Thoughts about a unique facility:
Biosphere-2, Arizona

Helmut Hinghofer-Szalkay

"The Human Experiment"

Near Oracle, Arizona, USA, Sept. 26, 1993: The first crew of biospherians reenter Earth's atmosphere after living inside the Biosphere-2 facility for two years

Biosphere-2 is the world's largest closed ecological life support system. Nestled among the cacti and sagebrush at the foot of Catalina Mountains, Biosphere-2 sits there like a giant spaceship, elegantly glittering, breathtaking from sunrise to sunset -- a beautiful place, stimulating thoughts and contemplation.

In September 1991, eight ecological pioneers started a 2-year's stay inside the Biosphere-2 complex, a $200 million structure covering more than three acres (>10.000 square meters), sealed by a stainless-steel latticework containing more than 6.500 panes of glass -- a life machine designed for a 100-year operation.

 One of the many engineering problems was to keep the entire structure essentially airtight, in spite of large daily and seasonal temperature variations. The solution was found by building two huge rubber-and-aluminum 'lungs' connected to the main structure by air tunnels. Operating in the 'closed' mode, these expand and contract as air heats and cools from day to night, thus reducing pressure differences between inside and outside to fractions of a percent. (The Lung concept was invented by Bill Dempster, chief engineer for the Biosphere-2 project of Space Biospheres Ventures. I'll never forget the tour he gave me and my family through the 'bowels' of this enormous machine.)

Large-scale life support systems are a big issue in spaceflight physiology. Dr. Heinz Oser, then European Space Agency Life Sciences Coordinator, helped me to find access to the staff creating Biosphere-2. My primary contact person was Mark Nelson, at that time Space Biospheres Ventures director of Space Applications. I was invited to visit the plant, and to give a Guest Lecture, which I did in July 1991 -- a few months before the Austrian cosmonaut Franz Viehböck was catapulted into orbit from the Baykonur launchpad in Kazakhstan. Back then, the steel-and-glass dome was still unfinished, and after donning a hard hat, I was given a tour of the site. With that, I realized just how big and unique -- and potentially useful as a physiological research tool -- this structure really is. Biosphere 2 became, and still remains, an unparalleled equipment.

A privatly run enterprise -- ­managed by dedicated idealists (if not to say visionaries) who started relatively unimpeded by overwhelming scientific scrutiny -- sufficed to put together this unparalleled laboratory in a matter of only a few years. Probably no university would have done this; no government agency would have done this either. A unique mix of people, ideas, and private money could.

From the beginning, the project was much disputed. The scientific community was largely sceptical, citing numerous concerns, such as the the fact that the people who managed Biosphere-2 were 'no real scientists'. So what? The Karl-Franzens-University in Graz is named after the Habsburg archduke Karl II who founded the University in 1585, and after Emperor Franz I who reestablished it in 1827. Neither Karl nor Franz were scientists. Does this mean no decent science is being conducted at the University? Certainly not: The principal project investigator -- not the owner or manager of a research facility -- is responsible for study design, data collection and interpretation, and publication of the results.

However: After sky-high enthusiasm at the beginning, the news media soon got sceptical. Time Magazine listed in its June 14, 1999, issue 'The 100 Worst Ideas of the Century' ­ -- Biosphere 2 amongst them. The reason? Problems during the course of the experiment -- e.g., 7 tons of oxygen disappeared from the atmosphere into the fresh concrete structure, unexpectedly, and oxygen had to be pumped into the system from the outside; the biospherians had not enough food to keep their body weight; the balance of species turned out to be problematic; etc.

But this is exactly why experiments are conducted: To learn from problems an new challenges. We want to experience something new, things do not need to behave as expected. To cite William C. Harris, Biosphere 2's former executive director: 'The nature of science is, anytime you do any kind of research, lessons are learned. One of the things they learned during the original experiment was that it's pretty hard to play God and run all the things on the planet ....'

Biosphere-2 is a place where many aspects of integrative physiological research aspects could be tested in ways nowhere else possible. It was designed as a long-term enterprise. The issue of sustaining life in remote, large materially closed environments -- such as on other planets -- is not yet finished; we clearly need much more research into this important area.

'Biosphere 2 will continue to stimulate the minds of those who have vision to think beyond the veil of tradition'
(Marino BDV, Odum HT. Biosphere 2: Introduction and research progress. Ecol Engin 1999; 13: 3-14)