NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/sci/space/18275

Text File | 1992-12-27 | 10.4 KB | 219 lines

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From: [e-mail] (Taber MacCallum)
Subject: Biosphere 2 update
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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