![]() ![]() Ants and roaches got into the supposedly sealed habitat. Crop failures led to food shortages, which led to hangriness and weight loss. In the Biosphere, people struggled to climb stairs and to stay asleep without apnea waking them up. Bacteria in the soil sucked up the air and produced carbon dioxide, leaving the participants with oxygen levels similar to those at the top of a 14,000-foot peak-what people in my home state of Colorado call “a fourteener” and love to post pictures of themselves summiting. More than 30 years ago, this setup didn’t quite work for the Biospherians: they couldn’t get enough calories or oxygen from what the structure had to offer. It feels simultaneously like being in a very large municipal botanical garden and a small-town aquarium. On my first night I decide to take a walk around inside before the conference starts. Trees reach toward visitors, and water shimmers just beyond reach. Inside are miniature ecosystems-ocean, mangrove wetlands, tropical rainforest, savanna grassland and fog desert. It looks like it does, in fact, belong on another planet. Behind that is a white bubble that resembles an indoor tennis court. Jutting perpendicular from the structure are greenhouse-shaped domes, in front of which is a Taj Mahal–like entryway. That geography is part of why the actual Biosphere 2 building looks so striking: Two ziggurats made of tessellated glass triangles are connected by a long, glass rectangular structure. The land around Biosphere 2 could be described the same way Buzz Aldrin talked about the moon: “magnificent desolation.” Cacti spike the ground, and behind the facility, the Santa Catalina mountains rise, rocky and Martian-like, more than 9,000 feet into the air. Along the smaller road in, ads encourage drivers to purchase custom home sites-right there, with Biosphere 2 as their new neighbor. On the small highway leading toward the facility, a big green sign like one you’d see at an interstate exit points the way. But the site feels slightly less removed from society than an exercise in living on a distant planet or isolated spacecraft should. The project was launched with a high-profile publicity campaign. Magnificent Desolationīiosphere 2-Earth being Biosphere 1, the original-was never a secret. Cynic, realist, whatever: when I stood around chatting with my free drink, surrounded by optimism, I harbored some reservations about the usefulness of analog astronautics and the motivations of the participants. The group felt very grouplike, and the mood was idealistic-as in “We are a family whose earthly explorations will enable a better and inevitable future in space.” Rightly or wrongly, I don’t tend to be a joiner, and I’m skeptical of human space exploration’s scientific value and long-term likelihood. Participants were united in their desire to advance space travel while remaining stuck on Earth and to make Earth more functional in the meantime.Īt the opening reception, I felt separate from my cohort and doubtful of the enterprise. The occasion for this particular four-day meetup was the Analog Astronaut Conference, an annual gathering to share results, plans and experiences in simulated space research. Today it is used for research related to climate change, biodiversity and sustainability. Located northwest of Tucson, Ariz., it hasn’t been used for its original, sealed, astronautic purpose since 1994. Last month I gathered with those who’ve participated in such experiments at Biosphere 2, which today is operated by the University of Arizona. Researchers study the systems that sustain the facilities, the procedures and instruments the participants use, and their psychology and biology-the scientific versions of “Can they do it? How will they react?” They venture outside only in a spacesuit, if at all, and interact with no one but their crewmates. For weeks or months, small crews get locked inside a habitat, capsule or settlement to simulate a space mission. The idea of applying my efforts to space research rather than individual satisfaction was appealing.Ī lot of people must feel similarly because today the globe is dotted with such analog facilities. Usually for me that involves tackling some pointless, agonizingly long trail-running trial. I love a “Can I actually do it? How will I react?” challenge. It was an early “ analog astronaut” experiment: a study that asks people on this planet to pretend to be spacefarers. The goal was to study how people and ecosystems survived in the sequestered, self-supporting habitat and to demonstrate the viability of a similar setup for future space travel. They would stay for two years in the enclosed facility in the Sonoran Desert, which was home to five different ecosystems. In 1991 eight people in Arizona entered a strange contraption: a 3.14-acre glass house called Biosphere 2. ![]()
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