Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 28, 1995                   TAG: 9503290008
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG                                  LENGTH: Long

`WE HAD NO IDEA WHAT WE WERE IN FOR'

When eight volunteers began their two-year stay in Biosphere II in 1991, they looked forward to living and working together in their self-contained ecosystem near Tucson, Ariz.

"We were intelligent, competent, emotionally stable people. We liked each other," said Taber MacCallum, one of the eight who had worked together for some three years on the experiment before being being selected as the crew. "We sort of thought we knew each other's quirks ... And we really had no idea what we were in for."

MacCallum, who was at Virginia Tech to participate in the third annual Mid-Atlantic Human Factors Conference, which ends today, spoke about his Biosphere experience at a gathering Sunday night.

"About six months is when we began to have real problems," he said. "For 18 months, I didn't look into the eyes of four people ... We're still split."

Biosphere II put 3.15 acres of landscapes ranging from desert to rain forest and 3,800 species of plants and animals under a massive glass-and-steel dome. The purpose was to see if an enclosed, complex ecosystem would find a balance over time, he said. "And it worked."

The privately financed, $150 million venture was seen as applicable to space colonies or long-duration space flights. It never was meant to be completely independent - it used outside electricity, for example - which MacCallum said led to misunderstandings when it came under intense media scrutiny.

The project also had human problems, including the early 1993 resignation of 10 scientists named to oversee it.

The four men and four women inside found themselves working long hours at their various specialties, caring for the plants and animals and doing other duties from monitoring the air to milking goats. They all had personal computers, telephones, televisions and other amenities in modern, private apartments, and worked in lush surroundings that one of their number, at the start of the experiment, likened to Eden.

"It really was a beautiful place to live," MacCallum said. "We all went in rather naive as to what we were in for."

There was a lack of oxygen. And food production problems from seasonal lack of sunlight left them on the edge of being fat-deficient. MacCallum lost 56 pounds in the two years.

"We ate a lot of beets. Our beets did very well," he said. "I don't need to ever eat another beet again."

They also ate the pigs that had been placed in the Biosphere, because, it turned out, pigs and humans compete for the same kinds of food. Goats, on the other hand, not only provided milk but also ate plant stalks, while humans ate the fruit, which worked out well.

MacCallum found himself in a group of four who suggested that food and oxygen be imported to handle the immediate problems and that the experiment be adjusted to compensate.

The other four sided with management against changing the experiment in any way. They began to regard the first group as traitors.

They kept saying that anyone was free to leave. "That air-lock door was always sitting there, just sort of beckoning you," MacCallum said. But nobody wanted to be the first to go.

That was how the split started, and little psychological things - some dredged up from childhood - added to it, MacCallum said. The groups of four began eating and socializing separately, yet nobody admitted out loud for a long time that there was a division.

The problems were aggravated by a largely fruit-and-vegetable diet that turned the eight orange (because of an excess of carotene from too many sweet potatoes) and skinny (existing on 1,800 calories a day), often gasping for breath and suffering from sleep disorders for lack of oxygen (the equivalent of living at 15,000 feet of elevation).

"All of us suffered clinical depression," to the point where they began thinking of the Biosphere air as "the grumposphere," he said.

Eventually, management did supply more oxygen, and the mystery of its disappearance was solved. "It turns out that concrete absorbs carbon dioxide like a sponge," MacCallum said, and the Biosphere had tons of concrete. "This is where our oxygen and carbon was."

MacCallum said the Biosphere experiment showed that, even with the best engineering and technology, attention must be paid to human factors in long-term isolation situations.

"I think a lot of the conflict stemmed from personal problems ... It's strange little things from your childhood that drive you insane," he said. "You're under incredible stress and incredible pressure, and your mind does strange things."

He was so angry, he said, that he quit the project as soon as the eight emerged from their two-year experiment. The first thing after that?

"Threw a big party. I wanted nothing more than to be in a room with a whole bunch of friends."

MacCallum later married one of the women who had been in the Biosphere with him. They had been sharing a relationship before and during the experiment. He said the eight had been together for years "and worked through who was with who and who wasn't with anybody," so mixing sexes never was a problem. "I'd prefer a mixed crew under any circumstances."

He has talked to others going into long-term confinement situations who insist, as the eight Biospherians did, that they will be able to handle any psychological stresses. "All I can do is go back to my experience and say it didn't happen."

MacCallum said psycho-social issues must be taken into consideration by people being isolated for long explorations, from Antarctica to outer space.

Asked if his experience gave him any insight into the O.J. Simpson jury, he said he was not aware of its dynamics, but "I wouldn't want my life to be in the hands of 12 people who had been sequestered for a year, six months or whatever."

sh: o: not found STORY Biosphere sp TOPIC `we had no i KEYWORDK AUTHOR:03/28/95 1SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

text

begin

Input file was 0008 Output file was /asst/dti/0329/pass2/0008