It was the ultimate experience of social distancing.
On September 26, 1991, four men and four women in dark blue coveralls said goodbye to friends, families and a bank of television cameras as they walked through an airtight door to embark on an unprecedented mission. Despite their Star Trek-style uniforms, the eight adventurers did not fly into space but isolated themselves from the outside world for two years inside Biosphere 2 – a three-acre glass and steel terrarium in Arizona. desert.
“The future is here!” said crew member Jane Poynter as she entered the $ 150 million planetary commune and ecological laboratory prototype that included 3,800 species of plants and animals and five miniature biomes – a rainforest, a ocean of coral reefs, a swamp, a savannah and a desert.
To test the human capacity to live in isolation in space, the eight “biospheres” hoped to be entirely self-sufficient by growing their own food and recycling all air, water and waste. While they could communicate with the outside world by email, phone and fax, for two years there would be no hugs with loved ones, no food delivery, not even toilet paper.
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A counter-cultural municipality launched Biosphère 2
The idea of Biosphere 2 (Earth being the first biosphere) was born from an avant-garde theater and an ecological town known as “Synergists” which was born in San Francisco in 1967. “This What sets this group apart from other types of counter-cultures is that they are identified as capitalists, “says Matt Wolf, director of” Spaceship Earth “, a 2020 documentary on the biosphere. 2″ Their model was to create businesses designed to be both economically and environmentally sustainable. ”
Synergists Exploit Ecological Projects in the Rainforest Puerto Rico to the Australian outback and even built their own ship that they sailed around the world. They were led by the charismatic polymath John Allen, a Harvard MBA and metallurgist who wrote poems and short stories under the pseudonym Johnny Dolphin and who, according to the Arizona Daily Star, has been “described by those who knew him as both a visionary and an abusive mind control guru.”
Billionaire Edward Bass, the sniping son of an oil tycoon and a so-called “ecopreneur,” was among those attracted to Allen after visiting his Synergia ranch in New Mexico. With Allen’s vision and Bass’s money, the synergists built Biosphere 2 north of Tucson.
The candidates for the Biosphere II project stand on the “lung” of a large enclosed environment.
Roger Ressmeyer / Corbis / VCG / Getty Images
Mark Nelson, a long-time member of the commune, was part of the crew of eight who entered Biosphere 2 in the fall of 1991. “There have been moments of absolute happiness, and if you wanted to privacy, you could hide in a number of biomes, “he says from his experience. The biospheres celebrated Thanksgiving with a feast of chicken, baked squash and sweet potato pie and toasted the winter solstice with rice wine.
Winter cloud cover, however, contributed to poor harvests and low oxygen levels which made eco-explorers feel like they were at an altitude of 14,000 feet. Hummingbirds and bees died while populations of ants and cockroaches exploded. The biospheres have lost a lot of weight because long days at work, oxygen depletion and low-calorie diets have made climbing even a daunting challenge.
These setbacks did not help the group dynamic, which, according to Nelson, was the most difficult part of life inside the bubble. Although the biospheres have split into factions, he says it has had no impact on their research. “What usually happens in small groups is subconsciously, they start sabotaging their work and the overall mission,” says Nelson, “but it never happened because we all fell in love with the biosphere 2 ”
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Lack of transparency plagued the project
While scientists questioning the validity of the biosphere 2 experiments poured stones into the greenhouse, the public image of the project also suffered from a lack of transparency. Two weeks after entering Biosphere 2, Poynter left for surgery after severing the tip of a finger in a rice thresher.
Months later, it was revealed that she had brought a duffel bag full of equipment when she returned. Then came revelations that a three-month supply of food had been stored inside Biosphere 2 before the start of the experiment, that air was pumped inside and that its doors had been regularly open to bring supplies such as seeds, vitamins, and mouse traps.
With such a great effort, the Biospheres fully expected failure. “That’s why you’re experimenting – to learn what you don’t know,” says Nelson. However, the media tended to cover the business as a survival reality show. “The theatricality has attracted a lot of eyeballs, but the nuance of what this group was trying to do with long-term visions is lost in the expectation that it will be this human experience in which eight people are trapped and nothing can go in and out. Says Wolf.
Despite the challenges they faced, the eight biospheres managed to cross their two years outside the world. But the next crew wouldn’t do it.
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The management of the biosphere 2 is entrusted to Steve Bannon
A few weeks after the new crew of seven entered the biosphere 2 on March 6, 1994, problems in the first biosphere burst into the project. With the company’s finances in trouble, Bass placed the company in receivership and appointed investment banker Steve Bannon, who would become a key advisor to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, as the new CEO.
Bannon insisted on the dismissal of Allen and other senior officials. Fearing for the safety of the new crew, the original biospheres Abigail Alling and Mark Van Thillo burst into Biosphere 2 before dawn on April 4, 1994, to warn of Bannon’s involvement. “I considered the biosphere to be in a state of emergency”, Said Alling. “I made a conscious decision to end the experience.”
While the Biosphere 2 crew decided to stay, they left five months later as the business turned into an avalanche of prosecutions and counter-prosecutions. Bass donated the installation to the University of Arizona in 2011, and research on smaller projects continues.
“The reality of the purpose of the effort was lost in the reshuffle,” says Nelson. “It was to be the prototype of a space colony and judging it by its efficiency for two years does not meet its objective and trivializes it all. Biosphere 2 is a 100-year-old project. We built it for the long-term study of the fundamental processes underlying the experience of the Earth. ”
