Let’s talk about the time that we made a scientific boner so immense that there’s a Pauly Shore movie about it.
Oh, and somehow Steve Bannon was involved.
Today’s Moment of Science… Biosphere 2.
Remember in the 1990s- or as the kids are calling it now, the late 1900s- when things like the rainforest rap made us think we were helping? There were also a few attempts to live in closed ecosystems on Earth because, just in case a bunch of seven year olds attempting to rap couldn’t save the planet, we needed a back up plan.
So let’s talk about Biosphere 2 because hoofuckingboy, that closed system didn’t work out so well. Good thing we solved climate change, amirite? Oh.
In 1984, plans for Biosphere 2 got started, and construction concluded in 1991. It was called Biosphere 2 with the implication that ‘Biosphere 1’ was our planet- weren’t they clever chucklefucks? It was backed financially by son-of-an-oil-magnate-turned-environmentalist Ed Bass. Space Biosphere Ventures was led by systems ecologist John Polk Allen, who’s been generously described as “both a visionary and an abusive mind-control guru.” Tucked away in Oracle, Arizona, it’s a marvel. When you picture “Martian base where Matt Damon’s shit potatoes grow,” this is pretty close.
When you’re making a world from scratch, you have to control for goddamn everything. During the day, the Arizona temperature would rise, causing the air to expand. To keep it a closed system as planned, they engineered the fuck out of some fancy pants ecosystem-sized expanding ‘lungs’ to manage air volume changes. I’m not sure how much that mattered though; it’s estimated that Biosphere 2 leaked about 10% of its air per year which is, uh, not Mars ready.
Creating a functioning set of ecosystems was a task of nearly goddamn impossible proportions. They constructed five environments to manage and study; a rainforest, wetlands, grasslands, a desert, and a makeshift ocean (with a coral reef). They also had an agricultural system with crops and animals to grow their own food, a laboratory, and living quarters.
The most carefully, deliberately designed environment was not equipped to handle the slightest of shocks to the system, like… clouds.
In the first mission, the winter months were cloudy, making it difficult for crops to thrive. It’s not clear exactly which domino caused the fall of the next, but a bacteria in the soil chugged oxygen, and over sixteen months levels dropped from 20.9% to 14.2%. Between that and carbon dioxide levels rising, they had to add carbon scrubbers and start injecting oxygen into their no-longer closed system.
If only ‘leaking precious life sustaining oxygen’ had been the least of their troubles.
Honeybees and hummingbirds died off, which meant crops were left unpollinated. Ant populations skyrocketed, along with cockroaches, unsurprisingly. The crops were attacked by a variety of pests. All the Biospherians lost weight, even having broken into an emergency supply of food rations. One person was ordered to be fired for breaking into the food rations, their response to which was simply to not leave the structure. They correctly figured nobody was coming in to get them.
That was the first mission, and even with all of that? It was carried out to its two year completion. So what the fuck happened that was so much worse in the second mission that shut it down in just six months?
Sentient herpe, Steve Bannon.
Yes, that Steve fucking Bannon.
Remember when I mentioned about oxygen levels dipping and carbon dioxide rising? At the time, Steve Bannon thought climate change was real, and wanted to use the humans inside Biosphere 2 to study it. “We have extraordinarily high CO2, we have very high nitrous oxide, we have high methane. And we have lower oxygen content. (…) This actually allows them to study and monitor the impact of enhanced CO2 and other greenhouse gases on humans, plants, and animals.”
TL;DR: Bannon was like “why can’t we just let them live on less oxygen and take notes?” A few of the scientists were not fucking having it because they enjoyed breathing, opened air locks, and smashed windows. This was the beginning of the end of Biosphere 2. It’s now used as a research facility by the University of Arizona.
We might have gotten some interesting observations from the project, but it’s hard to say how valid any data is when conditions kept shifting under their feet. The biggest takeaway from the whole project is that if we ever had to Noah’s Arc our way off this planet, we’d fail spectacularly.
This has been your daily Moment of Science, suggesting that it’d be cheaper for a billionaire to fix Earth than try to supervillain another planet into livability.
To get the daily MOS sent straight to your inbox with stories of how we’ve fucked up absolutely everything with flair and science, head to patreon.com/scibabe.
Brilliant. I’m all for “saving the planet” but not wiling to give up my morning coffee to get it done. I continue to look for “right” and “wrong.” Wanna hear the running totals?
One of the biospherians used an account at The WELL (text based bulletin board at the Whole Earth Catalog). During the conversation, we learned that they were under time pressure to fill the biosphere and close it up, hurry hurry, and so they hauled in all topsoil rather than creating a proper soil profile — way too much topsoil, and the topsoil buried too deep started to suffocate.
Oops.
I remember well the litany of problems with biosphere 2. A fair portion of their CO2/O2 balance was due to calcium carbonate and water formation due to interaction with the atmosphere and exposed concrete. They also went a lot hog wild on environmental diversity, which exasperated their gas imbalance. Frankly, they needed a larger aquatic habitat and larger rainforest habitat. Their notion on food production was wildly optimistic and they never bothered to measure light levels transmitted through the dome.
Circling back to the concrete, it could’ve been worse, they could have used slaked lime mortar, which would react even more with the CO2 and O2.
Environments that are sealed and balanced make rocket science look trivial. Regulatory feedback needs redundancy and robustness. Ideally, all one should need to do is alter air flow and water flow, with enough feedback to allow the system of systems to re-balance itself.