NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #30/NN_1992_30.iso/spool/sci/space/17935

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-21 | 8.9 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Taber MacCallum)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Biosphere 2 update
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Date: 20 Dec 92 19:06:31 GMT
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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
[e-mail]