From: tmaccallum@igc.apc.org (Taber MacCallum)
Subject: Biosphere 2 update
X-Added: Forwarded by Space Digest
Organization: [via International Space University]
Original-Sender: isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU
Distribution: sci
Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1992 21:18:09 GMT




Biosphere update:
December 27, 1992

First I need to put a disclaimer in here, my posts are 
entirely comprised of my biased opinions and do not reflect 
in any way Space Biospheres Venture (SBV) policies, 
officials or other crew members. Also nobody else at SBV 
reads the posts, I write them in my personal free time and 
they are written for no other reason.

I have received many more questions than I can 
adequately address in the time I have, but the response is 
great, thanks, sometimes it is a little rough in here.

The question of why run Biosphere 2 on ambient light is 
good and approaches the fundamental question of what 
does Bio 2 have to do with space colony designs.

The decision to make Bio 2 open to direct sunlight or 
opaque with light pipes or electric light  was a big one early 
in design and centered on economics, science, safety, 
operation and esthetics. (SBV is a totally private, tax 
paying company.)  Making an opaque structure is cheaper 
and required no technology development to make air tight. 
But the operating cost of electric lights plus the tremendous 
added heat load was far to much. Remember that heat 
removal in a vacuum or near vacuum is already a big 
problem and energy generation in the amounts required to 
grow plants using grow lights is problematic. As it is, heat 
removal is our biggest energy demand and the largest 
single operating cost. The heating/cooling/dehumidification 
and filtering system for the air handles a volume equivalent 
to the biosphere every 1.5 minutes. A disadvantage of 
glass is that if the cooling system failed during a summers 
day, the biosphere would over heat in under 20 minutes. 
Light pipes depend on the sun as well and cost too much. 
Science comes to the rescue, one of the biggest questions 
was what are the stability characteristics of a closed 
ecological system and how are they effected by changes in 
the systems energy flux, so lets tackle this problem right off 
the bat. Biosphere would be MUCH easier to operate if 
the light input was high and constant, it was a trade off. As 
it is, we are operating on greatly reduced light because the 
structure blocks out 60% of the photo-active energy. The 
diurnal and seasonal oscillations in light provide one of the 
most interesting opportunities to study the system. Also 
visitors currently provide our main means of attempting to 
pay for operating Bio 2 and if it was not possible to see in 
from all around, it would stifle tourism. Now people can go 
right up to the glass and wave at us. And yes, as needed, a 
team of window cleaners go around the outside, dirty glass 
can reduce the light transmission by 10 to 20 % very 
quickly. Inside we only need to do the bottom two or three 
sections of glass in specific areas.

It is probably worth giving some perspective to Biosphere 2 
and why it is designed the way it is.
Bio 2 is in a way analogous to the Delta Clipper - X, it 
needs to fly after it is built or we don't learn nearly as much 
and it is hard to get the money back on a total flop. When 
we started the project in '85, I always had to spell 
"Biosphere" to people on the phone and people said "what's 
that?" now it is a very common word. No closed ecological 
systems or even partially-closed ecological systems that 
included humans had ever even been seriously paper 
studied in the west, much less attempted. The BIOS 
projects in Siberia were mostly roomers and no hard data 
was available. The projects culminating with BIOS 3, were 
comparatively simple, only partially-closed and had some 
serious nutrient cycling problems. Our approach was to 
take functioning ecosystems as analogs and use them as 
the building blocks of a total system. Thus the seven 
biomes, an atmosphere, a lithosphere, a water system or 
hydrosphere, an information/data and control system and 
an energy source are the very basic components of 
Biosphere 2, analogous to the Earth. The name Biosphere 
2 comes from the idea that it is based on the Earth or 
Biosphere 1. The agriculture is operated to maximize food 
production which dictates how it is operated, allowing very 
little flexibility to make adjustments for changing 
atmospheric or energy conditions. The wilderness biomes 
have different seasonallity, life strategies, dominant 
metabolic pathways etc. which give us allot of flexibility in 
managing Bio 2. The desert and Savannah are especially 
flexible because dormancy can be controlled by 
temperature, humidity and rainfall, allowing us to bring 
them into production as needed. 

We are trying to learn by doing, we are going to come out 
at the end of the first test flight with allot of questions and 
a 
few answers to problems created by the things we did 
wrong. In a way it is a proof-of-concept, that complex 
systems can be scaled down dramatically and still work. 
This top down approach to stability is in contrast to the idea 
that stability is found in simple systems constructed from 
the bottom up, individual species by species which is closer 
to the NASA approach. Both ways of looking at system 
designs are very valid, even though unfortunately 
sometimes people fall into separate camps and look 
askance at each other. There is allot of cross fertilization 
and ultimately the best system will be dictated by the 
circumstances and probably be a mix of the two ideas.

One of Biosphere 2's strongest and weakest points, like the 
space shuttle, is that it attempts to do many things and in 
the process does nothing as well as it could if it had only 
one task. Space is by no means the only reason for 
Biosphere 2 and in many peoples thoughts it is a very minor 
application. With regard to space I hope to come out with 
new perspectives on long term space travel and topics 
including soil nutrient cycles, atmospheric chemistry, 
mission control inside and outside, food production, human 
group dynamics, human medical requirements, data 
acquisition and control, maintenance and operation of 
associated technical systems and waste recycling. The 
many functions Biosphere 2 tries and needs to fulfill are 
often in conflict with each other, these functions include 
ecological research on a global and biome scale, medical 
research, profit, education, genetics of small populations, 
marine system research, restoration ecology, food web 
studies, agriculture, analytical chemistry and spin-offs from 
engineering, technology and computer system development 
especially in modeling.

The Biosphere 2 project came under allot of pressure to do 
ecological research even before the first two year test had 
even began. Note that much research was done just to 
design Biosphere 2. This happened faster than I and many 
other people thought, we were still in design and 
construction when the media began asking about our 
scientific credibility. To facilitate the research our  
scientific review committee (which we had from the very 
beginning) recommend among many other things, in a 
report made after closure, that we hire a Director of 
Science. The report is on the whole very good. Candidates 
for the position are being interviewed now and hopefully a 
selection will be made by end of January.

For background reading, two recent articles have come out 
in the popular literature that are good, The current issue of 
Whole Earth Review is excellent and a recent Buzzworm 
article is supposedly "more investigative" but they badly 
blunder many facts they could have easily checked, plus a 
biased slant was put on the article due to PR problems, as 
well as the article, Buzzworm carries a regular article by 
Linda Leigh, another crew member. Also papers were 
given at the last cospar meeting, the proceedings from 
which should be out soon. If we wanted to hide what we 
were doing, we would not have built Biosphere 2 out of 
glass and invited people to see.

The computer data acquisition, control and communication 
systems are problematic especially due to software 
limitations. One of the main tools for modeling and control 
is the General Symbolic "G2" expert system. We use a 
distributed broad-band network of 9000 series Hewlett 
Packard computers and Sun systems running UX. Each of 
which control specific areas of the biosphere using HP 
48K I/O systems and independent programmable 
controllers run by the computer system. These systems 
communicate with dedicated monitoring, data base and 
supervisory computers forming a multi level, distributed 
system. Reliability of the system is great because when 
problems occur the system falls back to the next lower 
level. A PC ether network is bridged to the UX system and 
fulfills functions like mail, fax, word processing, etc.. 
Communication and tele-conferencing is also facilitated 
with video in and out, picture-tell, video phones, voice mail, 
private phone lines and meetings at the glass with an 
intercom.

I'll get to the questions on Medical, Hygiene, Insects, CO2 
Recycler and Analytical Chemistry in future posts.

A few tidbits, we are now relying heavily on stored animal 
fodder from the summer to maintain goat milk production 
because the low light has reduced plant growth. Egg 
production has stopped because the chickens are molting. 
Recent cloudy weather has forced us to put more CO2 into 
storage for release in the spring. High CO2 brings the pH 
of the ocean to dangerously low levels. Without the ocean 
we could go to much higher CO2 levels. The current 
average CO2 level is 3700 ppm, oxygen is now at 14.8%. 
Living at an equivalent pO2 of approximately 13,000 feet or 
96 mmHg has a definite effect on crew performance, 
especially in limiting physical exertion and disrupting  sleep 
patterns in some crew members. The drug Diamox and/or 
concentrated oxygen at low flow rates during sleep helps 
relieve the problems in some crew members. We have not 
yet seen any marked signs of adaptation to the lowered 
pO2 in the physical exams or blood tests.  The holidays 
have brought more feasting and we have all put on 1 to 2 
Kg of weight!

Cheers and a Happy New Year from Biosphere 2!

Taber MacCallum