Biosphere 2 is in disarray.The three-acre glass and steel structure 20 miles north of Tucson on Arizona Highway 77 is still one of the technological wonders of the world, but it has fallen on hard times since the University of Arizona took it over a year ago.Built in the late '90s at a cost of $150 million by entrepreneur and environmentalist Ed Bass, it first served as the world's largest closed-loop life support system, simulating what life might be like in a human colony on Mars.Today, it is a U of A propaganda mill, but it's still worth taking the $20 tour.Tours "under the glass" run from 9 a.M.To 4 p.M.Every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas.Catch the last tour before 3 p.M.Be forewarned that the adventure requires some physical agility.Visitors climb stairs, duck through low passageways, and step through airlocks.Before tours, which run for about 1.5 hours, participants watch a 10-minute documentary about the history and current ownership of Biosphere 2.There are some errors, most notable of which is the identification of ownership.CDO Ranching of Tucson no longer owns Biosphere 2, having donated it to the University of Arizona.Accordingly, the University no longer leases it.The public relations show is old.No telling when a new one will be made.To judge by comments overheard from the audience, and also monitored from travel sites on the Internet, the University manages to come off as arrogant and self-congratulatory.At the assembly point in the lower level of what was the human habitat, one finds a collection of posters unrelated to the tour.Probably these change and are the products of other events that use the campus.What we saw was from a Physics conference that apparently dealt with quantum mechanics.For visitors, it was an impenetrable and off-putting display of hubris.The tour guide does not mention or explain them, at least ours didn't.The replacement cost of Biosphere 2 has been stated as $1 billion in the past, but others have reported it as closer to $4 billion to $8 billion.It may be impossible to duplicate at all, it is said, because of the advent of regulations to prevent the removal of some of the species inside the biosphere from their native places.This is especially true of the coral reef in the biosphere's ocean.Coral reefs are endangered globally.Whereas the Biosphere 2 apparatus, that 3-acre glass and steel space frame structure that dominates the campus and the view for miles, was originally built by Space Biospheres Ventures to simulate and study the characteristics and performance of then state-of-the-art closed-loop life support for a space colony, this fact is not mentioned, or barely mentioned.Some of the original contents have been swept away by new experimental setups.In most cases it is not clear that the experiments need to be performed inside a device like the Biosphere.Guides regularly acknowledge that they could be done in large greenhouses.So Biosphere 2 is underutilized, wasted, like any free thing.In the rain forest biome, experimentation threatens the continued existence of irreplaceable assets by testing their response to drought conditions as a demonstration of what is said to be expected of climate change within the next 100 years.Trees in the biome drop some of their leaves to conserve water and sink deeper roots in search of more.Surface roots die.If there is something new to be learned here, I haven't heard about it.There is the "blue barrel" experiment, which investigates the responses of competing grasses to environmental change.About half of the coastal fog desert died after researchers turned off the "rain" to protect instruments in the experiment.With that action, and the continuing "drought" experiments, the inside of Biosphere 2 is now a tinderbox.Nearby, we find an experiment to learn how it is that otherwise competitive insects, one of which swims under the surface or the water and one of which walks on the surface, manage to practice civility in such close quarters.One reasonable hypothesis is that the surface tension, which acts like a flexible rubber sheet, separates the two with an impenetrable barrier.I call it the "good walls make good neighbors" hypothesis.But this experiment could be done anywhere.As operated by the University, Biosphere 2 has revenue of about $1 million a year and expenses of $3.5 million annually.In the winter peak season, about 1200 visitors a day pass through, but that drops to 100 a day in the hot summer months.In total, it is said that 100,000 visitors take the tour annually, The difference between revenue and expenses has so-far been made up with a grant from the creator of Biosphere 2, Edward Bass, an oil man from Texas, who donated $30 million for that purpose in 2007, and also brokered the deal between CDO Ranching and the University.Biosphere 2 is no longer "closed" to air or water.Fans pressurize the air in the "lungs", which were originally intended to maintain nearly constant atmospheric pressure within the Biosphere by expanding or collapsing in response to changes in air temperature.Air flows out through open airlocks elsewhere in the structure.Water in the form of vapor (humidity) flows out with the air, and makeup water is required to compensate for the loss.Out tour guide was not familiar with the quantity required.Bathrooms are no longer plumbed into the Biosphere's original self-contained, recycling system.Neither is the Biosphere's structure well maintained.Whereas the original Space Biosphere Ventures operation required 300 employees to keep up the infrastructure, the University is making do with 60, many of them part-timers.Glass panes in the lower tier are very visibly cracked, more so than a few years ago, or even six months ago.Rust is taking the space frame in many places.Some small parts of the structure have collapsed, and the debris is taped off where it has fallen.There are a few photovoltaic power displays on the grounds, but the gauges that used to show voltage and current output are in disrepair and no longer function,.The ocean is dying.The water is beyond opaque.Our tour guide, "Doug," advised us that, "Hey, it's an ocean.It's supposed to be murky." I don't think so, Doug.I've seen this ocean in better days.The wave machine no longer functions or has been turned off.A fountain of air bubbles rises from the 24-foot depths of the ocean and spreads out in the surface, presumably to oxygenate the water, doing the job intended for the wave machine, but apparently with less success.Animal species in the ocean have vanished, save for one or two.The dozen or so information placards under the windows of the underwater viewing chamber testify to the absence of the creatures they portray.The reef is spotted with white patches, the skeletal remains of dead coral.The surface is crowded with floating debris.Electrical power requirements account for much of the $3.5 million cost of operations.Whereas electricity to run the facility's environmental controls and pumps used to come from the "energy center" between the south and west lungs, power is now taken from the local grid, which has been expanded to serve the campus.Although our tour guide (Jake if you liked the tour, Doug if you didn't) told us that the energy center was still available for backup, this seems unlikely unless the University is paying for natural gas or diesel fuel for the large reciprocating prime movers, keeping up the batteries, changing the oil, and testing each week, as is required to maintain operations of that kind.One is compelled to wonder whether this is a research facility or a freebie retreat for the university's self-appointed elite.Ed Bass built the place, maintained it while it was in limbo, and donated virtually all of the capital to operate it, yet his name is seldom mentioned in the long tour-guide diatribes about how "we" did this and that.In truth, the University of Arizona was barely involved.Eventually, the money will run out.Bass is entitled to wonder what the university is doing to preserve his investment and become self-supporting.Other than a snack bar, there is no restaurant to serve visitors.The conference center is empty and largely unused.It would make an excellent venue for entertainment and retail within a space-themed park, the Biosphere "apparatus" starring in its original role, but that has not been placed on the agenda.It should be.For one thing, Biosphere 2 could become a moneymaker with appropriate management.Using the facility as a mechanism to break down barriers that have been artificially erected between academic disciplines would make a nice start, and one very appropriate to the supposed role of a university in society, which is to imagine the previously unimaginable.The Eller College of Management teaches entrepreneurship.The University has intellectual resources and student power in theater and stagecraft, biology, and engineering.It has research interests in photovoltaics, energy storage, space science, direct potable reuse of wastewater, controlled environment agriculture, and robotics.In short, it has the knowledge and the muscle to do good.In theory, it could pre-create a galactic frontier in a theatrical context and with a technological foundation.The University could make money.Faculty and students could have fun.They could learn stuff.But, if you know this university, you know that it is a creature of politics, not an intellectual life force.It will carry on the status quo.My advice. See Biosphere 2 earlier rather than later, while you still can.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Biosphere 2 Falls on Hard Times: Adventure Travel Destination in Decline
Biosphere 2 is in disarray.The three-acre glass and steel structure 20 miles north of Tucson on Arizona Highway 77 is still one of the technological wonders of the world, but it has fallen on hard times since the University of Arizona took it over a year ago.Built in the late '90s at a cost of $150 million by entrepreneur and environmentalist Ed Bass, it first served as the world's largest closed-loop life support system, simulating what life might be like in a human colony on Mars.Today, it is a U of A propaganda mill, but it's still worth taking the $20 tour.Tours "under the glass" run from 9 a.M.To 4 p.M.Every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas.Catch the last tour before 3 p.M.Be forewarned that the adventure requires some physical agility.Visitors climb stairs, duck through low passageways, and step through airlocks.Before tours, which run for about 1.5 hours, participants watch a 10-minute documentary about the history and current ownership of Biosphere 2.There are some errors, most notable of which is the identification of ownership.CDO Ranching of Tucson no longer owns Biosphere 2, having donated it to the University of Arizona.Accordingly, the University no longer leases it.The public relations show is old.No telling when a new one will be made.To judge by comments overheard from the audience, and also monitored from travel sites on the Internet, the University manages to come off as arrogant and self-congratulatory.At the assembly point in the lower level of what was the human habitat, one finds a collection of posters unrelated to the tour.Probably these change and are the products of other events that use the campus.What we saw was from a Physics conference that apparently dealt with quantum mechanics.For visitors, it was an impenetrable and off-putting display of hubris.The tour guide does not mention or explain them, at least ours didn't.The replacement cost of Biosphere 2 has been stated as $1 billion in the past, but others have reported it as closer to $4 billion to $8 billion.It may be impossible to duplicate at all, it is said, because of the advent of regulations to prevent the removal of some of the species inside the biosphere from their native places.This is especially true of the coral reef in the biosphere's ocean.Coral reefs are endangered globally.Whereas the Biosphere 2 apparatus, that 3-acre glass and steel space frame structure that dominates the campus and the view for miles, was originally built by Space Biospheres Ventures to simulate and study the characteristics and performance of then state-of-the-art closed-loop life support for a space colony, this fact is not mentioned, or barely mentioned.Some of the original contents have been swept away by new experimental setups.In most cases it is not clear that the experiments need to be performed inside a device like the Biosphere.Guides regularly acknowledge that they could be done in large greenhouses.So Biosphere 2 is underutilized, wasted, like any free thing.In the rain forest biome, experimentation threatens the continued existence of irreplaceable assets by testing their response to drought conditions as a demonstration of what is said to be expected of climate change within the next 100 years.Trees in the biome drop some of their leaves to conserve water and sink deeper roots in search of more.Surface roots die.If there is something new to be learned here, I haven't heard about it.There is the "blue barrel" experiment, which investigates the responses of competing grasses to environmental change.About half of the coastal fog desert died after researchers turned off the "rain" to protect instruments in the experiment.With that action, and the continuing "drought" experiments, the inside of Biosphere 2 is now a tinderbox.Nearby, we find an experiment to learn how it is that otherwise competitive insects, one of which swims under the surface or the water and one of which walks on the surface, manage to practice civility in such close quarters.One reasonable hypothesis is that the surface tension, which acts like a flexible rubber sheet, separates the two with an impenetrable barrier.I call it the "good walls make good neighbors" hypothesis.But this experiment could be done anywhere.As operated by the University, Biosphere 2 has revenue of about $1 million a year and expenses of $3.5 million annually.In the winter peak season, about 1200 visitors a day pass through, but that drops to 100 a day in the hot summer months.In total, it is said that 100,000 visitors take the tour annually, The difference between revenue and expenses has so-far been made up with a grant from the creator of Biosphere 2, Edward Bass, an oil man from Texas, who donated $30 million for that purpose in 2007, and also brokered the deal between CDO Ranching and the University.Biosphere 2 is no longer "closed" to air or water.Fans pressurize the air in the "lungs", which were originally intended to maintain nearly constant atmospheric pressure within the Biosphere by expanding or collapsing in response to changes in air temperature.Air flows out through open airlocks elsewhere in the structure.Water in the form of vapor (humidity) flows out with the air, and makeup water is required to compensate for the loss.Out tour guide was not familiar with the quantity required.Bathrooms are no longer plumbed into the Biosphere's original self-contained, recycling system.Neither is the Biosphere's structure well maintained.Whereas the original Space Biosphere Ventures operation required 300 employees to keep up the infrastructure, the University is making do with 60, many of them part-timers.Glass panes in the lower tier are very visibly cracked, more so than a few years ago, or even six months ago.Rust is taking the space frame in many places.Some small parts of the structure have collapsed, and the debris is taped off where it has fallen.There are a few photovoltaic power displays on the grounds, but the gauges that used to show voltage and current output are in disrepair and no longer function,.The ocean is dying.The water is beyond opaque.Our tour guide, "Doug," advised us that, "Hey, it's an ocean.It's supposed to be murky." I don't think so, Doug.I've seen this ocean in better days.The wave machine no longer functions or has been turned off.A fountain of air bubbles rises from the 24-foot depths of the ocean and spreads out in the surface, presumably to oxygenate the water, doing the job intended for the wave machine, but apparently with less success.Animal species in the ocean have vanished, save for one or two.The dozen or so information placards under the windows of the underwater viewing chamber testify to the absence of the creatures they portray.The reef is spotted with white patches, the skeletal remains of dead coral.The surface is crowded with floating debris.Electrical power requirements account for much of the $3.5 million cost of operations.Whereas electricity to run the facility's environmental controls and pumps used to come from the "energy center" between the south and west lungs, power is now taken from the local grid, which has been expanded to serve the campus.Although our tour guide (Jake if you liked the tour, Doug if you didn't) told us that the energy center was still available for backup, this seems unlikely unless the University is paying for natural gas or diesel fuel for the large reciprocating prime movers, keeping up the batteries, changing the oil, and testing each week, as is required to maintain operations of that kind.One is compelled to wonder whether this is a research facility or a freebie retreat for the university's self-appointed elite.Ed Bass built the place, maintained it while it was in limbo, and donated virtually all of the capital to operate it, yet his name is seldom mentioned in the long tour-guide diatribes about how "we" did this and that.In truth, the University of Arizona was barely involved.Eventually, the money will run out.Bass is entitled to wonder what the university is doing to preserve his investment and become self-supporting.Other than a snack bar, there is no restaurant to serve visitors.The conference center is empty and largely unused.It would make an excellent venue for entertainment and retail within a space-themed park, the Biosphere "apparatus" starring in its original role, but that has not been placed on the agenda.It should be.For one thing, Biosphere 2 could become a moneymaker with appropriate management.Using the facility as a mechanism to break down barriers that have been artificially erected between academic disciplines would make a nice start, and one very appropriate to the supposed role of a university in society, which is to imagine the previously unimaginable.The Eller College of Management teaches entrepreneurship.The University has intellectual resources and student power in theater and stagecraft, biology, and engineering.It has research interests in photovoltaics, energy storage, space science, direct potable reuse of wastewater, controlled environment agriculture, and robotics.In short, it has the knowledge and the muscle to do good.In theory, it could pre-create a galactic frontier in a theatrical context and with a technological foundation.The University could make money.Faculty and students could have fun.They could learn stuff.But, if you know this university, you know that it is a creature of politics, not an intellectual life force.It will carry on the status quo.My advice. See Biosphere 2 earlier rather than later, while you still can.
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