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Contribution short abstract:

The B2 enclosure experiment was a materially closed, energetically open environment, designed as a bioregenerative molecular economy. This work unpacks the bodily transformations that simultaneously facilitated and complicated the experiment, and the resulting environmental and cultural values.

Contribution long abstract:

Biosphere 2’s “Human Experiment” [B2] was the most comprehensive synthetic, bioregenerative, long-duration, life-support enclosure experiment conducted to date. Produced by a diverse group of interdisciplinary designers/inhabitants, its building envelope was materially closed but energetically open, operating similarly to Earth’s gravitational well. More than two orders of magnitude tighter than the space shuttle, it required the invention of synthetic environments, uniquely engineered eco-technologies, and design processes in order to conserve and transform all atoms inside through life sustaining cycles. Inspired by Ecological Systems Theory, the Biospherians developed a generative design approach that facilitated tracing and quantifying biogeochemical transformations. Ultimately, they produced a unique molecular economy, 30 trillion times smaller than Earth’s.

B2’s Mission 1 [1991-1993] was largely successful, supporting 8 people and many species of flora and fauna, for 2 years and 20 minutes. Accomplished by overpacking species and organic compounds [minus some liquid oxygen added mid-mission], and carefully controlling potentially toxic substances from entering its environment, B2’s hum/animal and non-sentient molecular transformers successfully, but painfully, sustained a hungry and increasingly breathless group of Biospherians. Through time, species went extinct, others proliferated, while the Biospherians leached DDT and other environmental toxins from their bodies. Simultaneously, they testified experiencing a sense of dissolution of their skin-barrier while becoming one with their larger B2 environment, which they untimely anthropomorphized as “The 9th Biospherian.” As their bodies tuned to B2’s, they reported deep satisfaction while drinking water that was once their urine, purified through B2’s non-human transformers, among other life-supporting essentials.