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Paper short abstract:

B2 had two aims: better understanding of Earth’s life-support capacity, and its application to bioregenerative, off-planet inhabitation. This paper analyzes emergent tensions between Ecological, Earth Systems, and Engineering approaches to constructing Cabin Ecologies, and B2’s surprising outcomes.

Paper long abstract:

Biosphere 2’s “Human Experiment” [B2] was the most comprehensive synthetic, bioregenerative, long-duration, life-support enclosure experiment ever conducted. Conceived and produced by a diverse group of interdisciplinary designers, its building envelope was designed to be materially closed but energetically open, operating similarly to Earth’s gravitational well. Its enclosure, more than two orders of magnitude tighter than the space shuttle, required the invention of synthetic environments, uniquely engineered eco-technologies, and design processes. B2 needed a robust probabilistic design approach, one capable of producing a successful bioregenerative ‘synthetic laboratory’ environment that not only accounted for all the parameters necessary to sustain life, but that simultaneously incorporated means to address the indeterminacy inherent in living systems, and the inevitable interpretive flexibility required for successful on-the-fly technological adaptations. Inspired by Ecological Systems Theory [EST] Diagramming, the Biospherians developed their own generative and representational design approach comprised of bubbles, arrows, and the accounting of stocks and flows between them, which facilitated the quantification of biogeochemical transformations, that simultaneously functioned as a Rosetta Stone for communication among experts across the diverse, and siloed, disciplines and knowledge systems required to produce B2. This paper unpacks tensions, and unintended consequences, of how the Biospherians accomplished their design, leveraging Ecological, Earth Systems, and Engineering approaches. It then analyzes emergent outcomes of living inside the “Human Experiment” which included significant troubleshooting of their life-supporting environment, and some of the surprising environmental outcomes which hold significant value for future long-duration, life-supporting, bioregenerative, off-planet exploration and inhabitation.