alt Hacker NewsBiosphere stuff is more fundamental than just mass. We had several closed ecosystem projects built on the ground out of concrete, with no mass limits, and all of them failed.
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Bad engineering, too many uncontrolled variables and roundabout solutions. Just solve the problems directly. Make the air, scrub the CO2, grow only food. The solution looks like a (light weight) nuclear submarine not a greenhouse.
Biosphere 2 was hippie gobbledygook.
"The Biosphere 2 project was launched in 1984 by businessman and billionaire Ed Bass and systems ecologist John P. Allen, with Bass providing US$150 million in funding until 1991.[15] Bass and Allen had met in the 1970s at the Synergia Ranch, a counterculture community led by Allen, who advocated Buckminster Fuller's "Spaceship Earth" concept and explored the idea of biospheres as a refuge from disasters such as nuclear war.[15] Several other former members of Synergia Ranch also joined the Biosphere 2 project"[0]
"Synergia Ranch is an ecovillage founded in 1969 by John P. Allen"[1]
Ed Bass inherited $2.8 million when he was a teenager from his great uncle who made his money in oil production, he's currently chairman of an investment and venture-capital management firm. In between he hung out with a bunch of hippies.[2] Just your typical nepo-boomer arc.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2
A habitat on Mars would certainly not be closed ecosystem, especially not in the beginning. The biggest issue at biosphere IIRC was CO2 poisoning. You can crack the air in a mars habitat with power and in the worst case find Martian resources that will do some advantageous chemistries