Читать книгу Life Under Glass - Марк Нельсон - Страница 24

“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.