what they eat), various lizards, small
kingfishers, and pygmy green hummingbirds, partially for pollination. "Most
of the species will be pygmy, because we really don't have that much space,"
Warshall told a Discover reporter. "In fact, ideally we'd have pygmy people
too." And they shouldn't go in two by two. "You want to have a higher ratio
of females to males for reproduction insurance," Warshall says. "Ideally we
like to have at minimum five females per three males. I know director john
Allen says that eight humans
four female, four male - is the minimum-sized group needed for human colony
start-up and reproduction, but from an ecologist's view the Bio2 crew should
be five females and three males." A land ship The seventh biome of Bio2
features a human ecology. The people habitat is modeled on the highly
evolved environments in ships - versatile, high-yield, low-space services.
Not a bad model for an ark on land. There are eight one person studio"
apartments (360 sq. ft. on average), with access to a general purpose
mezzanine. There's a large communal kitchen and a food-processing and
storage area. One dining room, one office, one analytical lab, one medical
lab, one tissue culture lab, one library with tower deck, one gym, one
workshop (amply stocked with spare parts), one laundry room, one veterinary
lab for pets, too), one media studio, and one enclosed plantation garden
planted with bananas, avocados, and figs. . Piping in thunder for the frogs
Constructing a wetlands by re-assembling a natural one is the analog method
of biome building. It seems to work fine. If we were really doing this
right, we would be piping in thunder for the frogs," says Warshall. "But we
are not really modeling the Earth, we are modeling Noah. How many links can
we break and still have a species survive? In reality that's our question."
"Well, we haven't had a crash yet!" Walter Adey chuckles. He has built two
living coral reefs and a mangrove swamp. His analog swamp gets a
thunderstorm when someone turns a gushing water hose onto it. Living
mesocosms, even synthetic ones, are hard to break. Compressing a swamp A
30-mile stretch of Florida Everglades mangrove swamp is surveyed into a
grid. Every half mile or so along the salt gradient, a small cube four feet
deep by four feet square) of mangrove roots and piggy-backing barnacles is
dug out and boxed. Reassembled in Bio2, the unboxed marsh blocks will take
up only a micro 90 by 30 feet. Each section harbors a mixture of
microorganisms with a gradually increasing love of salt. The flow of life
from fresh water to brine is compressed into talking distance. While they
are waiting to be placed in the marsh, the boxes are hooked up onto a
distributed saltwater tide, initiated twice a day by manually hauling on a
rope tied to a drain. One sustainable diet To entirely feed one person
indefinitely on a backyard-sized plot requires that nutrition be maintained
for both soil and human. ERL has worked out a rotation of cultivars for a
small plot (to be used in Bio2) that produces a varied human diet which
exceeds the minimum RDA for calories and all nutrients, except for vitamin
B12. It is not boring food: oats, wheat, rice, sweet potatoes, squashes,
sunflower seeds, various beans and peas, peanuts, lots of leafy greens, root
crops like beets and carrots, the usual garden veggies like tomatoes, cukes,
eggplant, peppers, and some fruit such as melons and strawberries. Plumbing
that thinks a little The nerve center, as the bionauts call it, is the
computer room run by an artificial cortex of software and chips. Ganglions
of sensors from around the Bio2 pour information into the computers. Every
valve, pipe, and duct of the infrastructure is modeled in the software, a
commercial product developed by artificial-intelligence expert Ed Fredkin.
Usually, mechanical systems of this complexity require constant baby-sitting
by engineers and operators. This one will rely on Fredkin's
artificial-intelligence program to keep the technosphere automatically
adjusted. Repairs and changes to the system can be forecast easily by
altering the graphic model displayed, as shown here. Bio2 is probably the
most intensely monitored environment ever. About a hundred compounds are
monitored continuously in the air, soil, and water throughout the whole
structure. Some of the potential profit-making spin-offs from the project
are automatic environmental monitoring devices and techniques. Marathon
intensive cropping Carl Hodges, working with Environmental Research Labs
ERL), set up an elaborate and rigorous cropping schedule based on several
years of research in greenhouses with a Bio2 climate, giving the day and
plot in which something should be planted or harvested. In the tests, sheep
manure with the nitrogen content of the feces and urine of one adult on a
vegetarian diet was added to the plots to parallel the (treated) human waste
that will be returned to the gardens in Bio2. ERL found that the nitrogen
and carbon fertility of the soil could be sustained with intense continuous
cropping as long as crop residues and human fertilizer were returned. But
the research at ERL did suggest that, over time, sustainable garden soils
may eventually become deficient in phosphates, although not in the time span
of the Bio2 experiment. The smallest forever garden Of all the myriad parts
making up Bio2, the most well-researched is the intensive agriculture area.
The total area available for food crops is about 1/2 acre. Domesticated
plants are bred for more sheltered climates so the entire atmosphere of the
agricultural area under these domed structures will be air-conditioned to
some extent. The garden's air will be dehumidified year-'round, and cooled
during the summer. While water for use inside the farm will be recycled,
water for the evaporation cooling towers will be drawn from wells outside.
Research done by ERL has shown that it is possible to grow enough food for
one person for one year on as little as 250 square meters, your basic tennis
court size. And to do this year after year. The eco-peasant One dismaying
result of ERL!s studies is the estimated time needed to grow and harvest
crops - four to six hours per person per day! This astounding result shifts
the image of the biospherian from futuristic eco-nerd to third-world serf,
toiling in the sweltering fields. Organic food is labor-intensive,
especially when you are obliged to grow everything you eat. The scale is an
awkward one as well - too small for a farm, too big for a garden @ so
adequate tools are hard to come by. The best source for ERL has been the
appropriate-technology catalogs for hand tools and university research plots
for power tools like tiny walk-bebind combines. Putting the dirt into dirt
Heavy metals are a problem for biospheres. The materials and construction of
Bio2 have been designed for a 50- to 100-year lifetime. Construction
practices normally used for durability, such as cadmium coatings for rust
prevention, copper piping, and galvanized-zinc air ducts - all high-standard
specifications - were discovered to be too toxic in the rapid and short
cycles of a biosphere. Even the "super" stainless steel alloy (corrosion
resistant and usually considered inert) carefully laid under the concrete
beneath the ocean was coated with a plastic epoxy because of minute traces
of toxic metals such as nickel, chromium, and molybdenum found from test
samples. Airborne organic contaminants - the stuff of smog - released by
building materials or produced by certain plants, are ingeniously removed by
a Bio2 innovation called a soil bed reactor." All the air in Bio2 is
circulated through the four-foot beds of soil in the agricultural area so
that the air percolates up from below ground level and off the top. This has
been shown to have little effect on the plants, but to have great effect on
the air. Almost all airborne solvents and organics are gobbled up by soil
microorganisms. The air comes out amazingly clean. This process has a great
commercial future in purifying the air of office buildings and factories. As
Carl Hodges is fond of quipping, "Industry has been stuck putting its dirt
into the air, when it should be putting its dirt into dirt." There is no
garbage Combination water purifier and aquafarm. Here's a multilevel tub
system for growing rice, green compost, and fish on ,waste" water. The rice
is grown paddystyle in flooded beds. On the water surface a mat of azolla, a
tiny flat water fern that is high in nitrogen, floats between stalks of
rice.
It is collected after the rice is harvested and composted for fertilizer.
Under the water, tilapia fish proliferate. Tilapia, a tropical carp-like
fish from the inland lakes of Africa, have an unusually high percentage of
protein, reproduce rapidly, and are excellent restaurant fare. "Waste" water
from the rice/fish tubs spills into water-hyacinth tubs which begin a
biological clearing of the water, a job picked up with gusto by microbial
bacteria adhering to a drum spun by the water movement. Since everything is
recycled, there is no garbage. Bugs welcomed Ripe papayas, ready for
munching, hang in the rain-forest holding area. Papayas and bananas do best.
Oranges languish unhappily. There's a couple of coffee trees that will
produce enough beans for an occasional cup in the morning. I've worked in a
lot of greenhouses, but this is the first one I've seen devoid of white
flies or mealy bugs. Yet nothing is sprayed. (With a water cycle of seven
days, you'd be drinking whatever you sprayed last week.) In part because of
the incredible diversity of plants, insects, and microorganisms allowed to
compete, pests are not a problem. In fact, Bio2 is in the business of
raising insects. A large insectary was built nearby to grow plenty of
beneficial critters such as ladybugs, praying mantises, and butterflies
(just because they are pretty) as well as the ants, bees, termites, and
other "pests" essential to support the wild parts. Without insects the whole
place might fall apart. How to make rain Making rain for the cloud forest is
a problem. The original plans optimistically called for cooling coils at the
peak of the 85-foot glass roof in the jungle section which would condense
the moisture into celestial rain. Early tests proved the drops to be scarce
and too large and destructive, not the constant gentle mist the plants
wanted. Second plan was for the rain to be pumped up into sprinklers high
overhead, but that proved to be a maintenance nightmare since over a
two-year period the fine-holed mist heads were sure to need unclogging or
replacements. Current design has "rain" ejected from misting nozzles fitted
on the ends of pipes, as in this holding area for the rain-forest plants.
Drinking water is condensed off of cooling coils in the moist air -
essentially air-conditioner drippings. One unexpected consequence of living
in a small, materially closed system is that rather than water becoming
precious, it's in virtual abundance. In about a week 100 percent of the
water is recycled, cleaned by microbiological activity in wetland treatment
areas of Bio2. When you use more water, it just goes around a little faster.
Greenhouse meat No, the biospherians are not vegetarians, They will raise a
few animals as food, to supplement their primarily vegetarian diet. Pygmy
goats provide each person one vital cup of goat's milk per day Guineafowl, a
kind of ancestral chicken that lives in jungle regions, serve as easily
cared-for poultry A coop of nesting chickens gives eggs. These Vietnamese
pot-bellied pigs will also be part of the biospherian diet. Meat eating has
its price - somebody inside will have to do the butchering. No butcher, no
meat. Another hidden loop made visible in Bio2. Meat is not a mere luxury.
Because of the climate inside Bio2, soybeans stagnate horribly. Growing
sufficient vegetable protein is problematic. On the other hand the crops
that do best under the glass are grain and fodder. So, the Biospherians will
grow feed for animal protein, including milk. Walk-in lungs In order to
qualify as a materially closed system, Bio2 had to be airtight. Master
engineer Bill Dempster designed the ark to leak no more than I percent of
total air volume per year. That's one change of atmosphere per century, if
he pulls it off. The glass seals are so tight, though, and the air volume is
so huge that when it heats up in the Arizona summer, the increase in air
pressure remember Charles' Law?l would pop the glass panels right out like
wine corks. The solution to this small" problem is two mammoth auxiliary
lungs," one on either side of the site. Inside each tank, such as this one
(capped with a lid when done), is a monster rubber pillow connected by a
tunnel to the Bio2 atmosphere. A 15-ton metal plate sits on the pillow as a
counterbalance. When it's cool, the plate rests on the floor. When it's hot
the subtle airpressure difference inflates the pillow elevating the metal
plate. The lungs and tunnel are built high enough that biospherians can walk
in them. They add about an extra acre of inside space, cool and dark, and
wonderful places to play the flute. The keystone predator "Designing a biome
is an opportunity to think like God," Peter Warshall points out with a
smile. Says Tony Burgess, "You can go two ways with this. Mimic an analog of
a particular environment you find in nature, or invent a synthetic based on
many of them. Bio2 is definitely a synthetic ecosystem. But so is California
by now." Redundancy of pathways in the foodchain is the great challenge for
would-be Gods. With multiple food chains, if the sandflies die off, then
there'll still be a second choice of food for the lizards. Humans are
keystone predators," acting as checks of last resort. [The 14 candidates are
shown here.) Populations of plants or animals that outrun their niches can
be kept in reasonable range by human "arbitration." If the ocotillo shrub
takes over, the bionauts will hack it away. Adey says, "You can build
synthetic ecosystems as small as you want. But the smaller you make it, the
greater role human operators play because they must act out the larger
forces of nature beyond the ecological community. The subsidy we get from
nature is incredible." Turbulence is not cheap, and other problems The
ecological factor most missing from Bio2 is turbulence. Sudden, unseasonal
rainfall. Wind. Fire. A big tree falling over. Unexpected events. There are
endless examples in ecology of how both mild and wild randomness is crucial,
say, to start a forest, or recycle nutrients. Warshall says, "Everything is
controlled in Bio2, but nature needs wildness, a bit of chaos. Turbulence is
an expensive resource to generate artificially. But turbulence is also a
mode of communication, how different species and niches inform each other.
Turbulence, such as wave action, is also needed to maximize the productivity
of a niche. And we ain't got any turbulence here." Energy efficiency in
Bio2? Not really. The solar panels needed to power Bio2 would have to cover
25 acres !). Massive power is needed to insure that Bio2 doesn't fry in the
Arizona summer heat. Ever hear of the greenhouse effect? To keep cool, Bio2
built its own 3.7-megawat electric power plant fueled by natural gas. Excess
power will be sold into the local grid. Beside the electricity, 10 million
gallons of well water per year will feed Bio2's cooling towers. An
energy-way-open system. The time problem in Bio2 is serious. The bionauts
will easily spend one-half their waking hours planting, weeding, harvesting,
cleaning, processing, cooking, and cleaning up their food. Add to that the
measuring and monitoring of many experiments, and then the ceaseless
maintenance of a whole technosphere of computers, plumbing, wave machines,
fans, electrical circuits - and you have eight slaves. Bio2 may be
materially closed, informationally and energetically open, but it's
time-constipated. My fear is that there's too big a hunk of the world
compressed into that bottle. At least they'll have a short commute. The
birth of ecotech Mark Nelson, Director of Space Applications at Bio2, got it
right when he said that Bio2 was the "marriage of ecology and technics."
That's the beauty of Bio2 - it's a fine example of ecotech, the symbiosis of
nature and technology. But my own experience bas taught how unreliable
technology is day to day. If a biological system can do the job, it will be
powers of ten more dependable than any technological system.
As I see it, the weakness of Bio2 is that it is far too machine-dependent at
the moment. Yet I endorse the course the Bio2 team is taking, because I
don't see any other way. The techno-stuff will ultimately be Bio2's undoing
the plants and birds and bees will do fine), but it is a necessary
scaffolding to get the ecology off the ground. Like weeds in a parking lot;
the refined species come later. We don't know enough yet to invent biomes
without the pumps. Using the pumps now we can try it and learn. Learn what?
How to live within nature and with our machines. Says Peter Warshall, "I
highly recommend that everyone build a biospbere." 5 Further Reading "Space
Ecosynthesis: An Approach to the Design of Closed Ecosystems for Use in
Space," by R. D. MacElroy and M. M. Averner, NASA Technical Memorandum
78491, june 1978. An early report that still has much to say "The
Biotechnology of Space Biospheres," by Mark Nelson, Fundamentals of Space
Biology, edited by Asashiman and Malacinski, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1990.
Pretty good specifics of the various technical systems in Biosphere II.
"Biosphere II: Technical Overview of a Manned Closed Ecological System," by
William F. Dempster; SAE Technical Paper Series #891599, Society of
Automotive Engineers, Warrendale, PA, 1989. Further technical details about
the engineering achievements. "Sustainable Food Production For a Complete
Diet," by E. Glenn, et al., presented to the Second International Symposium
on Horticulture and Human Health; unpublished. Very informative report on
the research for the intensive agriculture section. "Bioregenerative Life
Support for Space Habitation and Extended Planetary Missions," by Mark
Nelson, Space Biosphere Ventures, Oracle, Arizona, 1989. Gets into the few
prior attempts at self-sustaining space habitats. "Earth's First Visitors to
Mars," by Gina Maranto, in Discover, pp. 28-43, May 198 7. Best article in
the popular press to date. Traces of Bygone Biospheres by Andrey Lapo, 352
pp., MIR Publishers/Synergetic Press, Oracle, Arizona, 1987. A very Russian
re-classification of life types on Earth, by a sort of grand biomystic
combining Chardin's "noosphere " with Lovelock's "Gaia " and Vemadsky's
geochemistry. Hard to read, bu t intriguing. Space Biospheres by Allen and
Nelson, 89 pp., Synergetic Press, Oracle, Arizona, 1986. About the theology
of biospheres. Nothing very concrete. The Biosphere by Vladimir Vernadsky,
82 pp., Synergetic Press, Oracle, Arizona, 1986. Written (and completely
ignored) in 1926, this is a poetic-scientific foreshadowing of the Gaia
notion - life and earth as one organism. Biospheres by'Dorian Sagan, 198
pp., McGraw Hill, NY, 1990. Not about Biosphere II. Rather, speculations on
the science of biospherics - human habitats as extensions of Gaia. The
Biosphere Catalogue, Tango Parrish Snyder, ed., 240 pp., SyDergetic Press,
Oracle, Arizona, 1985. Not much new, except for a couple of good papers on
the foundations of ecospheres.
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