Visitors to SAM

by Luna Powell

For the 4th year, the National Space Society took around 80 middle school students on an overnight weekend trip to Biosphere 2 for their annual space design competition. The students had the opportunity to visit SAM for a tour with Luna and Matthias. Together, they put 20 students on the Reduced Gravity Simulator, provided an educational, geological tour of the SAM Mars Yard, and provided an external tour of SAM. Many of the students said that the knowledge they learned during the tour will help them during the competition! Thanks to Ty White who helped organize and set up the tour for his students.

Participants in Thunderbird School of Global Management’s Executive Master of Global Management program with a concentration in space embarked on a site visit to Southern Arizona. SAM team member Luna Powell engaged the thirty-person class in a full tour of SAM, including the newly constructed Mars yard.

This tour was arranged by Brett Mecum, class member, Arizona State lobbyist, and the author of the bill that provided SAM with $1.5M in funding for fiscal years 2023 through 2026.

Isaac Read may very well be the youngest person to ever don a pressure suit while engaged on a Reduced Gravity Simulator! Isaac and his father John attended the annual Analog Astronaut Conference at Biosphere 2, Oracle, Arizona. John’s father is an amateur astronomer and professional educator. Isaac is a bold explorer who was eager to try the pressure suit provided by Dr. Cameron Smith of Smith Aerospace Garments. Cameron just happened to have built a small suit for another user potential, and stored it at B2 for just such an occasion.

Isaac did well, adapting quickly to his apparent reduced gravity while encumbered by a pressure suit and umbilical for breathing.

[from left to right: Olivia Drayson, Michael Laine, Kai Staats, Bruce Mackenzie, Caleb Pool, Daniel Thompkins, Hope Zubrin, Robert Zubrin, Doug Plata, Andre Fernandez, and Ashton Zeth]

We are honored to have Mars Society Robert Zubrin and several 2023 conference volunteers and staff visit Biosphere 2 for a tour of the historic facility and SAM. Director of Research for SAM at Biosphere 2 Kai Staats provided the group with a four and a half hours tour including all of the biomes, historic living quarters, south lung and ‘technosphere’, and then SAM and the adjacent Mars yard and terrain park, currently under construction.

It was an engaging morning and afternoon with plentiful conversations and debates for the challenges of humans establishing long-term residence on Mars.

Today we were honored to receive Executive Director James Burk and several of the Mars Society staff and volunteers to Biosphere 2 and SAM. B2 Executive Director John Adams and Research Director at SAM Kai Staats provided a tour of B2 and then a visit to SAM with walk-through of the Test Module, Workshop, and Crew Quarters under construction.

SAM is in many ways given form on the foundation laid by Biosphere 2 and more than two decades in which the Mars Society’s Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) more than 1000 individuals have worked to help our species prepare to live and explore beyond our home world.

“Thank you Robert Zubrin, Shannon Rupert, and the many analogs worldwide for the inspiration to design and construct SAM.” — Kai Staats

Today we had the sincere pleasure of receiving Bernd Zabel, project manager for the Biopshere 2 construction and team member in the second (1994) sealed mission.

As with our time spent with Phil Hawes and Dr. Linda Leigh in 2021, it was a true honor to receive his passion, intellect, and stories for the challenges and rewards of the audacious Biosphere 2 project, reinforcing what can be done with vision and focus toward a single goal (and a sense of humor along the way).

“I was again a bit nervous receiving one of the Biospherians, thinking, What will he think of our modifications and additions to the Test Module? On our tour Bernd expressed his enthusiasm, saying more than once ‘This is beautiful!’ A few times he stopped with a puzzled look on his face, as he worked to recall how things were originally configured. ‘Our water storage tank was over there, and here was …”

When we came to the airlock I noted, “We pulled this from the basement of B2. Do you know its history?” to which Bernd responded with a grin, “Well, I should hope so. I built it!” and went on to share how it was quickly put together to isolate part of the Biosphere 2 during construction and early pressure tests. Thank you Bernd for your engaging support of our work at SAM, and surely we will host a SAM workshop at your resort in Costa Rica soon!” –kai

Born in Germany, Bernd was raised in Munich where he graduated with a Master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Technical University. Following extensive travel in Africa and Asia as a student, he made a trip across America to investigate alternative energy systems. He landed at the Synergy Ranch in New Mexico to conduct experiments in fully integrated production systems where the end products of one stage become the raw materials for the next. He designed and operated systems for water-conserving arid land agriculture, water harvesting, wind and solar energy, composting, and aquaculture.

In 1985 Bernd joined the Biosphere 2 project as General Manager of construction for the two-acre sealed experimental system. In 1994 he served as a member of the second team for a six months, and under Columbia University was Director of Engineering and Operations for the atmosphere, living conditions, and physical structure of Biosphere 2. Bernd worked in Tibet to bring running water to a monastery and consulted in Inner Mongolia at a demonstration project to stop desertification. From 2001-07 Bernd served as the systems engineer at the Garchen Buddhist Institute in Prescott Arizona. Thereafter he and his wife developed Biothermales, a resort in Costa Rica.

Presently Bernd is returning to his Biosphere roots and developing a material-sealed dome structure in which he will again experiment with total systems integration. Bernd is also an accomplished artist who had several exhibits of paintings.

The Arizona Space Business Roundtable held its monthly meeting at the Biosphere 2! The evening started with a walking tour of SAM (Space Analog for the Moon and Mars) at 4:00 pm followed by the Roundtable presentation and discussion at 5:30.

In summary, Stephen Flemming writes, “We had a great turnout at Biosphere 2 last night… about 40 people made the drive up from Tucson or down from Phoenix! We ran until 7:30 pm, so I know a lot of people didn’t get home until a lot later than usual. Thanks for taking the time!

We were welcomed by John Adams, Deputy Director of Biosphere 2, then Kai Staats led a walk-through of the SAM facility which is being built as a Space Analog for the Moon and Mars. You can learn about SAM at samb2.space/.

Biosphere 2 set a new standard for the Arizona Space Business Roundtable by providing pizza, which we enjoyed before a pair of lectures by Kai and Trent and a lively Q&A session. The audience enjoyed learning about the plans for SAM and the opportunities it creates for academic, industry, startup, and government activities. It’s an amazing resource available to the Arizona space exploration community. We should take advantage of it!

SAM needs volunteers to help with construction and, like everything else, needs money. If you have an interest in contributing time, treasure, or attention, please contact Kai via the SAM contact form.

Today we were honored to receive Dr. Linda Leigh, one of the original eight Biospherians and Biome Design Manager for the rainforest, savannah, and desert where she was responsible for coordinating the planning of B2’s land sections as well as collecting, storing, propagating and transferring more than 2,000 plant species for the original 1991-93 experiment. She was featured in the 2020 documentary film “Spaceship Earth“. Linda conducted the longest stay in the Biosphere 2 prototype Test Module, sealed inside for three weeks. All of her air, water, food, and waste were recycled by the plant systems contained within. The fully refurbished Test Module is now cornerstone to SAM, the habitat analog being constructed at Biosphere 2.

Linda was joined by Douglas May, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Arizona. Doug mentors the Engineering Capstone team projects each year, and was involved in the team that recently completed the Automated Pressure Regulation System for SAM. Trenton Kenney, volunteer at SAM for the month of June from the University of Minnesota and NASA intern is between Linda and Doug in the banner photo.

We enjoyed Linda’s stories about her time in the Test Module and are eager to learn more about her time in the Biosphere 2 and continued work as a plant ecology instructor and manager of the Oracle Community Learning Garden.

Welcome back Linda! We look forward to your next visit to SAM!

The following material is consolidated from interview with Linda for an article for the Edge Effect, 2021.

In her early undergraduate days, Linda was inspired by a University of Wisconsin-Madison botany professor, Dr. Hugh Iltis. Exuberant in his love of earth’s diversity, he painted a grim picture of a diminished-diversity Earth with only robins and white-tailed deer remaining. They traveled to nearby patches of native tall-grass prairies and burned them, learning about nature’s “services” and how, in the absence of natural processes such as fire, humans could take their place in an attempt to maintain ecosystem diversity. This set the scene for her use of a systems approach to understanding the earth. Before Linda joined the team at Biosphere 2, she worked as a field botanist locating endangered plant species’ habitats for recommendation as conservation sites.

In 1985 Linda joined Biosphere 2 as the “Biome Design Manager” for the rainforest, savannah, and desert, contracting specialists in termites, ants, aquatic insects, galagos, reptiles and amphibians, rainforest plants, soils, desert plants, and many more. Her team worked to answer the questions How many individuals of each species would be needed for 100 years of survival, and what were their pollinators? Did we have enough plants to provide the oxygen we would need? Since her work at Biosphere 2 she has worked in research and as a professional educator. She co-founded and manages the Oracle Learning Community Garden with intent to build habitats for migrating birds, insects, and bats while maintaining diversity of species for feeding people with plants that are appropriate to this region.