These Are Not Your Father's Biospheres

Ever since the perceived failure of Biosphere 2, which people had criticized at the time for not following genuine scientific principals, many have looked upon artificial habitats as places for strange, cult-like groups. Instead of research, the preception is that people go to live in these manmade living quarters for religious or philosophical reasons. There are a few current and planned artificial habitats, though, that are blowing the lid off of that old perception. These unnatural biospheres have evolved into sophisticated tools of science, and they're helping us to evolve, too.

Though a manned mission to Mars is still decades away, people are now in the process of preparing for the journey. One of the most interesting projects is the 520-day mock flight taking place in Moscow. Six volunteers, all males, have been locked in a steel capsule since June, 2010, and are not planned to re-emerge until sometime in mid March 2011. The mission: to assist actual astronauts in coping with the confinement and stress of long-term travel in the future. To aid in that mission, the crew has living quarters about the size of a bus which is joined to other modules for experiments and exercise. A separate built-in imitator of the Red Planet's surface is attached for a two-day mock landing. After that, the crew has to endure a month-long "voyage" back to earth, during which mission control will create mock emergencies to keep them busy.

Another exciting new artifical human habitat project is the planned undersea colony of "Atlantica." Dennis Chamberland, a contract manager for NASA, has designed prototypes of advanced life support systems for the moon and Mars, and now he wants to build one of his own as a permanent underwater living quarters and research lab. And he wants to do it by 2015. He and his wife, Claudia are so confident in the facility's design that they say it would be safe for a baby, and even plan to take their cat along for the 90-day practice run they have planned in a smaller undersea habitat called Leviathan on July 4, 2012. When completed, the full-sized facility will house up to 15 people and will be constructed of four steel cylinders connected to a central hub anchored to the sea floor 200 feet down. If it works, Challenger Station will tap into the Gulf Stream for energy, oxygen and scientific discovery. Though this is not the first attempt at living underwater for extended periods, it might be the first to try to establish a permanent colony in the sea.

The Ark Hotel might not be a scientific research artificial habitat, but it might be the closest most of us will get to one. It's called the Ark because the architechs designed it to withstand the rising of the world's oceans due to climate change. To achieve that, incredibly, the hotel has a structure that enables it to float. Seriously, it will float. Because of that, it would withstand tsunamis and other natural disasters like earthquakes. Also, the Ark is planned to be a bioclimatic building with independent life-support systems and a greenhouse-like environment that will allow for lush vegetation to help with air quality and provide food sources. The transparent structure will filter enough daylight through internal rooms to reduce the need for lighting. The floating hotel is a 'biosphere' built to be a self-contained refuge in the event of a natural disaster. As the designers say, "The Ark is an attempt to answer the challenges of our time."

sources: huffingtonpost.com, wtsp.com, allvoices.com photo: onlineweblibrary.com

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