My Stubborn Fascination with Biosphere 2.

“Why is it called Biosphere 2?” you may ask. “Was there a first one, like the four previous Babylon space stations in’Babylon 5’?”

Not quite like that. Biosphere 1 is the Earth. Biosphere 2 is, or was intended to be, a sealed off mini-Earth about 3 acres from end to end, located a little way north of Tucson, Arizona.

The structure was completed and stocked with plant and animal life by the spring of 1992. It was funded primarily by a wealthy oil baron in Texas who, I’m guessing, wanted to help save the Earth from ecological disaster by supporting four men and four women willing to live for two years in a giant greenhouse that supplies and recycles all its own air, water and nutrients. The ultimate goal was to see if we can build habitable Earth domes on other planets and moons. A secondary goal was to see if maybe we can fix our own planet while we’re at it.

And so eight human beings entered this structure and sealed it up, knowing full well that any number of things could go wrong. As they used to say on “Mythbusters”, “Failure is always an option!” 

Sure enough, things went wrong. The worst part was the sharp drop in oxygen levels relative to the CO2. And soon there were some crop failures on the organic farm. About after a year, as one of the Biospherians put it, “we were starving and suffocating”. New oxygen was allowed in so the subjects wouldn’t die or get permanently disabled, while it was finally determined where that oxygen was going: into the concrete.

One would think that finding this answer to the oxygen problem would lead to a new experiment with this correction in place, but it didn’t happen, due to some crazy legal conflicts, changes in ownership and the abrupt pulling of funds. Finally, in 2007, Biosphere 2 was acquired by the University of Arizona for studies and experiments in Earth science.

It’s also open for tourism, which is why John and I visited Tucson in late December of 2016.

Once we purchased tickets in the welcome center, our group was led on a five minute walk down a pavement to the structure itself. The solid white section is the Human Habitat, where we walk in through the entrance door and see the individual apartments, kitchen, common dining room, conference table and science lab. From there we walk up the stairs and enter the farm dome, which, naturally, no longer has a farm. It’s a downward sloping layer of soil where water and irrigation experiments are still performed.

While at that high platform, we turned left and walked through a hallway leading to the main natural biomes. From the railway we observed the small ocean, still with a flowing artificial tide, still growing a coral reef imported from Baja California. To the left, the towering rainforest dome (the largest visible end of the structure) whose forest is still living after all these decades.

As we walk to our right across the platform, we see where the savannah and wetland used to be; they’re empty now, and in place of the savannah was a small hydroponic garden in a box about ten feet by four feet. Vegetable plants such as tomatoes and cucumbers were growing from what appeared to be a layer of rocks, fed by a water pipe.

Overall it felt quite hot and humid inside, like the giant greenhouse it was. As we progressed to the dome at the far end, we explored the desert biome (a desert within the much larger desert that is Arizona!), where the air was somewhat drier.

From there we went down a flight of stairs to see the Technosphere underground, all the pipes and hydraulics controlling the indoor weather and air pressure. Then back outside where we could see the ocean again through windows. And that’s the tour!

Here is something I did not mention earlier; at the platform, shortly before leaving the farm and entering the rainforest, John received a text from a friend of ours with bad news. A week earlier we had learned of the illness and hospitalization of the actress Carrie Fisher.  Now my husband was saying “oh, no.” And I said “what?” He said, in a very low, solemn voice, “Carrie Fisher.”

I knew right away what he meant. But I still had to ask. “She died?” I whispered.

He confirmed it was so.

Of all the places to be visiting upon hearing this particular bit of shocking news…Florida, Cancun, San Francisco, or even Skywalker Ranch…somehow being inside the Biosphere at that moment felt especially weird. I wish I could adequately explain it.

But I was in mid-tour, so there was nothing I could do but shove this pain into the back of my mind and see the rest of the structure. It wasn’t until we stopped for lunch at a little cafe near the welcome center that I went onto Facebook with my iPhone to chat with other fans (whether of Star Wars or other movies in which she acted such as “Hannah and Her Sisters” or “When Harry Met Sally”) just to start processing the shock and grief.

So what is my summation of this tour?  I had wanted to step inside this fascinating structure and, as of six years ago, I accomplished that.  More importantly, this is an example of my quest to stop fantasizing about life in a beautiful garden and appreciate the realities of where I live now. Not just because the Biosphere experiment was marred by real hardship, but because if I did live in one, I’d start fantasizing of a city I could go to by train to sit in a movie theater or buy a cup of fresh iced tea.

I guess I’m saying the grass is green enough for me here at home, by the Hudson River.

But I will still keep traveling and exploring. That’s why this journal is called The Traveler.