href="#fb3_img_img_63137511-9ed1-58b7-b6cf-e3f5dfb19f43.jpg"/>
At 8:15 AM on September 26, 1991, eight researchers entered Biosphere 2 to begin its first two-year mission of discovery.
“At sunrise on Thursday, four men and four women will don red jumpsuits, share a hug with their friends in Mission Control and leave the world behind. If all goes well, they will leave the Earth behind for two years. The eight are not climbing aboard a space shuttle, although their language and nomenclature are deliberately evocative of the heyday of NASA. But they are embarking on an adventure that is in some ways bolder than the first manned space flight.”
– Los Angeles Times, September 23, 1991
WE HAD TESTED THE AIRLOCK many times before in trial runs, but this time was for real. On a bright September morning, at about 8:15 AM, the eight of us—the first crew of biospherians—stepped into the airlock chamber to begin a journey some of us had been anticipating for seven long years. We had just waved farewell to hundreds of people gathered to see us off before we ducked into this unique compartment. The airlock was about the size of a cargo container, with gray, stainless steel walls, and two doors that had portholes like a ship. One door opened out into Earth and the opposite opened into the Biosphere.
As the metal door swung shut, helping hands tried to push down the large lever on the outside to seal it tight, our last help from outside hands for the next two years. Inside, we pushed down on our side of the lever, but the door didn’t close. After a few moments, Mark Van Thillo called to those outside to step back, and with one decisive swing, brought the lever down to seal the door.
A few seconds later, we opened the inner door and entered Biosphere 2. Closure had been accomplished; our self-reliance had begun. The two-year challenge stretched out ahead of us, two years in which we hoped we would not need to go back through that door into the Arizona desert beyond it. With no one and nothing coming in, what was inside was all we had.
DAY OF CLOSURE
This historic day in our lives, the day of closure, was September 26, 1991. By 6:30 AM everyone—including the eight biospherians, the last-minute work crews, family, friends, and staff—had left the Biosphere and the doors were closed. The moment when an engineer closed the airlock door, our glass world became separate from Earth. No free flow of atmosphere, people, plants or animals, food or supplies would pass between Earth and the inside of the Biosphere again. All the preparations were over. From that moment on, the Biosphere became a distinct and separate entity, materially isolated from the rest of the universe except for energy and information flows. The physical boundaries were marked by the glass and steel space frames above, and the stainless steel liner below.
While we biospherians were taking part in the closing ceremonies in the plaza just outside the airlock, the Biosphere was already on its own. When we headed back towards the airlock at 8:15, we inserted the final, crucial ingredient into the experiment: the eight humans. Crucial because we were the ones who would either succeed or fail in making this extraordinary laboratory a working reality.
By the time the crew was sealed inside the Biosphere, along with our personal belongings and all the equipment for our mission, the day had already been crammed with activity and emotional intensity. We woke up at 3:30 AM while the Biosphere was still dark, long before the sun rose. We needed those early morning hours to prepare for satellite links with the East Coast morning TV shows airing three hours ahead of Arizona time. A handful of staff visitors, wanting one last night inside this world they helped build, lay curled up in blankets on the couches in the mezzanine. It was the last night that anyone but crew members would be allowed to sleep inside.
Those few hours before closure were filled with many ‘last’ things for us: last walks in the early morning desert air, last hugs from family and friends, last checklists, last treats. A jug of coffee brought by a friend was the last cup for those of us who hadn’t already decided to wean ourselves from caffeine. Like many other luxuries, there would be precious little coffee inside the Biosphere; only having what beans we could harvest from the handful of young coffee tree saplings in our orchard and rainforest. And our teas were limited to herbal teas.
Opinions about how to prepare ourselves for such an unusual experiment were decidedly divided. Some crew members, such as Gaie Alling, Jane Poynter, and Mark Van Thillo (known as Laser), maintained that “the experiment begins when it begins,” and they’d continue their normal patterns until then. Others, such as Mark Nelson and Linda Leigh (both coffee drinkers), decided to avoid the bodily shock they endured each time we started a week-long trial eating only what we’d have within the Biosphere 2 experimental diet, and so gradually cut out caffeine in advance.
The coffee jug exited with the visitors and the final clean-up crew. Along with the jug went the last packaged sugar and Styrofoam cups that we would see for a long time to come. Our very last luxury was a large breakfast of ham, eggs, and bread with butter; which we enjoyed in the peace and quiet of the Biosphere after the ceremonies, final goodbyes, and closure were over. From then on, all food would be grown, processed, and prepared by our own hands inside the Biosphere under the watchful eyes of Sally Silverstone, our co-captain, Agriculture and Food Systems Manager.
PACKING OUR BAGS
After years of intense concentration on the design and construction of an undertaking as ambitious as Biosphere 2, our own personal preparations seemed insignificant by comparison. So perhaps it’s not surprising that some of us waited until the last two weeks before closure to get those needs in order. Many of us weren’t even sure exactly what those needs would prove to be. How many pairs of socks, shoes, shorts, pants, shirts, and underwear will we need? What about clothes for special occasions? Would we even have special occasions to dress up for? Which books, tapes, CDs, photographs, paintings, stereo, TV, mementos, and other personal items should we bring in for our inner nourishment? This was a far cry from packing for a trip to Europe or a summer collecting expedition.
Sally lived out of a knapsack for years as she worked on various agricultural projects in India, Africa, and Puerto Rico, so material possessions were not a burden with which she had to deal. But others had more complicated situations. Roy Walford had cars, a house, and over a thousand experimental mice in his University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Medical School pathology laboratory. His cars he loaned to friends, his house he entrusted to his daughter, and his mice became the responsibility of his lab assistants.
Space Biospheres Ventures (SBV), the parent company that created the Biosphere, helped most of us store our clothes, furniture, and other belongings. But Mark Nelson brought all his clothes inside—from fur hats and heavy overcoats to dark suits with black dress shoes to match. Roy brought his brightly colored lungis (one-piece Indian cloth wraparounds for men). Jane brought a set of vividly colored wigs and masks for parties and other lighthearted moments.
Jane and Gaie shopped for sneakers and blue jeans in the Tucson Mall. Jane was the Manager of Field Crops and Animal Systems. Gaie (or Abigail) was the Assistant Director of Research and Development and the Director of Marine Ecological Systems for SBV, as well as Scientific Chief inside Biosphere 2. Her responsibilities for the two-year experiment included not only the management of the marine systems, but overall monitoring and management of the Biosphere 2 experiment, its research programs, and safety of its crew. Gaie earned a bachelor’s degree in marine
