This week, BLDGBLOG featured Remnants of the Biosphere, a series of portraits of what was once one of the most ambitious scientific projects in human history. Biosphere 2, constructed in the Arizonian desert, was billed as the first large scale enclosed eco-system designed by humans. It is now little more than a run-down tourist center.
Though its wikipedia entry is noncommittal, nearly all observers considered the project to be an unequivocal failure. The original live-in crew turned from hope-inspiring pioneers to starving, oxygen deprived malcontents in a matter of months.
Even the wiki article does acknowledge that the best lesson derived from the experiment was that, “small, closed ecosystems are complex and vulnerable to unplanned events.”
That may be the wiki-understatement of the year.
The failure of Biosphere 2 brings with it some irresistible symbolism. After all, the project was named after Earth’s ecosystem, the original Biosphere. And, adjusting timelines proportionally to size, Biosphere 1 is on an identical path.
The crew of Biosphere 1 is itself growing short on breathable air, palatable water, and nutrient-rich food. The atmospheric conditions on Biosphere 1 are slowly going out of whack. Its built-in safeguards are beginning to fail. And like its successor, Biosphere 1 has an inept command crew who have not prepared for any of the inevitable disastrous contingencies.
As on Biosphere 2, scientific rigor and conscientious stewardship have succumbed to fear mongering, demagoguery, and willful ignorance. Like Biosphere 2, marketing prowess and investor confidence is valued higher than knowledge and expertise.
Once we acknowledge the impending failure of our Biosphere 1 project, perhaps we will have the technology to import outside resources (via interstellar import programs) to replace those that the Biosphere can no longer produce. Perhaps, like Biosphere the Second, we will demand that the keepers let us out of this decaying, uninhabitable, deathtrap and seek our fortunes elsewhere. Perhaps we will be able to lease our Biosphere to an intergalactic home developing conglomerate who will find some commercial tourism value in its remnants. Perhaps by then, galactic sprawl will have populated the Milky Way and provided homes for trillions of space tourists who would pony up a few credits to see the fetid remains of a once glorious and confident planetary civilization. Perhaps they’ll think of the throngs of human refugees as a race of Pauly Shores. Perhaps they will see the humans as a people who have their adorable foibles and who persevere obliviously through adversity until they are inevitably bailed out by wiser, saner outside forces. Perhaps our lovable incompetence will be our saving grace, after all.
