have said about
Biosphere 2
Abigail
Alling
Arthur C. Clarke
Astronaut Joseph P. Allen, Ph.D., President, Space
Industries, Inc.
Astronaut Rusty Schweickart
Atlanta Georgia Journal Constitution
Attorney Lawrence M. Hecker
Brenda Forman, Ph.D. US Space Foundation
Captain J.J. Schulte, USAF Medical Center at Wright
Paterson Air Force Base
Carl Hodges, Director, Environmental Research Lab,University
of Arizona
Dan Old Elk, Crow Indian Medicine Man
Daniel Boorstein, Author of The Discoverers
Dave Brown, Author of Mavericks of the Mind
David Chandler, Boston Globe
Discover Magazine
Dr. Arthur W. Galston, Yale University Botanist, advises
the NASA program
Dr. Barbara Hyde, American Society for Microbiology
Dr. Bruno D.V. Marino, Harvard Professor
Dr. Christopher Langton, Santa Fe Institute
Dr. Dan Polhemus, Ka'Elele
Dr. David Williams, New York Botanical Gardens
Dr. Don Spoon, Microbiologist
Dr. Gerald Soffen, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Dr. Harold A. Mooney
Dr. Jack Corliss, Director of Research, Biosphere 2,
1994
Dr. James H. Bredt, Project Director of NASA's Closed
Ecological Life Support Systems
Dr. Mary Firestone, University of California at Berkeley
Dr. Michael Crow
Dr. Phil Dustan, Professor, College of Charleston
Dr. Robert Frye, University of Arizona
Dr. Roy Walford, Biospherian
Dr. Stephen O'Brien, National Cancer Research Institute
Dr. Thomas E. Lovejoy, Smithsonian Institution
Dr. Wallace S. Broecker
Dr. Walter Adey, Director Marine Systems, Smithsonian
Institute
Edward P. Bass, Chairman of the Board,
Elle Magazine
Final Frontier
G.I. Gitelson
N.S. Pechurkin
L.A. Somova
G.M. Lisovsky
V.A. Ouskin
(+) 300 biophysicists from Krasnoyarsk, Russia
Harold J. Morowitz, Ph.D
Herald-Tribune
Jane Goodall, Ph.D.
John Allen, FLS
John Petersen, Alan E. Haberstock, Thomas G. Siccama,
Kristiina A. Vogt, Daniel J. Vogt and Barbara L. Tusting Yale University
School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
Kevin Kelly, Whole Earth Review
Life Magazine
Linda Leigh, Biospherian
Los Angeles Times
Mandy Trangsrud of Tempe, 16 year old Girl Scout
Margret Augustine, CEO and President, Space Biospheres
Ventures, 1985-1994
Mark Nelson
Mark Van Thillo, Co-Captain Biosphere 2 1991-1993 Mission
Marvin Noe, Post-Intelligencer
National Geographic World
Nation's Building News
New York Times
People Magazine
Professor Eugene P. Odum
Professor Howard T. Odum
Professor Keith Runcorn, F.R.S.
Professor Stephen J. Gould, Harvard University
Project Pro
Richard Evans Schultes, Ph.D., F.M.L.S.,
Richard R. Harwood, Ph.D., C.S. Mott Foundation
Sally Silverstone, Co-Captain Biosphere 2 1991-1993
Mission
Skyline
The Times of India
Time Magazine
US News and World Report
USA Today
William Schulz, Smithsonian Institution
Yvonne Clearwater, Senior Research Psychologist, NASA
Human Factors Laboratory
"If you're talking long-term settlement in space, you're going to have to have something like this. I don't mean to say Biosphere 2 will exist on other planets. But what we can learn from Biosphere 2 is how can you support humans long term, what is required for air, water, and food."
Abigail Alling
New Scientist
25 September, 1993
Abigail Alling
During the first 5 day closure inside the Biosphere 2 Test Module
New York Times
March 14, 1989
"I'd like to say that I consider Biosphere 2 one of the most hopeful things that has happened in the United States for quite a while - whatever the outcome of the experiment (and I'm sure it will be a success in the long run - like the Hubble Telescope)."
Arthur C. Clarke
Biosphere 2 Newsletter,
Vol 2 No 2, 1992
"First of all, I join all of my associates from NASA in congratulating and encouraging those of you who are associated with Biosphere 2. This Biosphere 2 project literally feels like NASA felt to us NASA-ites in the old days. Keep after it. It is a wonderful feeling. It doesn't mean you are going to do everything right, but you are at least doing things. Let's assume that there are elements of what you do that, in fact, actually work. We also know that on the 20th anniversary of the Moon Landing our President announced that, in addition to the Space Station, we are going to return to the Moon, this time to stay, and then travel further on to Mars. Wonderful words, I would assume that in response to this challenge our government officials will need information about biospherics."
Joseph P. Allen, Ph.D.
President, Space Industries, Inc.
former Shuttle astronaut
Biological Life Support Systems, 1990
"To me, its one of the most exciting research projects going on in the world today. It's far more ambitious than anyone else has been even courageous enough to think about, let alone do anything about."
Astronaut Rusty Schweickart
Boston Globe
August 20, 1990
"What will go into space is the knowledge and experience gained in a self-contained biosphere like this.... What they learn will be extremely important."
Astronaut Rusty Schweickart
Los Angeles Times
March 23, 1987
In an age of pre-stuffed turkeys and boil-in-a-bag dinners, Sally Silverstone's "Eating In," a personal account of her experiences as "Food Systems Manager" for Biosphere 2, provides a revealing glimpse of something much of the world has forgotten - the vital, at times almost mystical, link that has always tied hungry people to the land.
Atlanta Georgia Journal Constitution
November 20, 1993
"Biosphere 2 represents a tremendous technological and scientific accomplishment that has already yielded valuable scientific results. This project continues to hold great promise for improving our environment and enabling us to respond to the uncertainties of Earth's future."
Attorney Lawrence M. Hecker
The Arizona Daily Star
September 1, 1994
"Sure, whatever lessons come out of Biosphere 2 may well help a space effort, but its real importance is going to be right here at home on earth. List the environmental problems we face: the greenhouse effect, ozone depletion, solid waste disposal dilemmas, pollution of the ground water - these are life support issues. Biosphere 2, a miniature earth, is intended as a laboratory in which we can find ways to deal with threats to its model, Biosphere 1. The Home Planet. The only planet we've got. So sure, it's risky. But what an adventure! And what does all the outcry and snipping say about what we have become? This country used to revel in risk and adventure, not revile it! Have we become so cowardly, so afraid of failure, so hidebound and so envious that our only response to something risky and daring is carping and negativity? I devoutly hope not. Here's to all adventurers! Here's to Biosphere 2. May it live long and prosper."
Brenda Forman, Ph.D. Washington Watch column,
US Space Foundation
November, 1991
"Well folks, I've pretty much decided that if it were up to the media, nobody would ever dare try anything new, exciting or adventurous, ever again. You mount an ambitious experiment at your sure and deadly peril. Because if everything does not go precisely as planned the very first time out, the media will crucify you--thoroughly and with obvious glee. Of course , the whole idea of an experiment is NOT to show that you already know all the answers but to find out what you DON'T know! Biosphere 2 is a classic case in point. You'd never know if from the media accounts but Re-entry day marked the rather successful conclusion of a remarkably bold and innovative experiment. Luckily, the media's prissy attitude about Biosphere 2 doesn't seem to have interfered with the general public's fascination with the whole adventure. I find that without exception, people are hugely curious about it. In short, this turns folds on-and if it turns them on to science and the challenges of serious experimentation, then, say I , Right on."
Brenda Forman
Analysis and Opinion, 1993
"Biosphere 2 is probably the best study we have that would liken itself to a Mars Mission."
Captain J.J. Schulte
USAF Medical Center at Wright Paterson Air Force Base
Dec. 11, 1993
"In think the most important thing Biosphere 2 will do is give Biosphere 1 a biosphere to talk to. It will be the same as when we looked back from a spaceship at our little blue ball and understood the oneness of it."
Carl Hodges
Director, Environmental Research Lab
University of Arizona
New York Times
October 18, 1987
"The whole project seems to me like the star that's up in the air, and we look at it to see if man can survive on another planet. So the whole project is like on a table and you look at it from different angles and you look at it from different dimensions."
Dan Old Elk
Crow Indian Medicine Man
"Biosphere 2 is the most exciting project going on now."
Daniel Boorstein
author of The Discoverers
on the occasion of his 50th wedding anniversary, spent with his wife Ruth
at the site of Biosphere 2
The Biosphere 2 project is of such awesome scope, its complexities break so much new ground, that no ordinary scientific institution would attempt it, no funding agency would underwrite it. So it has fallen to a private company to go where science has never gone before....Boston Globe August 20, 1990 "The whole point of the project was to create a self-sustaining, chemically-closed ecosystem, and the fact that this was achieved for the first time in human history, seems to be consistently overlooked."
Dave Brown
Author of Mavericks of the Mind
Letter to Science Magazine
January 19, 1995
Nobody who comes [to Biosphere 2] can fail to be impressed anew by the interdependence of life on this planet and the fragility of its balances.....Their experiment has proved the feasibility of a totally self-sufficient enclosed system, the likes of which may someday harbor astronauts in a huge space station, colonists on the surface of another planet, or researchers stationed in a harsh, remote spot on Earth, such as the South Pole.
David Chandler
Boston Globe
September 26, 1993
"In the opinions of many... the Biosphere 2 enterprise is the most exciting venture to be undertaken in the U.S. since President Kennedy launched us toward the moon."
Discover Magazine
Earth's First Visitors to Mars
May, 1987
"[Biosphere 2] is a paradigm of what man here on Earth has to face in years ahead. We have a burgeoning population, a decline of arable land, and waste heaps that are growing continuously. We have to find ways of producing more food in less space to feed more mouths, with less nonrecyclable refuse. This work is going to have a lot of civilian spin-offs."
Dr. Arthur W. Galston
Yale University Botanist who advises the NASA program
Science Times, New York Times
November 6, 1990
"Outstanding basic research has been done in private companies, and it's impossible not to do basic research here. This research is holistic - we have to look at both details and the whole. The people who 'get it' are the best scientists, the ones who are pushing the limit. Biosphere 2 is a leap into a whole new way of doing research, a cutting-edge experimental system, because it's now possible to do experiments in total ecosystems under controlled conditions. Most of the scientific results are still to come. There are no experimental failures; there is only information gathering. Thus far, balancing the Atmosphere has been the trickiest part, but the way to do it is to do it. After all, the balance only Earth took a while to achieve, too."
Dr. Barbara Hyde
American Society for Microbiology
Vol. 60, No 2, February 1994
"The scientists emerged with a consensus that the White Paper process identified unique opportunities for research in the areas of ecology and biodiversity, plant physiology and biogoechemistry. It appears to me that Biosphere 2, a unique, living "Earth" laboratory, has a bright scientific future."
Dr. Bruno D.V. Marino
Harvard Professor
Director of Science and Research
Space Biospheres Ventures Press Release
December 20, 1994
"This facility is light years ahead of any other....It's a gem."
Bruno Marino
Boston Globe
August 16, 1994
"Biosphere 2 is a new instrument in science which is most appropriate for addressing and even discovering unique problems.....Biosphere 2 is a new kind of telescope which can be used to look at the Earth itself. We need to take the time to understand how to use it, to discover the kinds of questions we should ask, and to scale up from there."
Dr. Christopher Langton
Santa Fe Institute
Biosphere 2 Newsletter, Vol 1, No 2, 1994
"Although a lot of planning has gone into the project, you can't just magically wave a wand and say 'poof, here's a biosphere" - you have to build it over time. We look forward to continuing this learning process, its been exciting and interesting so far."
Dr. Dan Polhemus
Ka'Elele
Jan/Feb, 1994
"We'll be breaking new botanical ground here. The knowledge we gain will be ammunition in the cause of conservation."
Dr. David Williams
New York Botanical Gardens
Newsweek
June 8, 1987
"...This amazing Biosphere 2 ocean has great potential as an educational and research tool to better understand our Earth and its coral reefs."
Dr. Don Spoon
Microbiologist
Biosphere 2 Newsletter Vol 1, No 2, 1994
"The press loved Biosphere 2, and the public loved it."
Dr. Gerald Soffen
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
New York Times
February 20, 1994
"[The Biosphere 2 experiment] is an heroic effort."
Dr. Gerald Soffen
Aeronautics and Space Administration
Arizona Republic
September 19, 1993
"Biosphere 2 presents unparalleled opportunities to study some of the dimensions of the biodiversity issue."
Dr. Harold A. Mooney
Paul S. Achilles Professor in Environmental Biology at Stanford University
Space Biospheres Ventures Press Release
December 20, 1994
"[Biosphere 2] is one of the most dynamic and exciting tools for scientific exploration in the world today. We shall research and refine each aspect of the project until it is positioned at the cutting edge of science. To coordinate research in this facility is the opportunity of a lifetime. Biosphere 2 is a leap into a whole new way of doing research, a cutting-edge experimental systems, because it's now possible to do experiments in total ecosystems under controlled conditions."
Dr. Jack Corliss
Director of Research, Biosphere 2, 1994
American Society for Microbiology News
Vol. 60, No 2
February, 1994
Dr. Jack Corliss
Time Magazine
October 4, 1993
"[Biosphere 2] is a very interesting experiment, and certainly some of the technology that they will be developing should be of use in the space program."
Dr. James H. Bredt
Project Director of NASA's Closed Ecological Life Support Systems
Los Angeles Times
March 23, 1987
"The fact that we have only one Biosphere 2 leads to the interesting and fundamental question: Can we do life science without replication? Or if we do science like we've always done science, how do we use the Biosphere? These questions stretch our imagination as scientists. They also may be fundamentally important to the functioning of terrestrial systems."
Dr. Mary Firestone
University of California at Berkeley
Biosphere 2 Newsletter, Vol 1, No 2, 1994
"A group of world-class scientists got together and decided the Biosphere 2 facility is an exceptional laboratory for addressing critical questions relative to the future of Earth and its environment."
Dr. Michael Crow,
Vice-Provost of Columbia University
Space Biospheres Ventures Press Release
December 20, 1994
"The [Ocean of Biosphere 2] is a major achievement... I am really impressed" ...... Tropical corals might survive for six months in an artificial sea, Dustan thought two years ago as the doors of Biosphere 2 closed. Now he deems the man made ocean a resounding success, filled with life and information that could be applied to the real world outside.
Dr. Phil Dustan
Professor, College of Charleston
Brunswick, Georgia News
November 15, 1993
"The year 1996 has been declared the 'International Coral Reef Year'
in response to the global demise of reef communities. It is our hope and
intention that the studies already initiated between Biosphere 2 and Belize
will provide essential information about reef ecology and will encourage
the development of new technologies for reef restoration and preservation."
Dr. Philip Dustan
Biosphere 2 Newsletter Fall, 1993
Vol 3, No 3
"The kind of work done at Biosphere 2 would help when a base is established on the moon or Mars."
Dr. Robert Frye
University of Arizona
Arizona Daily Star
February 21, 1992
"It's like one is in a different world. Like being on another planet, and watching things go on back on Earth."
Dr. Roy Walford, biospherian
Boston Globe
January 18, 1993
"My Scientific Career has previously centered on experimental and
molecular biology - the study of the inside of the cells, a "bottoms-up"
approach to the study of life. Ecology offers the opportunity to study
life from the opposite direction, from the "top-down" approach.
Biosphere 2 is where these two approaches meet: total system ecology."
Dr. Roy Walford
Biosphere 2 Closure, Eyes on the Future Newsletter
September 26, 1991
"This whole venture took a lot of courage and a lot of money... They are well on their way to establishing a world-class center for excellence for the study of ecology."
Dr. Stephen O'Brien
National Cancer Research Institute
Phoenix Gazette
September 19, 1993
'The committee is in agreement that the conception and construction of Biosphere 2 were acts of vision and courage. The scale of Biosphere 2 is unique and Biosphere 2 is already providing unexpected scientific results not possible through other means."
Dr. Thomas E. Lovejoy, Smithsonian Institution
Report to Space Biospheres Ventures
by the Scientific Advisory Committee
July 21, 1992
"One of the things Biosphere 2 has displayed to us over the years is its ability to control its own carbon cycle."
Dr. Wallace S. Broecker
Newberry Professor of Geology at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory,
Columbia University
Biosphere 2 Newsletter Vol 2 No 1, 1995
"The intellectual lure of the Biosphere is tremendous."
Dr. Wallace S. Broecker
Newberry Professor of Geology at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory,
Columbia University
Arizona Daily Star
November 13, 1995
"Humankind has too long taken for granted some very basic resources provided by the Earth - clean air and water, to name a critical two. To build Biosphere 2 is to learn unforgettably, with our minds and hearts, what this really means."
Dr. Walter Adey
Director Marine Systems,
Smithsonian Institute
Boston Globe
August 20, 1990
Dr. Walter Adey
Washington Post
January 21, 1990
"Biosphere 2 is a project that appealed to my interest in science and ecology. I thought it had tremendous potential to develop technologies, know-how, data and could have great use in environmental matters on all scales, from the fairly small to the planetary. And in a business sense, I saw that these technologies would have a very significant commercial application."
Edward P. Bass
Chairman of the Board,
SBV Science Times, New York Times
September, 1991
Edward P. Bass
Biosphere 2 Newsletter, Vol 2 No 3
1992
Abigail Alling, Biospherian in charge of Marine Ecology, was selected as one of the top ten Women Of The Year by Elle Magazine in 1993.
The idea of building biospheres is catching on outside the United States. Now being planned by a consortium of Japanese corporations and Japan's space agency is Biosphere J. "J" standing for junior.
Final Frontier
Jan/Feb, 1994
G.I. Gitelson
N.S. Pechurkin
L.A. Somova
G.M. Lisovsky
V.A. Ouskin
On Biospherian re-entry successfully ending Mission One. "Dear Biospherians, It is a great pleasure to congratulate you with successful completion of your unique experiment. We appreciate your courage and devotion to science. We know that the results you have obtained will contribute to the science of biospherics."
G.I. Gitelson
N.S. Pechurkin
L.A. Somova
G.M. Lisovsky
V.A. Ouskin
(+) 300 biophysicists from Krasnoyarsk, Russia
September 24, 1993
Harold J. Morowitz,
Ph.D
"Biosphere 2 provides, for the first time, the possibility of conducting
controlled, large-scale ecosystem ecology experiments. Modern Physics
emerged when Galileo conducted experiments that yielded numerical data.
Biosphere 2 provides a setting for the same type of transformation in
ecology as occurred in physics."
Harold J. Morowitz, Ph.D.
Robinson Professor of Biology and Natural Philosophy
George Mason University
Biosphere 2 Newsletter Fall, 1994
Vol 1, No 2
"My sense is that knowing the light levels for energetic unbalance as determined from Biosphere 2 will be of utility to paleontologists and geochemists studying the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction. It is difficult to think of ways to determine this number other than studying large-scale closed ecosystems. This important ecological parameter is emerging from Biosphere 2 measurements in a perfectly natural way, yet no one at the beginning of the closure anticipated this result. This may be thought of as serendipity, but it is the kind of scientific serendipity that requires prepared minds, open minds, and the intuition as to which parameters to measure. There are probably a number of ecological and evolutionary questions that will be illuminated by the data now stored in all those tapes that have recorded the two-year saga of Biosphere 2."
Harold J. Morowitz, Ph.D.
Robinson Professor of Biology and Natural Philosophy
George Mason University
Biosphere 2 Newsletter Fall, 1993
Vol 3, No 3
"Jules Verne and H.G. Wells could have only dreamed of a day like this..."
Herald-Tribune
September 26, 1991
Day of the Biosphere 2 closure.
"We have to pay tribute to the imagination and determination and the vision of the people who have made Biosphere 2 a reality.... Biosphere 2 stands as a monument to human technological achievement. The information being gathered will be of inestimable value to our understanding of the fragile environment which sustains life on this planet."
Jane Goodall, Ph.D.
Biosphere 2 Newsletter, Vol. 2 No 4, 1992
"Four basic ways uneasily co-exist in science to deal with understanding complex systems: One, prolonged naturalist observation, description of observed regularities and classification of parts, making a naive realist description of the field of study (E.O. Wilson, 1984).
A second, by analyzing component parts of the object of study, formulating restricted hypotheses, and then, holding all else other than the chosen part as constant as possible, measure changes produced by measured impacts.
The third way is to accept complexity as an irreducible element, and then to search for the organized structure that enables us to examine the entity as a whole, to ascertain its specific laws or regularities (Konrad Lorenz, 1977).
The fourth way is to put into an operating model a synthesis of these three approaches, together with test principles of engineering, to test the validity of the existent thinking’s predictive powers, and to provide a fecund base for new observations. This full interplay of observation, analysis and structuring to make a working apparatus in order to test and extend our knowledge of biospherics is the approach we used to create Biosphere 2. This interplay of all four scientific approaches is required to study Earth's biosphere, the most complex entity yet encountered.
No field of knowledge is today more desultory than the science of the biosphere in which we live. I doubt that any task today in the "Campaign of Science" is more pressing than creating a workable biospherics. "
John Allen, FLS
Keynote paper delivered at Linnean Society of London, April 1996
Fourth International Conference on
"Closed Ecological Systems: Biospherics and Life Support"
John Allen, Founder of Biosphere 2
Scape Magazine
June/July, 1990
"We invented Biosphere 2 not only for science, but also for beauty, adventure, and hope for all humanity - and for the Earth's biosphere itself."
John Allen
August 31, 1994
"Restoration ecologists understand the value of the process of ecosystem construction as a means of evaluating hypotheses and gaining new information about ecosystem function. The synthetic approach may raise more questions than it answers, but new questions and new ways of thinking about ecosystems and the biosphere are critical to the advancement of our knowledge. In our view the ongoing process of creating and maintaining ecological systems within Biosphere 2 will continue to reveal important information about the Earth's ecosystems for many years to come. Some of this information may be directly applicable to the practice of restoring these ecosystems."
John Petersen, Alan E. Haberstock, Thomas G. Siccama,
Kristiina A. Vogt, Daniel J. Vogt and Barbara L. Tusting Yale University
School of Forestry and Environmental Studies,
Restoration and Management Notes 10:2, 1992
"Biosphere 2 presents a young person more opportunities for a high-profile mission in space technology than faltering NASA can.... On Mars, I would only want to live in an artificial biosphere. On Earth, living in an artificial biosphere is a noble experiment, suitable for pioneers.... Great things will be learned inside Biosphere 2 about our Earth, ourselves, and the uncountable other species we depend on. I have no doubt that someday what is learned here will land on Mars or the Moon... Already it has taught me, an outsider, that to live as human beings means to live with other life. The nauseating fear that machine technology would replace all living species has subsided in my mind. We'll keep other species, I believe, because as Biosphere 2 helps prove, life is technology. Life is the ultimate technology.... I turned the massive handle on the air-lock doors in the quiet Biosphere 2 and debarked into a twilight desert. Two years in there would fill a lifetime."
Kevin Kelly
Whole Earth Review
No. 77 Winter, 1992
The purpose is clear: If we are to develop space colonies, we must create our own place to live. Biosphere 2 is a major experiment toward that end.
Life Magazine
February, 1989
"The scientific value [of Biosphere 2] is immense. The field of global ecology largely has been theoretical, conceptual and descriptive. We're actually making it into an experimental science now."
Linda Leigh, biospherian
USA Today
September 27, 1993
"In this first two years of the planned 100 years of closure, everything
is new, unexplored, pristine; the spirit of adventure and discovery is
compelling. But there will always be surprises, always be mystery and
always be an opportunity for transforming the way we think of our sense
of place in the biosphere."
Linda Leigh, biospherian
Biosphere 2 newsletter, Vol 2, No 3, 1992
At sunrise on Thursday, four men and four women will don red jumpsuits, share a hug with their friends in Mission Control and leave the world behind. If all goes well, they will leave the Earth behind for two years.The eight are not climbing aboard a space shuttle, although their language and nomenclature are deliberately evocative of the heyday of NASA. But they are embarking on an adventure that is in some ways bolder than the first manned space flight.
Los Angeles Times
September 23, 1991
"I learned more in two hours in Biosphere 2 than I did in a whole year of biology."
Mandy Trangsrud of Tempe
16 year old Girl Scout
Tempe Tribune
January 19, 1994
"Space Biospheres Ventures represents a new approach to doing business. We are a private ecological research firm which has created one of the boldest research and development facilities of this century. We are also a profit-making venture. Biosphere 2 ushers forth technological development that is marketable and beneficial to the Earth. It responds to the current environmental crises by searching for real solutions, and stands as a vision of hope so that we as a species can move forward and leave our destructive ways behind us."
Margret Augustine, CEO and President
Space Biospheres Ventures, 1985-1994
Project Pro
September, 1993
Margret Augustine
Christian Science Monitor
May 7,1987
Mark Nelson
"We are going into another space, we are going into another time."
Mark Nelson
September 26, 1991
Said as he entered Biosphere 2 for the two year experiment
New York Times, September 27, 1991
"Russian Vladamir Vernadsky proposed that because of the great impact
humans have in the biosphere, we must begin to take our role as intelligent
caretakers and cooperators. He termed this coming era of history the noosphere
("noos" means mind). In Biosphere 2 we are under the necessity
of acting as noospherians, intelligent partners with our world. It is
small enough that we understand with every breath of air we take that
our biosphere's health is our health."
Mark Nelson
Dartmouth Alumni Magazine
October, 1993
"The Biosphere team scaled a number of hurdles and made significant achievements. No one knew how a closed systems of this size would behave. We had to close the door to find out and the results have been phenomenal."
Mark Van Thillo
Co-Captain Biosphere 2 1991-1993 Mission
Phoenix Gazette
September 19, 1993
"In the days when extreme environmentalists are trying their best to shut the whole country down, it is very refreshing to read about people looking to the future. Since the beginning of our great country we have survived and prospered through research and development. We replaced old ideas with new technology...Think how great this country could be again if all this energy could be directed toward research for our future. My hats off to the pioneers of the artificial world."
Marvin Noe
Post-Intelligencer
October 3, 1991
"In the future, space pioneers may live and work on Mars or on the moon. An airtight biosphere could make this possible. In a biosphere, the plants, animals, and people would be able to survive in a hostile environment."
National Geographic World
November, 1988
"The Biosphere 2 project in Oracle, Ariz., won a Gold Nugget Merit Award in the Best Commercial/Industrial Use category. The Gold Nugget Award is one of the nation's most prestigious architectural awards. The project combined sweeping curved lines of the traditional southwestern styling with a Mediterranean appearance."
Also, "the Biosphere 2 project in Oracle, Ariz., won a Grand Award in the category of Best Institutional Project. The project housed seven major ecosystems - human, marine, marsh, savannah, desert and jungle - for a two-year experiment that was conducted to study the relationship between people and the environment."
Nation's Building News
December 20, 1993
"Next month one of the most complex software packages ever designed will get a chance to prove itself in [Biosphere 2]...Their environment will be controlled by G2, the most advanced of new batch of computer programs, known as expert systems, that are designed to mimic human decision-making. The long-term hope is that this experiment will show that human colonies space or on other planets can be made both viable and self-sustaining."
New York Times
February 10, 1991
Biosphere 2 is an independent, self-regenerating life-support system, the perfect lab in which to make controlled studies of some of the natural workings in the world outside.
People Magazine
October 14, 1991
"Viewed as an exercise in human ecology and environmental engineering, the experiement was a great success."
Eugene P. Odum
ECOLOGY, A Bridge Between Science and Society
SinauerAssociates Inc., 1997
When you consider that nothing on the scale of Biosphere 2 has been attempted before (NASA'S designs for regenerative life support are entirely different, and much smaller) and how little we really know about how our Biosphere 1 (Earth) works, a measure of success will have been achieved if the biospherians come out alive and healthy this fall after the 2-year isolation. Certainly the experiment will have improved our understanding of human-biosphere interrelations and helped answer the question of how much natural environment must be preserved for life support, and it will have provided a basis for improving the design next time around."
Professor Eugene P. Odum
Director Emeritus, Institute of Ecology
University of Georgia, Athens, Ga.
and author of Fundamentals of Ecology
Science, 14 May 1993, vol. 260
"But perhaps Biosphere 2's greatest value, has been just in showing
what is possible. How innovative these eight people were in being able
to live in a small area and make it work. The real lesson there is not
so much a scientific lesson, but showing how people can work together
when resources are short, which is going to be the situation in the world.
"
Dr. Eugene Odum
Boston Globe
February 14,1994
"When you consider the fact that nothing on the scale of this has ever been attempted before, the fact that they are all coming out alive and still speaking to each other is a miracle."
Dr. Eugene Odum
Phoenix Gazette
September 19, 1993
"Good Ecological engineering involves incremental changes to fit technological operations to the self organizing biota. The management process during 1992-1993 using data to develop theory, test it with simulation, and apply corrective actions was in the best scientific tradition. "
Professor Howard T. Odum
Environmental Engineering Science
University of Florida, Gainesville
Journal of Ecological Engineering 6 (1996) 7-19
"Biosphere 2 is now widely recognized as a most imaginative and heroic project and of great scientific importance"
Professor Keith Runcorn, F.R.S.
Geophysicists, Newcastle upon Tyne University
September 10, 1994
"Who remembers the second man on the moon? I think it was Buzz Aldrin. The first time is a symbol; its an act of brave pioneers. But I think it takes a different and special kind of courage to be second. So I salute all of you who are going in today, because you are converting what is a grand idea into a simple daily utility which is what it needs to become. The eyes of the world aren't on you anymore, but the eyes of science are, and the hopes of the world are."
Professor Stephen J. Gould
Harvard University
March 6, 1994
"A World within a World" All life known to humankind exists within the context of a biosphere: a stable, complex, evolving system containing life, composed of various ecosystems operating in a synergetic equilibrium, essentially closed to material input or output, and open to energy and information exchanges. Our planet, Earth, could be termed the global Biosphere 1 - SBV has constructed a second - Biosphere 2, isolated by a virtually airtight structure and composed of elements from the global biosphere.
Project Pro Vol. 3 No. 3
September, 1993
"I do feel that from many fields - biology, genetics, and even human health - many pieces of information will come out of their records that will help those sciences right here on Earth."
Richard Evans Schultes, Ph.D., F.M.L.S.,
Professor of Biology and Director of the Botany Museum
of Harvard University (Emeritus)
"The greatest lesson of Biosphere 2, that there is no 'away', is equally important to Biosphere 1. This must be realized soon by all of Biosphere 1's 'crew' because unlike Biosphere 2, Earth cannot be replaced."
Richard R. Harwood, Ph.D.
C.S. Mott Foundation Chair of Sustainable Agriculture
Michigan State University
Biosphere 2 Press Release, September, 1993
"The achievements of the biospherians go beyond the application of
state-of-the-art methods of sustainable agriculture. Biosphere 2 recreates
in miniature the flows and balances that occur on Earth--but it moves
through these cycles on 'fast- forward'. Carbon dioxide turnover on Earth
takes about three years: in Biosphere 2 it takes about three days. On
Earth it takes years or decades to see how changes in the rainforest affect
the growth of sorghum or sweet potatoes in another part of the world;
in Biosphere 2, the impact may be seen in a matter of weeks. In Biosphere
2, agricultural materials such as crop nutrients and animal wastes recycle
through the water and air systems in days, as opposed to weeks or years
on Earth. It is, in this sense, an ecological laboratory of incalculable
value - the world's largest test-tube."
Richard R. Harwood, Ph.D.
C.S. Mott Foundation Chair of Sustainable Agriculture
Michigan State University
Biosphere 2 Press Release, September, 1993
"To succeed in the first two-year closure period will be a unique management challenge. In Biosphere 2, we have been provided all the essential life-giving elements of this planet, and we must make choices that insure their survival. As the caretakers of this planet, we must recognize that its resources are finite and that our wisdom in protecting them must be infinite."
Sally Silverstone
Co-Captain Biosphere 2 1991-1993 Mission
1991
Whatever the results of the two year experiment, this much seems sure: It's going to give both space research and interplanetary travel plans a boost and will teach us a good deal about how to cope with the serious environmental problems plaguing Biosphere 1.
Skyline
March 27, 1990
“The first and only project of its kind on such a large scale, Biosphere 2 will be watched by ecologists the world over for the scientific data it will generate. And at the end, we could know a lot more about managing natural ecosystems and have products and technology patented and available to help manage them.”
The Times of India
April 5, 1989
The Best of 1993
Biosphere 2
One of the Top Ten Best Scientific Projects
Time Magazine
January 3, 1994
World record for living in a closed ecosystem, set by the original eight Biospherians: two years; previous record: six months, set by Soviet researchers in the 1970's.
US News and World Report
February 21, 1994
"This project probably pioneered the transformation of ecology into an experimental science, while the crew has survived a unique social experiment, the longest voluntary tenure in a confined environment on record"
USA Today
Life on Another Planet
September 24, 1993
"The Biosphere 2 project has enhanced the basic scientific focus on ecosystems modeling as a tool for research and for public education about complex natural systems."
William Schulz
Office of Public Affairs
Smithsonian Institution Press Release
September 26, 1991
"The fact that nobody walked out of there during the past two years because conditions become unbearable is quite significant....This experiment has been highly successful from a human factors standpoint."
Yvonne Clearwater.
Senior Research Psychologist
NASA Human Factors Laboratory
Ames Research Center
Phoenix Gazette
September 19, 1993
