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'Spaceship Earth' documentary explores the mystery of the controversial Biosphere 2 experiment

Weldon B. Johnson
Arizona Republic

Conduct a web search for Biosphere 2 and one of the first things that comes up is the question: Did it fail?

Watch the documentary film, “Spaceship Earth” (★★★ out of five) and the answer could well be: It depends.

“Spaceship Earth,” directed by Matt Wolf (“Bayard & Me,” “Teenage”), tells the story of John Allen and the group of people behind Biosphere 2, a kind of scale model of the Earth that opened in Arizona in 1991.

Biosphere 2 (the Earth itself is Biosphere 1, the movie explains) was an experiment designed, at least in part, to explore the possibility of creating a self-sustaining ecosystem for long-term space exploration, surviving climate change or some other disaster that could make Earth uninhabitable.

Whether it was successful or not depends on your definition of success. It's unclear if it proved what its creators set out to prove, but it's still functioning almost 30 years later.

A self-contained ecosystem?

Eight people entered Biosphere 2 in 1991 and were supposed to survive only on things contained within the structure (including its atmosphere) for two years.

While the idea of a small group of people surviving in a confined space sealed off from the outside world might have its appeal during the current COVID-19 outbreak, it was a radical idea back in the early 1990s.

“Spaceship Earth” details the media hype surrounding the start of the experiment, and it chronicles the way that attention turned negative when questions came up about the purity of the science there.

One of the group was injured during the experiment and had to leave to get medical attention. Additional supplies were introduced into the supposedly sealed environment when she returned and it was later revealed that fresh air was also pumped into the facility.

The interesting crew behind the biosphere

The film details how Allen and those in his circle lost control of the project (it is now run by the University of Arizona) and what happened to them in the years since.

Perhaps more interesting, though, is the story of how that group came together in the first place.

Dr. Roy Walford (front) was among the candidates for Biosphere 2, a privately funded experiment designed to investigate the way in which humans interact with a small self-sufficient ecological environment, and to look at possibilities for future planetary colonization.

That story began in the late 1960s with a group of people looking to challenge themselves. They started with theater and branched out into diverse ventures that included real estate, an art gallery and even building an ocean-going ship without having much experience in any of those areas.

Unlike some other collectives that sprung up during that time, they say they didn’t use drugs and weren’t opposed to making money. The film details how those early ventures led to Biosphere 2, which was the group's most ambitious undertaking.

“We weren’t a commune, we were a corporation,” one of the members said early in the film.

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