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Biosphere 2 (Autonomous Enclosed Community Experiment: 1991-1993)

MrRING

MrRING

Android Futureman
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I thought this website was interesting:

bigdeadplace.com/index.html
Link is dead. The MIA website can be accessed via the Wayback Machine at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120725054853/http://www.bigdeadplace.com/index.html

About Big Dead Place
This site is dedicated to Antarctica and to thinking about Antarctica.
It's edited by Nicholas Johnson, formerly known under the pseudonym F. Scott Robert.
Though much of the site is original, some of it is excerpted from the book Big Dead Place, published by Feral House Publishing.
We welcome submissions and we respect anonymity if you prefer.
Click to expand...

https://web.archive.org/web/20120725054927/http://www.bigdeadplace.com/about.html

It's a (largely funny) website by people who life in Anarctica, how thye deal with the conditions, the social life, their views on John Carpenter's The Thing, and other goodies.

Also of note is this interview with Abigail Alling of Biosphere 2, and their talk of what it's like to have lived the Biosphere experience compaired to the frozen, isolated wastelands.

bigdeadplace.com/biosphereinterview.html
Link is dead. The 3-part interview article can be accessed via the Wayback Machine at:

Embracing the Experiment: Interview with Abigail Alling of Biosphere 2
https://web.archive.org/web/20120227050317/http://www.bigdeadplace.com/biosphereinterview.html
 
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And who knew the Biosphere has an official web presence?

biospheres.com
Link now leads to the Institute for Ecotechnics, which seems to be the latter-day incarnation of Biosphere 2's creators.

https://ecotechnics.edu
 
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There may be an appropriate Thread for this story; if so perhaps a Mod would shift it to there.

Eight go mad in Arizona: how a lockdown experiment went horribly wrong

In the 1990s, a troupe of hippies spent two years sealed inside a dome called Biosphere 2. They ended up starving and gasping for breath. As a new documentary Spaceship Earth tells their story, we meet the ‘biospherians’

the first ‘biospherians’ prepare to enter their enclosed environment.
the first ‘biospherians’ prepare to enter their enclosed environment. Photograph: Corbis/VCG/Getty Images

It sounds like a sci-fi movie, or the weirdest series of Big Brother ever. Eight volunteers wearing snazzy red jumpsuits seal themselves into a hi-tech glasshouse that’s meant to perfectly replicate Earth’s ecosystems. They end up starving, gasping for air and at each other’s throats – while the world’s media looks on.
But the Biosphere 2 experiment really did happen. Running from 1991 to 1993, it is remembered as a failure, if it is remembered at all – a hubristic, pseudo-scientific experiment that was never going to accomplish its mission. However, as the new documentary Spaceship Earth shows, the escapade is a cautionary tale, now that the outside world – Biosphere 1, if you prefer – is itself coming to resemble an apocalyptic sci-fi world. Looking back, it’s amazing that Biosphere 2 even happened at all, not least because the people behind it started out as a hippy theatre group.
“Just the fact that the same number of people came out as went in is a triumph,” says Mark Nelson, one of the original eight “biospherians”. Far from a failure, he regards Biosphere 2 as an unsung achievement in human exploration, as do many others. “I like to say we built it not because we had the answers. We built it to find out what we didn’t know.”
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jul/13/spaceship-earth-arizona-biosphere-2-lockdown#img-2
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jul/13/spaceship-earth-arizona-biosphere-2-lockdown#_=_
 
I think these folk deserve more sympathy than they get.

Who else would have done so well?
 
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