Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 19, 1993 TAG: 9309190090
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ORACLE, ARIZ. LENGTH: Long
But when the airlocks open next Sunday, Poynter says she and the others will be more than ready to rejoin the world after a stay punctuated by controversy, occasional hunger and achievement.
"This has been a long haul," Poynter said in a recent telephone interview from inside the dome. "For sure, we all suffered from cabin fever."
The futuristic, privately financed project has been accused of hucksterism, scientific amateurism and outright deception in the much-publicized test of a prototype space colony.
But backers and some outside scientists say the $150 million experiment succeeded in its main mission - keeping eight people alive for two years, growing most of their own food and recycling water, waste and most of the air.
"We really didn't know if it was going to work," said Poynter, who managed the half-acre farm. "It wasn't until we sealed this up entirely, we lived in here for a while and we saw, `Boy, this does work!' "
Biosphere 2's glass-and-steel dome encloses a tiny rain forest, desert, ocean and savannah in a 3.15-acre replica of Biosphere 1 - the Earth. The varied "biomes," stocked with 3,800 species of plants and animals, are supposed to work together to create a self-contained, balanced atmosphere like that in the real world.
The four women and four men of the crew had unlimited phone contact with the outside world but said in recent telephone interviews that they can't wait to see family and friends and sample some long-denied food and drink.
"I would never go out into space without my friends," said Mark Van Thillo, the team's technical manager and co-captain. "That's something I've learned in here."
Botanist Linda Leigh isn't looking forward to the outside world's daily irritants, such as noise, pollution and driving. But friends and food are another matter.
"I love coffee, and love to sit down for a cup with a friend," Leigh said.
Dr. Roy Walford figures he'll celebrate with a glass of good scotch.
Biosphereans say that despite such stresses as limited diet and occasional arguments, they always focused on making Biosphere 2 work.
The crewmembers, all single, were each assigned a two-room apartment. They won't discuss in-the-bubble romances or sleeping arrangements.
Space Biospheres Ventures is already planning a second one-year stay in the dome, which is intended partly as a lab to study the Earth's environment. The company, backed largely by Fort Worth oil billionaire Edward Bass, plans to name a team soon and close them in around late February, after a survey of all plants and animals.
The miniworld did sustain its crew, and most of the plants and animals are thought to have survived. But there were problems.
The atmosphere got quickly out of balance and never was put right.
Oxygen, which makes up 21 percent of the Earth's air at sea level, declined steadily, and was down to 14.5 percent by early this year.
That left the crew breathing air as thin as that atop a 13,400-foot mountain, so members tired easily and had trouble sleeping. Some had to breathe pure oxygen at night.
Oxygen was pumped in twice this year.
From the start, levels of potentially hazardous carbon dioxide climbed in Biosphere's air.
Carbon dioxide is found at 360 parts per million in the Earth's atmosphere, but reached more than 4,000 ppm in the Biosphere during a spell of prolonged cloudy weather. The level settled around 2,000 ppm this summer - high, but well below the federal workplace safety limit of 10,000 ppm.
The farm failed to produce up to expectations, a development sponsors blame on pests and unexpectedly cloudy weather over the dome set in desert foothills 35 miles north of Tucson.
Instead of growing all their food, the dome's inhabitants ended up producing just 80 percent. They made up the difference by eating crops grown and stocked inside Biosphere before it was sealed and by eating some items, like kidney beans, that had been intended for seed but hadn't grown well.
Crew members had planned to live on a home-grown vegetarian bounty, supplemented with the occasional egg, goat or chicken. They ended up getting an average of 1,780 calories a day for the first six months, then 2,200 for the rest of their stay.
All reported feeling hungry, and they lost an average 14 percent of their body weight on a menu heavy on such items as sweet potatoes, wheat, rice and bananas.
Walford, the resident physician, says the pesticide-free, low-calorie diet did wonders for cholesterol levels, blood pressure, blood sugar and general health.
Walford, 69, says his experience in the dome supports his earlier research on animals suggesting that an extremely low-calorie diet could help humans live 120 years.
That kind of out-of-the-mainstream science, coupled with Biosphere organizers' fascination with appearances, has brought ridicule from the likes of Jay Leno and made it easier for critics to score points with the media.
Within weeks after the crew was closed in, project operators were forced to make a series of embarrassing disclosures: They'd secretly installed mechanical scrubbers before closure to clear the air of carbon dioxide. They'd stockpiled food in the dome. And when Poynter left briefly for finger surgery after an accident, she secretly brought back a duffle bag of non-food supplies.
Stated quietly from the start but downplayed by the publicity-conscious company was the fact that the whole experiment in self-sufficiency depends on electricity from an outside generator.
Bass named an advisory panel of respected outside scientists in February 1992 to quiet criticism.
The panel succeeded in getting Bass to name an experienced scientist as research director, but then disbanded this spring after several members quit over disagreements with the project's two top managers.
by CNB