March 9, 2018
Tucson,
Davis-Monthan AFB, FamCamp
No, not an experiment by SpaceX or Elon Musk, but one to lay groundwork for future space colonization missions that was bult from 1984-1989, as well as act as an environmental and social experiment: Eight scientists were to be locked into a three-acre dome containing five different earthly biomes for two years, from September 1991 to September 1993. The goal was to see if humans could survive and become self-sufficient in a “closed system”—that is, one that was not supposed to have any supplies coming in or out.
I guess politics and money was it’s demise, and the experiment failed (for lots of reasons, you can research it and see) but Columbia University, then the University of Arizona, eventually took over the mammoth space to conduct earth science research and it has been very successful in conducting controlled experiments on certain portions of the Bio and how the experiments affect the other Bios.
We really enjoyed the guided tour. The engineering of systems that was required to make the Bio work was really cool.
Check out this historical video … (after link opens, double click the “black space” in the center of the frame, then the video will start.
https://nyti.ms/2kAcQHG