# Antarctic colony **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 5, 2024, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antarctic-colony/1011204 "2024-12-05T15:53:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2024, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antarctic-colony/1011204/161 "2024-12-17T01:26:01Z")
Now that’s the sort of facepalm mistake that gets people killed. Thanks for the info. Modeling your micro-ecosystem off the larger Earth macro-ecosystem requires that you not introduce any waaaay out of proportion confounders. Which they seemingly did and unnoticed to boot. Oops. Just don’t do that in Mars; it won’t end well. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2024, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antarctic-colony/1011204/162 "2024-12-17T01:31:13Z")
Well that didn’t threaten the experimenters’ lives, just wrecked the Biosphere 2 as a workable demonstrator of a closed environment. A Mars settlement would obviously be provided with additional inputs as needed, with oxygen an obvious one and available as long as the machinery to produce it remained functional. I would be more worried about a Mars colony failing because it _went broke_ than any collapse of its systems. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2024, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antarctic-colony/1011204/163 "2024-12-17T02:13:03Z")
And that was part of the purpose of the Biosphere 2 experiment: To see what unknowns they weren’t taking into consideration, so they could build a better habitat the next time around. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2024, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antarctic-colony/1011204/164 "2024-12-17T02:46:34Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > The biggest problem with an Antarctic colony is that other than a few select locations it’s all glacier ice. Even just the uncovered part of the Peninsula that’s not ice covered is the size of England. More than enough room for a colony. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2024, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antarctic-colony/1011204/165 "2024-12-17T03:59:36Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > In the case of Biosphere 2, they were unaware that newly poured concrete continues to absorb oxygen for years as it cures. Nitpick: it’s CO2 that concrete absorbs, not oxy. It’s the lime converting back to calcium carbonate, I believe. However, that did effectively take out some of the oxygen. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2024, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antarctic-colony/1011204/166 "2024-12-17T22:59:46Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > In the case of Biosphere 2, they were unaware that newly poured concrete continues to absorb oxygen for years as it cures. > [@LSLGuy](#): > > Now that’s the sort of facepalm mistake that gets people killed. Thanks for the info. The point was _they didn’t know._ We know now. It was always highly unlikely Biosphere 2 would be a complete (or even near) success. One point was to learn from what went wrong, or at least that was the theory. The project was beset by problems and the funding ran out/was cut. Biosphere 2 is currently owned and operated by the University of Arizona and experiments continue to be conducted there. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2024, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antarctic-colony/1011204/167 "2024-12-17T23:15:55Z")
Agreed. We / NASA ought to be funding about Biosphere 7 by now to learn _all_ there is to learn about closed habitats before we do it for real where rescue is more complex than “open the airlock & step outside” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/antarctic-colony/1011204.md?page=8)