Visit Biosphere 2!

I went on a road trip to go to the 13th and Final Erickson Congress in December.  That was a magical time in and of itself.  Since it was so far and all, I wanted to assure that I was able to see at least a few things on my bucket list which were out in that direction.

So about a week before I went, I wanted to get the information about Biosphere 2 knowing it was somewhere out there, the big closed ecological system where people were living for months and years on end and see how far it was from Phoenix (around 2 hours).  I’d always wanted to see it in person.  Little did I know they had tours!  And not terribly expensive either!

After I visited Marfa, I went to visit Biosphere 2.  I slept in a truck stop a few hours from it because I had the time and I was tired from driving all night.

When I came upon it and to visitor parking, it was like I was in scientific Disney World, even down to the different rows being labeled as different things like Food, Energy, etc.  I went to follow the directions for admissions and nothing can prepare you for the size of the complex.  There is a visitors center, a separate cafe, gift shop, and more apartments than you can shake a stick at… apparently you can do retreats there.  And yet I still had a way to go to the main complex.  Since I knew I had the tour but had a while, I went down to the outstanding ocean exhibit.  Of course nothing could compare to going up to the crew habitat and then actually walking around the Biosphere itself!  Most of it we could walk on it except the rainforest was doing a special experiment so we could not go there and the LEO we had to view from afar.  Still it was such an outstanding discussion and the little space exhibit upstairs reminded me so much of my work with Space Studies that it made me really miss the work I did back then and reminded me of all the possibilities out there. Man I loved that degree and all the magic it had.  All those memories and more came flooding back to Biosphere 2 which I studied when I was in that program.  I wanted to be a crewmember so much.

 

What about you?  Would you be a crew member?

Completed : 2019