As the environmental conditions on other celestial bodies are harmful to life, artificial habitats are vital at least in the early phases of colonization. Given the biological needs of plant and animal life and the limited resources available, it seems only natural that a number of advanced high-tech features will be needed to support early settlers. These include solutions such as using piezoelectric plastic membranes for outer hulls, which create electricity from wind on the surface of Mars, and another layer capturing radiation, or constructing entire cities by using lightweight aerogel structures instead of rigid domes. During the Biosphere-II experiments, about 80% of the food supply was provided by locally grown crops; this percentage will need to be increased substantially for long-term expeditions.

A long-term vision of a biosphere is the so-called "Dyson sphere", originally proposed in 1959 for an advanced civilisation to utilise all of the energy radiated by their sun. It is an artificial sphere the size of a planetary orbit. The object would consist of a shell of solar collectors for habitats around the star, so that all or at least a significant amount of energy will hit a receiving surface where it can be used. This would create a huge living space and gather enormous amounts of energy. Another version of the Dyson sphere is a "ringworld" (also the title of a novel by Larry Niven), which is a band of matter along the ecliptic of a planet that would require less material, although the mechanical stress would be even greater.

The science-fiction novel "Red Mars" by Kim Stanley Robinson gives the regolith as an example of a biosphere. The first habitats were just simple barrel-vaulted chambers, which were covered by 10 m of sandbagged regolith to stop radiation and to allow the interiors to be pressurised to 450 mbar. They used indigenous resources to get their building materials; for example, bricks were made of clay and sulphur from the regolith. Later, more sophisticated materials and structures were used. The novel "Red Mars" does not give too much detailed information about the structure of the biospheres, but there are other science-fiction novels and movies having biospheres/ecosystems as a central theme. For example, "Silent Running" (1971) has the hero Lowell Freeman looking after plants in giant space greenhouses. Back on Earth, all the trees have long vanished. When orders are received from Earth to destroy the greenhouses, Lowell cannot go through with it, but cannot persuade his three colleagues to help him save the plants, so he makes other "arrangements". "Starlost" (TV series, 1973) was all about people living in a spaceship for generations until they forget they are on a spaceship. Besides the Mars trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson also wrote "Icehinge" and "Antarctica" - both of which have closed biosystems as important elements.

An ambitious experiment in Cornwall, England is perhaps the earthly forerunner of a biosphere in space. The Eden Project consists of several geodesic domes (known as biomes), which are enormous greenhouses specially constructed to house and grow many of the world's plants.

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