Biosphere 2 was a project started by a billionaire and heir to a Texas oil fortune turned environmentalist, in the late 1980s at a cost of 150 million dollars. The project while presenting a novel concept of replicating the earth's biosystems inside a self-contained and sealed glass megastructure container, also developed a reputation that was at the fringes of what could be considered credible mainstream science. Much of its tarnished reputation was due to the messy administration of the project which was so contentious at the time that there were rumors of sabotage by disgruntled participants. Indeed there was a struggle for control of the facility and Bass' parent facility had to forcibly take over the facility from the mutinous management group that at the time was rumored to have become cult-like.
Over the years since Arcosanti and Biosphere 2 have existed there has been a lot of efforts to link the two projects together. The core similarity that leads people to make those comparisons is that both projects involved an attempt to create an alternative environment and then see how people behave in a living laboratory.
The main distinction is that one operates on a shoestring that is most self-funded by bell sales and the other involved a 100 plus million dollar investment by a billionaire. Another major difference is that one focused on science and technology and the other aspired to create a architectural Megastructure to house cities under a large complex of interconnected buildings.
Biosphere 2 sought to demonstrate several things:
How we can study complex natural systems by creating nature in a large enclosed structure
Add people to that structure and see how they do isolated from other humans for a year
On both levels it was not a huge success. The result was that there was a lot of negative coverage... some might say also similar to what Arcosanti has experienced.
Biosphere 2 set high expectations for itself and was not able to live up to them. It may be a cautionary tale about the difficulty of creating a totally self-contained systems. The mission of the project did not seem to be clearly defined. Some of the research seemed to be directed at space colonization and it was one of the most notable attempts to create a Closed Ecological Life Support System, but it did not appear very successful in getting significant backing from groups supporting space travel and colonization.
Also important to observe is that the facility is not a true example of how we can augment natural systems to create living machines.In the Biosphere 2 Facts Page the project managers seem to want to impress the reader by noting all the complex machinery needed to sustain the project. Yet this exposes the key design flaw of the project that made it another example of squandered resources. The project was designed at a time when there was enough awareness of integrated biosystems design to have built a massive model to promote this thinking on a practical level.
The systems were not designed to run on renewable energy and require a huge carbon footprint to sustain the facility
Ecosystem management was not done using the augmentation of natural systems and the interrelating with human systems and the build environment, it was done with complex and fossil fuel powered machinery.
The question was what to do with a huge Megastucture of a building that could not really justify its existence under the unrealistic research and development operational framework put forward by the designers of the facility? After the power struggle between the designer/operators and the owner in the 90s when the project seemed to be a huge white elephant, the owner Decisions Investments (Bass' company) seemed very uncertain about what to do. It was potentially a huge economic loss for its owner Ed Bass.
There were several attempts to bring people in to manage the project including several hiatus periods where the project was abandoned by its managers (or in the case of where its original designers were evicted after a messy battle over control and ownership of the project). This included a partnership with Columbia University through its Earth Institute and Jeffrey Sachs. Up until 2003, the partnership was a symbiotic relationship with the Biosphere 2 infrastructure offering hands on experience for Columbia top students in the earth sciences, the environment, and astronomy.
More recently it become incorporated into the University of Arizona's institutional research empire and the financial costs of running the facility seem to finally be justified by some clever administrators who were able to figure out how to do something interesting and scientifically relevant research there.
Notes
Long before Breitbart, Trump CEO Bannon ran Ed Bass’ Biosphere 2 Bud Kennedy Fort Worth Star-Telegram http://www.star-telegram.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/bud-kennedy/article97952922.html#storylink=cpyhttp://www.star-telegram.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/bud-kennedy/article97952922.html
Billionaire turned environmentalis Ed Bass' WWF Profile: https://www.worldwildlife.org/leaders/edward-p-bass