Читать книгу Life Under Glass - Марк Нельсон - Страница 14

Since the three of us wrote Life Under Glass before we completed the two-year experiment, we decided to leave the book’s original text largely untouched for its historical value. At the time, we didn’t have the final data on most of the research projects underway, but we wrote with the immediacy and urgency of a still unfinished and dramatic experiment. We hope some of the rollercoaster ride of joys, frustrations and, above all, our total immersion and connection to a living world, will touch your hearts and minds. Life Under Glass is a record of how we started to learn to be biospherians, a term we called ourselves as a crew of eight. We realized in the early days of the experiment that our role was to learn from our biosphere, and adjust our actions accordingly to support its vitality, ecosystem functions, and overall health. We did not enter Biosphere 2 having a model of how a biosphere works; we started on day one to learn together.

The eight biospherians followed individual life paths to get to the project site in Oracle, Arizona at what was originally intended to be a quiet, although daring, research endeavor. We joined a small cadre of other biospherian candidates; we worked on the ecological and technical design; we traveled to exotic field sites collecting corals, plants, and animals; we operated prototype systems and even helped with construction while training in the skills required to live inside. The project’s quick pace and high morale was familiar to NASA veterans of the Apollo Project who came to visit. Like them, we were not afraid of making mistakes. We were making history, attempting what was considered impossible. From the project launch in 1984, a research and development complex was soon built and operated to prepare for Biosphere 2. Breaking ground in 1987, hundreds of construction workers, glaziers, engineers, and specialists of all types worked at breakneck pace to complete that massive facility so that we could begin its initial shake-down mission in 1991.

Ultimately, eight of us were selected and coalesced to form a team for undertaking something that no other humans had ever attempted. We were going to be the first crew of the first human-made mini-biosphere for two years. It was a unique opportunity to study global ecology with us taking part as experimenters and part of a co-evolving sustainable living system. We had to carry out daily tasks that would enable our biomes to thrive, and us as well, for our breath, food, and health depended upon them. Although that was the goal of Biosphere 2’s first closure experiment, everyone, including us, understood that it might not be achievable. At early Project Review Committee meetings, the sessions concluded with key managers and consultants enumerating lists of challenges, and sometimes even nightmare scenarios they could envision. Biosphere 2’s initial closure experiment faced daunting odds and plenty of unknowns, but that only strengthened our resolve to figure it out and do whatever it would take to keep our world healthy and biodiverse - and us inside! Ready for anything . . . we hoped!