Chapter 42 8.4 Huge ecotech glass sphere

That fitful runaway started on a run-down ranch near Santa Fe, New Mexico.In the early 1970s, the commune's most prosperous era, the ranch housed a group of typical renegades who were culturally misfit.At the time, the vast majority of communes were running as they please.And this large ranch, named Collaborative Ranch, did not follow the trend.This New Mexico commune demands discipline and hard work from its members.When the catastrophe came, instead of resigning themselves to fate and blaming others, they devoted themselves to researching how to get rid of social ills.They conceived of several proposals for a giant spiritual ark.The bigger the whimsical ark was designed, the more interested everyone was in the whole idea.

It was the commune's architect, Phil Hawes, who came up with the exciting idea. At a conference in France in 1982, Hoth showed off a mock-up of a transparent spherical spaceship.Inside this glass sphere are gardens, apartments, and a pool with a waterfall. "Why do you think of life in space as just a journey, and not as real life?" Hoss asked. "Why not build a spaceship that mimics the environment we've been traveling in?" In other words, why not create a living satellite instead of a lifeless space station?Copy the overall natural environment of the earth itself, and make a small transparent sphere to sail in space. "We knew it was going to work," says John Allen, the charismatic ranch leader, "because that's what the biosphere does every day, and we just had to figure out the right scale. "

After leaving the ranch, the members of the cooperative ranch continue to work hard to realize the dream of this hidden living ark. In 1983, Ed Bass of Texas, one of the former members of the ranch, used a portion of the family's very strong oil fortune to finance the construction of a proof-of-concept prototype of this Ark. Unlike NASA, collaborative ranchers don't rely on technology to solve problems.Their idea was to add as many biological systems as possible—plants, animals, insects, fish, and microbes—into the sealed glass dome, and then, relying on the self-stabilizing tendencies of the initial system, self-organize a biosphere's atmosphere.The business of life management is to transform the environment to make it beneficial to life.If you can gather organisms into a colony and give them the freedom to create the conditions they need to thrive, the biome can live forever without knowing how it works.

In fact, not only do they not know, but biologists don't really know how a plant works--what it needs and produces--nor does it know that a distributed plant enclosed in a small room How the micro-ecosystem works.They can only rely on scattered, uncontrolled beings to figure it out for themselves, so as to achieve some kind of self-reinforcing harmony. No one has built such a large living body.Even Gomez hadn't built his reef yet.Collaborative ranchers also have only a vague idea of ​​Claire Folsom's Ecosphere, and even less of Russia's Biosphere 3 experiment. The small group—now calling itself the Space Biosphere Enterprise, SBV—designed and built an experimental facility the size of a small shed in the mid-1980s, with tens of millions of dollars in funding from Ed Bass.The hut is stuffed with as many plants as a greenhouse, some fancy pipes for water circulation, a few black boxes of sensitive environmental monitoring devices, a small kitchen and bathroom, and of course, lots of glassware.

In September 1988, John Allen conducted the first experiment by sealing himself in this device for 3 days.Like Yevgeny Shevlev's courageous step, it was an act of faith.While the plants were chosen through rational speculation, how well those plants work as a system is completely out of control.In contrast to Gomez's hard-earned casting order, the guys at SBV just threw everything in one go.This closed home can rely on at least some species of plants to satisfy a man's lung capacity. The results of the tests are very encouraging.Allen wrote in his diary on September 12: "It seems that we - the plants, the soil, the water, the sun, the night, and I - are approaching some kind of equilibrium."In this limited biosphere with 100% atmospheric circulation, the levels of 47 trace gases "probably all originally produced by human activities" dropped to negligible levels because the air in the hut was transported through the vegetation soil - SBV modernizes this ancient technology.Different from Shevlev's experiment, when Alan walked out, the air inside was fresh, and more people could be admitted to live.For people outside, taking a breath of the air inside, they will be shocked by its moistness, thickness and "freshness".

Allen's experimental data shows that humans can live in this small house for a period of time.Later, biologist Linda Leigh spent three weeks in this small glass shed.After 21 days of living alone, she told me, "At first I was concerned about whether I could bear to breathe the air in it, but after two weeks I hardly noticed the humidity. In fact, I felt energetic." Enriched, more comfortable, and healthier, perhaps due to the nature of airtight plants to clean the air and produce oxygen. And the atmosphere is stable even in that small space. I think this test module can last for two years, And there's nothing wrong with the atmosphere."

During that three-week period, the sophisticated monitoring equipment in the shed showed no increase in trace gases, either from building materials or from living organisms.Although the atmosphere is generally stable, it is also sensitive, and any small variation can easily cause it to fluctuate.When Leigh broke ground at the shed to harvest sweet potatoes, her digging disturbed the soil organisms that produced carbon dioxide.The panicked bugs temporarily altered the carbon dioxide levels in the lab.This is an example of the butterfly effect.In a complex system, a small change in the initial conditions may amplify and affect the entire system on a large scale.This principle is usually illustrated like this: Suppose a butterfly flaps its wings in Beijing, which will trigger a hurricane in Florida.In the enclosed glass sheds of the SBV, however, the butterfly effect is on a small scale: with the flick of a finger, Leigh disturbs the balance of the atmosphere.

John Allen and fellow collaborating rancher Mark Nelson envision a Mars space station in the not-too-distant future as a giant closed-system bottle.Allen and Nelson gradually develop a hybrid technology called eco-technology, based on the fusion of machines and living organisms, designed to support future human alien colonization. They are extremely serious about going to Mars, and have already started working out the details.In order to travel to Mars and beyond, you need a crew.How many people are needed?Military chiefs, expedition leaders, entrepreneurial managers, and people in crisis centers have long known this.They believe that the ideal team size for any complex, dangerous project is 8 people.More than 8 people will cause slow and delayed decision-making; and less than 8 people, emergencies or negligence will become serious obstacles.Allen and Nelson decided on a team of eight.

Next step: How big would this bottled world have to be to provide shelter, food, water and oxygen for 8 people indefinitely? Human needs are fairly certain.Each adult needs about half a kilogram of food, a kilogram of oxygen, 1.8 kilograms of drinking water, the amount of vitamins recommended by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and a few gallons of water for washing and washing.Claire Folsom gets extrapolations from his little ecosystem.By his calculations, you'd need a sphere with a radius of 58 meters—a mixture of half air and half microbes—to provide an indefinite supply of oxygen to a person.Next, Allen and Nelson took data from Russia's Biosphere 3 experiment and combined it with data from intensive agriculture harvested by Folsom, Salisbury, and others.According to knowledge and technology in the 1980s, 3 acres (approximately 12,000 square meters) of land are needed to feed 8 people.

3 acres!The transparent container would have to be the size of the Astoro Dome.Such a large span would require a dome at least 50 feet (more than 15 meters) high, covered with glass, and it would truly be an unusual sight.Of course also quite expensive. Still, it's sure to be spectacular!They will definitely build it!With further funding from Ed Bass, they did too, for a total of an additional $100 million.The construction of the 8-person ark officially started in 1988.Collaborative ranchers call this grand project Biosphere 2 (Bio2), the bonsai version of our Earth (Biosphere 1).It took three years to build this "bonsai".