Space Colonization Studies Center

> While I think that Biosphere II is probably one of the neatest technical
> and exploratory projects ever done, I have a couple issues with it from
> an SSI standpoint:
>
> 1. Managing Biosphere II might best be done by a group like the Mars
> Society (since it fits their notion of space colonization, and they have
> an ongoing related projects already).
> http://www.marssociety.org/
> http://www.marssociety.org/mdrs/index.asp
> http://www.marssociety.org/arctic/index.asp

Hmm, I am getting html failures while trying to access these URLs.
Something is wrong at their site. Since I am not a proponent of going
to Mars I haven't paid any attention to their activities. SSI has
always been about orbital habitats and the means to create them so I
don't see any reason why SSI shouldn't take the lead (other than lack of
will power).

>
> 2. There is/was no focus in the project on the notion of
> self-replication or in-situ resource us for manufacturing, IMHO the key
> problem for space settlement -- living off the land.

True, there wasn't before. There is no time like now to insert that
focus. The pure "lets go live in a closed environment" use of Biosphere
2 is a dead end and I think that that has become quite clear. There is
money and facilities available to somebody who can dream up a better use
for it than to just leave it to rust away.

> As far as science, the Biosphere II project has proven:
> A. concrete consumes oxygen for a couple years as it sets, and

I was a little mixed up on this as well. So asked a number of questions
while there to clear it up. There were actually three problems: Oxygen,
Carbon Dioxide, Radon.
-The drop in oxygen occured because the breakeven point for oxygen
generation vs oxygen use by the plants etc. during the closed test fell
on the side of using up oxygen due to not enough sunlight. The years of
the test were the cloudiest that Arizona had every recorded.
-Concrete uses carbon dioxide has it hardens. There is a log function
of the rate of consumption through 100 years. There is a lot of exposed
concrete in the facility so a lot of hardening was left to be done when
the door was shut.
-The stainless steel is there to keep radon gas out. I still find this
confusing, but that seemed to be its one and only function. The info
created by ?? for Biosphere 2 certainly did not make that clear.

> ...
> Now if Bass wanted to focus on how to replicate Biosphere II's from
> local resources using tools fitting inside a Biosphere, I'd be more
> interested in it. In general, anybody with money and energy can build
> and maintain a garden of arbitrary complexity (which is what Biosphere
> II was)-- what is new would be replicating it -- as a "self-replicating
> garden" [a title of a paper I wrote way back on the topic...].

Agreed! That is why I think that we should make a proposal. It is
unlikely that any of the universities will try to propose anything
radical. What I have proposed so far makes biology a small but
important part of much larger picture. If we don't try we can't win.

>
> I met some Biosphereians (or support staff) when they made a
> presentation at Princeton about fifteen years ago -- one said they put
> acres of stainless steel under the whole thing to make it air tight -- I
> suggested they could have tried fused the sand with lots of heat (like
> SSI's support of Nader Khalili's work).

Ya, I see this as a mission statement problem. Wrong mission
statement. So what do you think the mission statement should be? I
have already expressed mine.

Mitchell James
mejames@...
www.InnerTransit.org (Homebase for collaborative engineering on the web)