🚀 go-pugleaf

Biosphere 2 Update:

Several people have asked me to post a general description 
of Biosphere 2 as well as updates during the remainder of 
our first test run. I'm Taber MacCallum, a crew member 
inside Biosphere 2 for the first full test. So here I go.


Biosphere 2 is a privately financed closed ecological 
system that is now supporting eight humans and nearly 
4000 documented species of plants and animals in seven 
biomes. There is a rain forest, savannah, desert, marsh, 
ocean, farm and a human habitat with a kitchen, 
apartments, laboratory, workshop, command room, animal 
bay, storage, fully equipped medical facility, recreation and 
living rooms. Biosphere 2 has a foot print of 14 thousand 
square meters with an atmospheric volume of 161 thousand 
cubic meters. Almost all of the energy used for growing 
plants, waste recycling and atmosphere maintenance is 
derived directly from sunlight through the glass. In this 
closed environment all the air, water and  waste is recycled 
and purified by plants and microorganisms. In summary the 
system is essentially materially closed with a leak rate of 
less than 9% per year and energetically open, meaning that 
information, electricity, light and heat go in and out as 
needed. 

I am responsible for the analytical chemistry inside 
Biosphere 2, and primarily concerned with the 
biogeochemistry. For instance, research into the 
mechanisms responsible for the decreasing atmospheric 
oxygen may bear significantly on the mechanisms involved 
in the decreasing global oxygen and show us what to avoid 
in future large closed system designs. (See the R.F. 
Keeling paper in the August issue of Nature for global 
decrease data.) I also work with Dr. Walford on the 
medical research involving the crew. Our caloric intake 
now is about 2100 calories per day/per person and the 
oxygen is now at 14.8%, so the partial pressure is the 
equivalent of about 13,000 feet. While low food and oxygen 
would not be a good situation if we were in an isolated 
space colony, it's why we're doing it first on the ground. 
We are now 14.7 months into our two-year exploratory 
mission and even though we could just walk out the door, 
we treat air, food and water as matters of life and death. 
Someday, hopefully, they will be. The restricted calorie 
intake has serendipitously provided a research opportunity. 
Our cholesterol level, blood pressure, fasting blood sugar 
and other basic measures of health have all improved 
dramatically. This is one of the first highly controlled long 
term dietary studies that has ever been conducted on 
humans. The results thus far were published in the 
December 1, 1992 issue of the Proceedings of the National 
Academy of Sciences. 

Now at over 14 months, we have surpassed the 6 month 
record for living in a closed life support system, previously 
set by Russian researchers working in Siberia. We live and 
work in a computerized paper-free environment, monitor 
and maintain the various technical systems, collect data, 
communicate with a team of outside scientific 
consultants and researchers, prepare reports, and 
somehow find time for individual research projects and 
creative endeavors like writing, painting, video 
documentation, music and computer network postings. 
The project is located north east of Tucson in Arizona, 
near the town of Oracle and is open to visitors.
The space exploration and settlement aspects of Biosphere 
2 are my primary interests, especially from the aspect of 
technological development and first hand experience with 
the management of a total life support system, crew 
relations and mission control support etc. on a two year 
mission. 

One of the things that has become very important is feasts 
in Biosphere 2, having become an invaluable and 
inseparable part of life inside Bio 2. So when Thanksgiving 
came along I slaughtered and roasted a young pig whole on 
a spit after stuffing it with guavas, bananas and papaya. 
Oh... The fruit made the pork wonderfully tender and 
sweet. We also had Indonesian rice with peanuts, stir-fried 
vegetables, baked beans, salad, chutney, crepes with ice 
cream, sweet potato pie, and cheese cake, bread, soup and 
home brew. 

The complexity of the experience is hard to relate, from 
farming and analytical chemistry to giving emergency 
medical treatment and exploring the wilderness all in a 
day's events. It's like hearing several sources of different 
music all at once, that are somehow not discordant, albeit a 
little jarring at times. It is imperative that space travelers 
be 
able to find a way to relate the experience, or society is 
cheated out of a large part of the returns from the large 
endeavor required to colonize space and other worlds.
A year ago I was not totally sure if Biosphere 2 would 
work, even to the degree that it has. Before Biosphere 2, 
nobody knew if complex closed ecological systems on this 
scale would even survive, let alone support humans. To 
have objective, living proof that nature thrives on a scale 
and condition so radically different from the one we 
evolved in, is a major change in our understanding of the 
nature of nature.

During the winter solstice period, basically between
Thanksgiving and mid January, the sunlight on a full sunny 
day at the latitude of Tucson falls to less than 40% of the 
summer solstice sunlight and the frequency of long storms 
that obscure the sun is much greater. This is the time of 
maximum impact on the carbon dioxide level in Biosphere 
2, due to diminished photosynthesis by the plants, the CO2 
can rise to above 4,000 ppm during stormy weather as 
compared to its summer minimum of under 1000 ppm.  
In preparation for these stormy episodes I tested the  
carbon dioxide recycler and it is now being used due to the 
storms we are experiencing. In the absence of storms we 
would not need to use the system at all. 

The carbon dioxide is scheduled to be re-released in the
atmosphere during the sunny, clear days of Spring. The 
recycling action differentiates it fundamentally from 
precipitation only units (CO2 scrubbers) used in systems 
such as submarines and the space shuttle, that cannot 
recycle the gas. I designed the system to take CO2 out of 
the air in the fall and winter and put it back in the high light 
spring and summer. The release process regenerates the 
chemicals for use again the following fall/winter season. 
Carbon dioxide is stored as limestone (CaCO3) and the 
limestone is heated in the summer releasing the CO2 and 
forming CaO.

While in many ways Biosphere 2 is inexorably linked to the 
Earth energetically, by gravity, with information and 
science, material closure creates for many intents and 
purposes another entity. The feeling inside, our attitude and 
actions are definitely those of people who are part of 
another world. The mission rules and the unspoken rules, 
our cravings, desires and the physical/mental 
transformations thus far can only be explained by a drastic 
departure from what I once knew to be the norm. Though I 
am still part of, and for my very breath and sustenance 
depend on a biosphere that is radically different from the 
one you are in right now.

We as a species have found no way to live for any 
significant length of time except as part of a biosphere. 
Significance for a species is measured in generations not 
months or years. This is rather inconvenient because of the 
relative weight and size of a biosphere as we know them. 
Biospheres are impossible to launch and require 
maintenance of systems that on the surface seem to bear 
no direct benefit to the humans doing the maintenance, but 
they could potentially be reliable once we get the bugs (not 
insects) worked out, and it's the only system that we know 
definitely works.

Of course nobody would launch a biosphere off the earth, 
but I think it is a model of what we might ultimately build in 
space or on a planet from local materials. Just bring the 
genetics. We must not forget the aesthetics and stability of 
a long term settlement. This may be beyond our active 
lifetimes but I think we must lay the proper foundations 
from the very beginning. The life support systems we land 
with, are the backup systems we live and grow old with.

*****

I will endeavor to periodically post updates with more 
specific and current information than was in this post, 
during the next nine months of this closure, as we approach 
the end of the first full test of Biosphere 2.

Taber MacCallum
Analytical Systems Manager, Biosphere 2 Crew, 
1991-1993 mission
tmaccallum@Igc.org