Once upon a time; there was an experiment to see if eight people could live inside a fully self contained structure that provided for all of their needs, for two years. There were a lot of things they learned from it, but one of their major lessons was that they didn't know everything at that time that they needed to know in order to do it.
Just outside of Tucson is "Biosphere 2" a huge structure that contains within it several climate zones, and to which the children and I refer to as "Moonbase Earth."
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- My Father, Son, and Daughter outside Biosphere 2
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- It was so hot that I couldn’t take a picture without the sun being the back drop, even had I taken a picture OF the sun, it would have back lit that photo too!
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- Outside it was 110 degrees, inside the jungle habitat… it was a moist 105 degrees.
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- I’m not the best person at taking tours, ideally my iPhone would augment reality to tell me what’s worth knowing, or I’d have the option to read a plaque somewhere… and in this regard my youngest might agree. I’m not sure what the tour guide said, but my daughter found it to be … ‘enlightening’
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- My parents in the background as my son examines some bug containers in the ocean habitat. I love how this picture captures time.
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- Children gaze on in wonder at the huge pressure equalization lung underneath Biosphere 2; the room had great acoustics for the little echo’s they called out. (Perhaps at the annoyance of the tour guide; but she gets to echo in there whenever she wants, and this was their first time.)
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- The bulk of the tour is done at this point, my Family is incredible, and the heat is extreme, even in the shade I can feel myself baking as the lady goes on and on with what can probably only be said at this one spot in the tour.
We had a great time exploring the Biosphere 2; it was a little hot, and I'm not fantastic at taking tours; but it's definitely a site to see!
I left thinking a lot about the 'failed' experiment, technology has come a long way in the last twenty years, they learned a lot from the first biosphere. I wonder now if, using a lot less space, and a little more nutritional science, a self contained sustainable environment could be created that would succeed at the experiment if people could live for two years in health entirely closed off.
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