I recently watched a documentary from 2020 called Spaceship Earth about the Biosphere 2 project in Oracle, Arizona. I had picked up bits and pieces about Biosphere 2 over the years, but found the film to be effective in expanding my sense of the endeavor.

Biosphere 2 was an effort motivated by obvious ecological peril together with the crazed space-age notion that we’d be living on other solar system bodies in a few generations. So, we’d better get our butts in gear and learn how to create our own sealed ecosystems. To clear up a point of confusion, Biosphere 2 was not the second attempt at an artificial environment, but was so-named to honor Earth as the original biosphere.

Here, I offer a few reflections spurred by the documentary.

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