82
|| the dynamics of life | HUNTING FOR IMPRESSIONS
on your fingers. So far the spaceport in New Mexico is
rented by Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, for high-altitude
tests of the Grasshopper vertical takeoff rocket. However,
interactive excursions on it are conducted regularly.
Spend some time at Biosphere-2 in Oracle, Arizona
www.pacificaquascape.com
NASA has already discovered a “second Earth,” the
exoplanet Kepler 452b, on which, scientists think, protein-
based life could originate. Which means that it’s time to
ponder seriously how humanity will colonize other planets.
The Space Biosphere Ventures company (since dis-
solved), with the support of billionaire philanthropist Ed-
ward Perry Bass, asked that question in 1991, creating the
closed Biosphere-2 ecosystem. Eight volunteers and 3,000
specimens of flora and fauna settled in a Noah’s Ark of our
times containing a tropical forest, a desert, a savanna,
rivers, and even a mini-ocean. The experiment revealed a
ALPEON.COM
slew of difficulties: microorganisms and insects multiplied
uncontrollably, while trees become fragile in the absence
of wind. The participants experienced oxygen starvation
and, perhaps worse, in a couple of years had quarreled so
badly that they don’t talk to each other to this very day. But
just the same, it’s worth your while to spend some time on