a master’s degree in Forestry and Environmental Studies from Yale, she had tracked whales and dolphins from Greenland to the Indian Ocean to Antarctica. Jane was a gardener, trained in farm management in Australia at an Institute of Ecotechnics’ project with a stint of marine ecology on the Institute’s ocean-going research vessel, the Heraclitus. Both of them were accustomed to isolation in the outdoors and living out of duffel bags. Even they miscalculated; they wound up with too many blue jeans (twelve pairs in all) but not enough sneakers (six pairs). They figured that their jeans would be the first things to wear out, because they’d be working daily in the farm area, what we call the Intensive Agriculture Biome (IAB for short). As it turned out, most of us wore out our work shoes before anything else. Jane and Gaie’s sneakers lost their heels and soles, which ended up in the scrap box. Indeed, by the end of the two years, bare feet “outdoors” (outside our habitat living area) became a common sight. In the habitat, it had already become a custom, since we had to remove our dirty shoes to avoid tracking mud on the carpeting. Sometimes going barefoot was a pleasure in our tropical world; but it also had the practical purpose of minimizing wear-and-tear on the limited supply of footwear.
Mark Nelson, knowing that half his time would be spent in manual labor in the fields and wilderness, did his shopping in a quick trip to a couple of Tucson thrift shops. A philosophy graduate from Dartmouth College, Mark, Chairman of the Institute of Ecotechnics, had spent the last twenty years working on ecotechnic agricultural, ranching, and ecological restoration projects in arid regions of the United States and Australia. He was SBV’s Director of Space and Environmental Applications, and the Communications Officer for the crew. In the Biosphere he helped Linda Leigh, the Director of Terrestrial Ecological Systems for SBV, and manager of the systems inside, with her work in the terrestrial zones: the rainforest, savannah, and desert biomes. He was also in charge of the ecological waste recycling system and provided fodder for the domestic animals. Piles of new clothes seemed pointless; there was no one to impress, and clearly plenty of ways to get dirty. Laser (Mark Van Thillo) felt much the same way; work clothes would be just fine for him, too.
Jane had the idea to make a special box of new clothes for her to open on the first anniversary. Mark, although he relied on second-hand clothes, liked the idea and also prepared a box for the one-year anniversary of closure. This might not have been quite like a day’s indulgence at the mall, but still there would be an infusion of something new.
We all had our Biosphere 2 jumpsuits, called by some our ‘Star Trek suits.’ The late Bill Travilla, one of Marilyn Monroe’s clothes designers, was inspired by Biosphere 2 and offered to design something special for us. The results were these lightweight wool jumpsuits in fire-engine red and dark blue. We dutifully wore them for our official closing ceremonies and basically never wore them again. After losing a good bit of weight from the Biosphere 2 diet, they wouldn’t have fit us again anyway.
Although Laser spent almost no time on his wardrobe, he meticulously prepared a collection of avant-garde music and a library of over three hundred books, rivaled only by Mark’s collection, which he hoped to read in his free time. Laser was in charge of Quality Control for the construction of Biosphere 2; and once inside, his role was that of co-captain in charge of emergency systems, as well as the Manager of Technical Systems. A daunting task—he was responsible for the maintenance and operations of our very extensive infrastructure of machinery, which he had to keep running. Because he was intimately involved with the building of the system, he knew more than anyone else how everything was put together; therefore, along with his team on the outside, he was confident he could fix anything. If he and Mark ever managed to finish those five hundred volumes in their apartments with everything else going on, then they could have gone on to another thousand in the common library at the top of the sixty-five-foot tower in the middle of the habitat; housing a broad range of books in history, art, literature, architecture, ecology and other sciences, as well as philosophy.
Such was the intensity of the countdown to closure. And if anyone still suspects that we stashed bottles of champagne or jars of freeze-dried coffee, we can assure them that we did not! What we could grow in our fields was what we’d have. There was some food from crops grown in Biosphere 2 prior to closure, and all the fields had crops growing at various stages of maturity. Our goal was to see if we could produce all of our food during the two years, including replacing the original stored crops.
In addition to our personal wardrobes, we had piles of T-shirts, pants, skirts, and other clothes made of wool which were donated to us by The Wool Bureau, a company that promotes the use of natural wool products. The Wool Bureau liked the Biosphere 2 concept from early in the project, and believed that their products would work well in our tropical world. Their new design actually turned out to be recyclable, biodegradable, and comfortable even in our tropical climate. They also donated our carpets and the brightly colored fabrics on the walls throughout the human habitat area. The walls of the Biosphere 2 Command Room, our semi-circular office and computer/communications hub, were covered by a purple and gray wool fabric; the library walls an azure blue; and each bedroom was a different color of light brown, red, or blue.
Perfume and perfumed soaps or shampoos were not a good idea in the closed, recirculating atmosphere of the Biosphere. First, what they outgassed would confuse the detailed monitoring systems that tracked all the small amounts of trace gases that might be in the air. Moreover, in a closed system, compounds from non-biodegradable soaps or shampoos could easily accumulate to a toxic level. To put it bluntly, if we used a product that was not biodegradable, we’d be drinking it in our tea within a week. That excluded just about every readily available brand of hand soap, dish soap, detergent, and shampoo.
Sally tested many products, squarely facing the difficult task of satisfying both personal preferences and biological requirements. She once managed a hostel for mentally handicapped adults in her native England, and sometimes joked that it was this experience that made her able to survive as co-captain. Unflappably calm amidst the flare-ups of chaotic activity, Sally had been controller and General Manager of the architecture studio for Biosphere 2 during the entire design and construction stage, so settling the soap question was a minor matter for her. The biggest arguments centered around which soap to purchase, and needless to say Sally found a way to satisfy everyone. She included a granulated brand of oatmeal soap that hardly dissolved in water, as well as an oatmeal and wintergreen soap that melted like soap when wet and could actually produce a lather. She stocked milk crates full of lotion, shampoo, conditioner, wintergreen and spearmint toothpaste, and natural sponges, all of which complied with the need to eliminate potentially dangerous gas emitters. Those of us who liked fragrances had to collect them ourselves from our herbs in the farm area and plants in the wilderness zones.
Quantities presented yet another problem: how much of the stuff would we need in two years? Some of us, like Linda Leigh and Gaie (who shared one bathroom), ordinarily used up to two containers of shampoo and conditioner (four ounces each) a week. It seemed unlikely that Roy, who was bald, needed any! Longhaired people needed twice as much shampoo as short-haired Sally or Mark.
There were many such questions to answer before the experiment could begin. What about feminine hygiene? Tampons and pads cannot be recycled, and if four women used these products for two years, the resulting garbage would be difficult to handle. We found an Ohio company called The Keeper that produced a reusable plastic cup designed to catch the menstrual flow. All that had to be done was wash it out. Toothbrushes also aroused controversy. Some dentists recommended twelve toothbrushes; others recommended four to six. In the end, a mix of electric and manual toothbrushes came inside.
Everyone had a thorough dental checkup before coming in, a requirement SBV was very firm about. Our healthcare specialists, Roy Walford, a then sixty-nine-year-old professor of pathology at UCLA Medical School who specialized in life extension; and Taber MacCallum, our youngest crewmember and Roy’s assistant, had both taken the special US Navy course in emergency dentistry designed for use on ships far from land and without an onboard dentist. Their tales of old-fashioned tooth pulling and other dental tortures inspired what was probably some of the most conscientious tooth
