Biosphere Project

Scientists have struggled for generations to understand the complex interrelationships of life forms and the atmospheric and hydrologic cycles that provide life on Earth with its essentials. A Russian scientist, Dr. Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1943), was the first to understand that the life systems of Earth are perfectly balanced and able to self-correct; Vernadsky is considered the "Father of Biospherics." Efforts to recreate these water, air, and life cycles began in 1968 when an American experimenter in Hawaii, Dr. Clair Folsome, accidentally discovered that microbes, seawater, and algae trapped and sealed in a glass bottle did not die but created their own tiny environment in which the materials recycled naturally. Dr. Folsome's sealed bottles survived for some years, and, even after he added shrimp, the shrimp were able to live although they did not reproduce.

In the former Soviet Union, scientists sealed humans into small buildings to study methods of creating life-support systems in space. These experiments were known as BIOS-3, but the dwellers only had to produce half their food, and waste was disposed outside the buildings. When the Biosphere 2 Project was conceived, its creators met with Dr. Folsome, the Soviet scientists who had worked on the BIOS-3 experiments, and experts at the National Atmospheric and Space Administration (NASA) whose spacecraft and lunar module designs had allowed Americans to reach the moon.