Читать книгу Life Under Glass - Марк Нельсон - Страница 29

“Biosphere 2 is a new kind of telescope which can be used to look at the Earth itself. We need to take the time to understand how to use it, to discover the kind of questions we should ask, and to scale up from there.”

– Dr. Christopher Langton, Santa Fe Institute

June 2, 1992

INTERVIEWERS AND VISITORS always ask us what a typical day was like inside Biosphere 2. What did you do on February 10 or June 2? Did you mark your calendar with any special event that day? Or was it just another Monday or Tuesday?

Even if we didn’t check our logbook or diaries, we could say that we spent Tuesday, June 2, 1992 in a way that was unquestionably different from anyone else on Earth. But to us it was a fairly typical day. Here is a look at what filled our hours that day; the explanations of events are brief, because many of these daily tasks were a continuous part of the much larger challenges and research studies which the remainder of this book will detail.

Dawn broke over the Santa Catalina Mountains at 5:35 AM that morning. No activities were scheduled at that hour, but the crew’s early birds were already stirring. Linda got up to do her early morning check of the wilderness areas, including observations on how much had been eaten of the ‘monkey chow’ put out in bowls for the galagos (the small primates also known as bush babies) in the lowland rainforest. Sally made her early morning cup of mint tea and was already on her way to work in the vegetable patch of the agriculture system. Mark, who had also gotten up early, was hand-watering the supplemental crop boxes on the agriculture balcony, and cutting fresh mint and herbs for the kitchen. He would soon log into his email to review the weather report of the last twenty-four hours and record it in his notebook.

By 6:30, Gaie, the breakfast cook of the day, sounded the official wakeup call. She phoned each apartment, allowing the crew a half-hour to shower and dress before the hour of work that precedes breakfast.

There was one major difference between the bathrooms you’re familiar with and the ones inside Biosphere 2: we had no toilet paper. There was no way that our recycling system could handle the amount of toilet paper that eight people would produce in two years. Instead, we used a water spray that hung next to the toilet. We found it in a plumbing catalogue designed for Saudi Arabian customers; the Arabs (as well as many other cultures) consider toilet paper far less effective for hygiene and have used water for the purpose for centuries.

Flushing the toilet, of course, didn’t mean that ‘it went somewhere’ to be forgotten. All of the water that comes from the human habitat area—from toilets, showers, kitchens, laundries—went to the basement of the agricultural area and into the waste recycling system. Since we monitored the system every day, we could often tell if a faucet had been left open or a toilet was malfunctioning, because a suspiciously large amount of water would have entered the tanks.

After the wakeup call, Gaie headed for the kitchen to get breakfast going. She pre-heated the oven, boiled water for porridge and tea, and then stopped in at the command room to get the twenty-four-hour report on carbon dioxide to bring to the morning meeting.

By 7 AM, work had begun. Sally was milking the four she-goats, and Jane was feeding them. The buck and two bleating kids got their feed, too. Sally fed the chickens their portions of worms and azolla, a high-protein fern that grew on the surface of the water in the rice paddies. Later they’d bring the milk, plus eggs collected from the chickens, up to the breakfast table.

Jane checked the status of the irrigation tanks in the agriculture basement and the fields to ensure that the computer-programmed watering system had been triggered successfully. Sally began her daily collection of fresh vegetables, and since it was a Tuesday, she also brought up the next week’s rations from the basement by elevator—burlap sacks of sweet potatoes, taro, flour, and beans. The supplies and the five-gallon buckets of vegetables Sally had picked had accumulated in the plaza outside the main double doors leading into the farm.

Linda, Taber, and Mark took pruning shears and sickles to the rainforest. Linda and Taber climbed into the space frame in the northeast corner to continue cutting back morning glory vines that were shading the trees. Mark was working by the varzea, the rainforest stream, cutting and bundling up morning glory vines that tangled the steep slopes of the banks and waded into the stream to cut and haul out their roots. By the end of the hour, Linda and Taber gathered twenty-five pounds of the most edible morning glory leaves and vines for the fodder storage bins in the animal bay, our enclosed barnyard area.

Laser logged on to his computer program in the command room to check the technical systems around the Biosphere. A special vibration analysis program gave early warnings of potential breakdowns. He studied the analysis report, completed the weekly maintenance report, then took a quick trip to the basement below the savannah to check on the tanks of water that had been condensed out of the air which passed through the wilderness biomes. Laser was in charge of the rain for the wilderness area (both terrestrial and marine) and had to mix the water which drained through each biome (its leachate water) with an appropriate amount of condensed water to make acceptable irrigation water for each area.

Meanwhile, Roy was completing the laboratory workups from the last set of biospherian medical checks. He was also in the process of conducting a stress hormone study, which requires the collection of daily urine samples. He added the fixative agent to the next day’s collecting bottle and stored the previous day’s samples in the freezers in the genetic and tissue culture laboratory on the mezzanine above the analytical laboratory.

By then, Gaie had finished fixing breakfast. Porridge was standard for every breakfast, and that day she made it with a mix of sorghum and wheat flour, sweetened with ripe bananas and papayas, topped with goat’s milk. The rest of the menu depended on the cook’s allotments of food. On special holidays and birthday mornings there might have been omelets or banana-filled crepes or even a cup of coffee from beans grown on one of the dozen young coffee trees. (The few beans we grew in the Biosphere were never enough for daily cups of coffee.) That morning, along with the porridge, Gaie served a carrot-cake loaf topped with an icing of milk, banana, and passion fruit; there was also a side dish of beans and sweet potatoes stir-fried with chilies.

At 8:00 AM, the kitchen chimes would finally sound on our two-way radios, and we assembled for breakfast. Our breakfast started off with the usual joking and social conversation, but it also served as our morning staff meeting, updating everyone on the progress of the experiment. Sally called the meeting to order and went over who was on the day’s watch and who had cooking duty. She also asked Mark for the weather report, which included key environmental data: high and low temperatures in all the biomes for the previous day, the relative humidity in the agriculture area, outside temperatures (needed for gauging how to program our air handlers for cooling and heating), outside and inside total light received, and high and low carbon dioxide values at various sensors. Gaie then added the high and mid-point CO₂ for the previous day, which was followed by a discussion about various options to deal with CO₂ levels, tactics which had to conform with the SBV research strategy of minimizing the impact of elevated CO₂ on the overall system, and specifically to the ecology of each biome. Should temperatures be lowered in the biomes to lower soil respiration? What was the status of compost making which releases CO₂? When would the dormant desert and savannah receive their first activating ‘monsoonal’ rain, setting off an extra release of CO₂? Finally, Sally outlined the tasks for the morning agriculture crew, and each crew member outlined his or her day to make sure that all activities were coordinated.

After Sally adjourned the meeting, the 24 hour watch duties (similar to a ship’s officer watch) was officially handed over from Gaie, who was on every Monday, to Mark, the Tuesday watch. Seven biospherians share the watch duties because Laser, as technical manager, has to be on back-up call for all of the others. If anything unusual had happened on Monday, or if there were any alarms during the day, Gaie would note them in the logbook. But this day had gone perfectly. Mark took over the watch and checked by radio with the Mission Control counterpart on the outside, who had also received the Mission Control watch handed over from the previous day’s watch person.

With twenty minutes until the start of the morning work crews, we had some free time to catch up with messages on our computers, or the morning news on TV. Gaie did a quick cleanup in the kitchen, loaded the dishwasher, and turned it on. Then she brought a couple of jugs of mint tea to the plaza for morning break.

For all of us, the one-hour agriculture work began at 8:45, with five of us continuing on for another two hours. That day we weeded sweet potato, sorghum, and peanut plots in addition to routine agricultural duties. Laser, in charge of compost, began his hour by pouring several buckets of animal manure and crop residue into the hammer mill which shred the material into our compost machine and helped accelerate the decomposition process. His other responsibilities were to feed and water the worm-bed area in the agriculture basement. That morning he had brought a bucket of worms to the animal bay for the chickens. Mark’s daily routines include harvesting a bucket of the azolla water fern and cutting fodder for the animals. That morning, he cut elephant grass that had been planted along every available walkway of the agriculture area. He also gathered a bucket of canna lilies that grew in the constructed wetland wastewater lagoons in the south basement which were also used as goat fodder.

While in the south basement where the light spilled through a span of glass, Mark checked the constructed wetland wastewater system, which consisted of three holding tanks that received all the wastewater from our habitat and another set of three for wastewater from the animal bay and laboratories. When filled, the tanks were closed and anaerobic bacteria began the breakdown process. Periodically, by batches, tanks were emptied into the wetland plant lagoons where canna, hyacinth, and a dozen other plants purified the water as they grew. That particular day Mark unloaded part of the wetland lagoon to make room for new wastewater. Before starting the pumps, he checked with Jane to see if the agriculture irrigation tanks were ready to receive the treated wastewater.

Sally continued her round of vegetable harvests, thinning beets from one of our new stairwell planters and picking tomatoes from plants in tubs on the bases of the space frame pillars. Linda had been processing wheat from our last grain harvests for the past couple of weeks in the basement. The noise of the thresher prevented her from hearing the radio, so she told her ‘buddy’, Gaie, to cover any radio calls for her. It was a big world, our three-acre Biosphere, with deep waters, cliffs and hills, as well as a basement filled with mechanical and electrical equipment, so staying in radio contact was important. Having a buddy system (divers use a similar system) helped everyone keep in touch.

That day, we planned to experiment with some new varieties of lablab beans that were given to us from a research center in India. Roy was collecting beans from the first plot in which we’d tried them, and pruned them to encourage more flowering. Jane and Taber also pruned the sweet potato plants to stimulate the growth of tubers, having collected the fifty pounds of high-protein fodder we needed daily for the goats. The weeds they removed went to the compost machine, and the sweet potato greens went to the animal bay as extra fodder.

Gaie usually spent her first morning hour tending the orchard, harvesting papayas and figs, pruning citrus and guava trees, and performing checks on the marine systems before joining the agriculture crew. This included looking over the mechanical systems, as well as data such as temperature, salinity, nutrient, and pH levels. She would then take our little boat ‘out to sea’ to skim the leaves from the savannah cliff face off the surface of the water, and then clean the protein skimmers, another system that removed excess nutrients from our ocean’s water by bubbling air through pipes.

By a quarter to ten, Laser and Taber were at work on technical maintenance. They cleaned the filters on the basement air handlers that controlled climate in the savannah and installed new parts to the system that collected condensed water from the space frame glass over the wilderness areas. Gaie, Jane, Mark, and Sally continued with the peanut harvest, and while Mark and Gaie pitchforked the peanut plants into piles, Sally and Jane stripped the roots and piled the greens into separate buckets to be taken to the drying ovens at the end of the crew. These peanut greens would be used for animal fodder after weighing and drying,

At that point, Linda would have finished threshing and put the wheat grain into the drying oven. After drying, buckets of wheat grain go to the seed cleaning machine for the final separation of remaining leaves. Roy spent this second hour in the medical laboratory on the mezzanine floor of the habitat, working on a paper detailing the oxygen depletion studies he and Taber were carrying out. As work crew ended, the rest of us grabbed a food bucket or sack to carry to the elevator which went up from the orchard portion of the IAB to the dining room.

Although we had no physical contact with anyone except the other seven people living inside, parts of our lives were very public. Often groups of visitors would gather to watch us through the glass windows that separated our two worlds. Being caught in undignified positions no longer bothered us. Being without self-consciousness allowed us to work barefoot in shorts, even in the most amusing circumstances, such as splashing through the rice paddies splattered with mud while diving for the tilapia that grew there. We couldn’t hear what people said through the glass unless our ears were pressed against it and they were shouting. Sometimes people held up signs wishing us good luck, and it gave us a boost to see their smiles and thumbs-up gestures. At times when someone wanted total privacy, it wasn’t difficult to find seclusion deep within the vegetation of the rainforest, far from the side glass, or to do chores early in the morning or in the evening when visitors weren’t around.

At 10:45, a break was announced over the radio. Mint tea and roasted peanuts were set out in the plaza. For fifteen minutes, we relaxed on the carpet and cushioned benches, or on the first steps of the tower stairway, then dispersed to go on to the next of our biospherian tasks.

This was Gaie’s day to put on her wetsuit and scuba gear to ‘garden’ the coral reef: a weekly dive that included examining the overall health of the reef and fish populations, cleaning the underwater viewing windows, and removing excess algae (similar to weeding). An on-site security guard would regularly watch her through the window, acting as her diving buddy, as we were too few to have her accompanied each time. If anything went wrong, the guard would call Laser to join Gaie underwater.

While Gaie checked the coral reef, Sally moved the day’s vegetables and a week’s supply of staples (grains, tubers, and fruit) into the back kitchen to be weighed, logged into notebooks, and stored in refrigerators, grain bins, or the freezer. Then Gaie and Jane returned to the agriculture area to examine the crops for insects and disease. Sally had recently released two new types of mite predators, so she also collected a few sweet potato leaves to check on how they were doing. A microscope sat on a counter in the laundry room off the plaza for these examinations. Jane sprayed the rice paddies and grain fields with B.T. (Bacillus thurigensis), a useful bacterium which parasitizes looper worms, a harmful caterpillar, from a five-gallon backpack sprayer. This method had successfully kept the loopers under control.

By then Linda and Taber, into their second hour of wilderness operations, moved to the upper savannah to prune back the passion vines and cowpeas that were giving too much shade to the African acacia trees along the savannah stream. In the sand dune area of the desert, Mark took soil cores to measure soil moisture. On the dune sat a squat Plexiglas box nicknamed ‘R2D2’ (after the Star Wars robot), a device which continuously measured the CO₂ (carbon dioxide) coming out of the soil. We moved the machine from biome to biome, to monitor how CO₂ efflux changed with the seasons. The desert had its last rain a few weeks prior, and the soil had rapidly dried out, with CO₂ emissions having dropped considerably. Mark took samples from the first and second foot of soil and weighed them wet before drying them in the agricultural drying ovens. In seven days, he would have to weigh them again to get accurate soil moisture readings.

Laser continued his round of preventive maintenance, which included cleaning filters in the water systems. He called the Energy Center to check on the status of repair of their backup generator and on our supply of chilled water. The higher the outside temperature, the colder the water had to be in order to cool down the Biosphere.

We had already cut the dry grasses in the dormant savannah in anticipation of the first rainfall to bring it out of dormancy. The timing of these seasonal climate changes were determined by the SBV research division which then required coordination between the Biosphere 2 crew and personnel in Mission Control to program the air handlers. Between our morning break and lunch, Roy re-calibrated sensors for atmospheric temperature and humidity.

At 11:30 Sally started a phone call with school children in Ohio. Seated in their school library, some sixty eighth graders listened on speaker as Sally talked about Biosphere 2 and then answered their questions. Hundreds of schools around the country have used educational materials from Biosphere 2 to learn about biomes and global ecology. Many grade-school students have designed and even constructed their own model Biospheres complete with plants and even insects. All eight of us frequently connected with schools in Arizona and around the country–one of the most enjoyable of our “jobs” while inside. When Biosphere 2 was first planned, it was not expected that it would be more than a quiet research endeavor in the somewhat remote, and seasonally quite hot, Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona. We expected to recoup the investment by building other biospheric laboratories in world cities which would double as eco-tourism destinations. But when Biosphere 2 struck a nerve and excited people around the world, people began coming–by the dozens, hundreds, then thousands, even before we had created a formal visitor’s program. Consequently, we realized that biospherics education had to be an important part of Biosphere 2’s program; and reaching and changing minds, especially young minds, was a major payback for the epic creation of the facility.

By noon, Gaie showered, changed, and returned to the kitchen to make final preparations for lunch. Like most of the Biosphere 2 cooks, she’d done much of the work the previous afternoon while fixing dinner. With the vegetables cut and the potatoes already baked, she only needed to finish the salad. She made a dressing (bananas blended with water and chopped herbs), popped her baked potato casserole into the oven to reheat, and salted the soup of beans, vegetables, and chicken broth which had been slowly cooking in a crock pot since the night before. She then sautéed Swiss chard and beet greens in the wok and mixed up another cold salad of sliced beets and papaya.

Jane and Sally were giving the goats and chickens their midday feed. The buck, Buffalo Bill, received a diet lower in protein than the milk goats and had to be locked into a side pen during each of the three daily feedings. The two kids normally kept Buffalo Bill company, but since they were now a week into being weaned, they also were fed a different diet in a separate pen. Buffalo Bill was a veritable Houdini at opening pen doors, so before leaving, Jane routinely double-locked them and tied them with a loop of baling wire.

Lunch time was 12:30. A couple of latecomers had let us know via radio that they’d be along soon, and we prepared plates for them. All our meals were either served on individual plates or put out in servers where it’s easy to see each one-eighth portion. Everything was eaten, a tribute both to the care with which the cooks prepared the meals, and to the appetite we brought to each meal.

Over lunch, we’d share more news. We were all especially interested in animal sightings in the wilderness, news from TV radio, or email, or what comes over the grapevine from friends or staff with whom we had recently been in touch with by phone. Jane brought up the coming arts festival we had planned and who on the outside would be sending in their music, paintings, or poems over the video system. Laser enthusiastically described his encounter with a baby galago in the orchard the previous night; Linda said it was a baby newly born to Topaz. One of our buddies in Mission Control took on the weekly task of renting the latest video releases for us. Laser announced that Lorenzo’s Oil and Malcolm X had just been piped in and we all let out a hearty cheer. ‘Piping in’ a movie means that Laser would place a blank tape into the VCR to record what had been transmitted through the video link with Mission Control.

For an hour and a half after lunch, we usually took an informal siesta. After the initial months of adjusting to the new diet, the heavy physical work, and the lower oxygen supply, not many of us actually used the time to take a nap, but instead relaxed in our rooms reading or phoning friends. It became a welcome break in the workday. Everyone in Mission Control knew our schedules, so there were no radio calls during that time, unless there was something urgent to attend to. This day Mark’s family came to visit him at the special window we use to meet with outsiders. His mother, who after closure, made the big move from Brooklyn to Tucson, his brother, and his sister-in-law, who lived just a few miles away, chatted with him at the window through a speaker phone.

Around 2:30, Sally would place the next allotment of food in large plastic tubs in the refrigerator. Taber, the next cook on the rotation, began his cooking duties by checking the blackboard in the back kitchen where Sally noted the available quantities of some of the staples. These changed from week to week depending on our harvests and on Sally’s calculations (assisted by computer) of our nutritional needs. Taber’s beans had already been soaked overnight, and since the morning they had been slowly cooking in a crock pot. Our foods included many whole foods, so there was more washing, peeling, and soaking than normally required in a typical American meal preparation.

Jane and Gaie put on loose-fitting work clothes for the messy, sweaty job of cleaning two rows of algae scrubbers. Gaie cleaned the Plexiglas containers and wave-buckets, while Jane scraped the old algae off the screens. The harvesting of the algae off the screens was labor-intensive, so the biospherians would alternate the job, each doing one to two hours every two weeks. Before they completed the job, Jane and Gaie placed the scraped-off algae in racks in the room’s drying ovens.

Now R2D2 had to be moved to its new location in the lower savannah. First Linda disconnected the long cable which carried its measurements to one of the large computer stations in the basement. Then Mark and Taber coiled the cable and extension cord and gently moved the ‘portable’ but awkward sixty-pound apparatus over the surprisingly rugged and varied Biosphere 2 terrain. They re-ran the cable and extension cords to the nearest side air vent that drops down to the basement and Linda later rewired the cable to the closest computer cabinet and electrical outlet. There were computers along with thousands of sensors all over the Biosphere: parts of the “Nerve System” that collected data so it would be available to us and Mission Control.

In each biome, a circular plastic ring had been fixed in the ground for R2D2 to sit on. A greased gasket ensured an airtight fit. The instrument had two sensors to measure both the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the carbon dioxide diffusing out from the soil. Before R2D2 was constructed by Mission Control staff at the end of our first year, Linda and Taber used to take the measurements manually, taking a syringe of air every six hours over twenty-four-hour periods and then running the air samples on a gas chromatograph in the Biosphere 2 laboratory. We’d occasionally use the manual method to check the accuracy of R2D2 and to take samples in other biomes if R2D2 was occupied elsewhere.

The weekly Mission Control meeting via video started at 3:00 PM. Sally and Laser joined Norberto Alvarez-Romo, head of Mission Control, Bill Dempster, in charge of engineering systems, and Bernd Zabel, operations manager for the Biospheric Research and Development Center (BRDC) to coordinate activities between the two worlds and review technical systems. Sally and Laser sat at the V-shaped table in the command room which was outfitted with both the video link and a document reader. They talked over the operational and research activities for the week and a few problems that needed Mission Control’s attention. Mission Control noted that vegetation was pressing against the space frame glass at several points and needed pruning, and that the glass also needed cleaning at several places. They made sure that we knew about all upcoming visits by collaborating scientists, guest lecturers, or VIPs in the environmental world.

During the afternoon, we usually worked on our weekly and monthly reports or contacted people with whom we had been doing research projects. Sally finished her weekly report on food production, diet, and nutrition; Jane reported on animal fodder production; and Laser detailed the maintenance program. There were also reviews and projections for the terrestrial wilderness systems (Linda), the marine wilderness systems (Gaie), and the medical and health systems (Roy).

By 3:30, the Biosphere would be bustling. Laser was working on technical design problems and the future upgrades during the transition (the period after the completion of the two-year closure when system improvements, detailed research with outside scientists, and helping and training the second crew would occur) with Ernst Thal-Larsen and Larry Pomatto, Director of Technical Systems, via video. Sally was on the phone with Jim Litsinger, the project’s integrated pest management consultant, and Dr. Michael Stanghellini, a pathologist at the University of Arizona who had recently examined roots of our rice, wheat, and sorghum crops to see if nematodes or water-borne bacteria were responsible for the poor yields. They discussed a test which had been proposed by consultants at the University of Michigan to see if our rice seedlings were suffering from a more subtle nutrient deficiency.

Mark was on the phone, too, discussing an upcoming meeting, The Case for Mars Conference, with its organizers in Boulder, Colorado. Using PictureTel technology, we were able to present a ‘paper’ detailing our findings and also participate in a direct discussion with the conference members. After he hung up, he made data entries from the leaf litter and decomposition studies underway in all the biomes.

Within the hour, Gaie was scheduling the first three months of the anticipated transition phase (the period between Mission One and Mission Two from September 26, 1993 to February 26, 1994) that would provide the opportunity for research, review and repairs inside the laboratory. During that period of time, Biosphere 2 would continue to operate with closure protocol. Work teams were prioritized and planned according to the breath of an eight-person crew living inside. Thus, this task needed to include all sixty research programs underway, as well as technical system repairs or upgrades, and training the second crew that would operate the laboratory for the coming year. In order to set the research plan, she contacted a number of the consultants and collaborating scientists by phone and email to arrange a meeting within the Biosphere to make measurements and observations for the completion of research projects.

Taber spent the afternoon doing routine maintenance on the automatic sniffer system that analyzed levels of eight critical gases in the atmosphere.

It may sound as if everyone was so involved in activity that there was little room for emotional interaction. But there was—even if conducting our private relationships proved a bit tricky. We agreed not to invade in one another’s personal lives by addressing who was or wasn’t involved in love affairs, suffice it to say that there were some people in Biosphere 2 with such relationships, and others without them. For those without, how was it possible to continue a relationship with someone on the outside? With ingenuity. Private meetings at the windows were arranged. While the official biospherian handshake was two hands matching each other (even though separated by the thin three-eighths-inch glass), pairs of lip-prints had been spotted on each side of the meeting window as well. Sometimes they took a while to fade, lingering like the blush of flowers preserved in a diary.

At 4:30, Linda and Mark met in the west arroyo area of the desert to measure plants. This was part of a biomass resurvey they completed at the end of each rainy season, to measure how the communities of plants were changing as the desert developed. At the same moment, Sally was discussing the results of recent trials of recipes from her Biosphere 2 cookbook, Eating In, with one of the ‘food testers.’ Gaie had just completed her daily review of the Biosphere 2 management with John Allen, Director of Research and Development, and was now on the phone with Dr. Jack Corliss, Director of Research for SBV, about the overall research program which included wide areas of investigations in global modeling, biogeochemical cycles, biomes and ecosystems, systematics, human physiology and nutrition, and engineering.

Meanwhile, a last burst of animal husbandry was taking place: by 5:30, Jane was milking goats, Taber came down from the kitchen to put the buck and kids into their separate pens to feed them, and Sally was taking care of the chickens. After completing the biomass measurements in the desert, Linda connected the cables for R2D2 and once more checked in with Mission Control regarding CO₂ emissions. Mark went to take more soil moisture samples.

By now the official workday was over, but, as usual, a few matters needed attention. Laser was trouble-shooting the electronic sensing devices of the fire alarm system which had been giving false alarms due to high humidity. Gaie and Mark reviewed a press release written by the public affairs office. Sally returned a call from a Tucson journalist requesting her reaction to the National Academy of Sciences warning of the danger of pesticide levels in fruits and vegetables, especially to children. She used the opportunity to discuss the relevance of our agricultural system, which didn’t rely on chemical pesticides or harmful chemicals of any kind and was nevertheless extremely productive. The journalist also wanted to come out for a photograph of Sally with some of her new beneficial insects (which eat crop pests), so she arranged a time for the following morning.

Roy was cook’s helper for the day and began helping Taber by washing pots, making tea, and setting the table in the frequently frantic last minutes before meals were served. Gaie, Mark and Sally, hungrily anticipating dinner, took the opportunity to work on this book, which they’d been writing since the early days of the experiment.

Taber and Roy served dinner at 6:45 PM. Taber made one of his characteristically beautiful meals, featuring a flour shell into which he placed delicious chili with lablab beans, chives, taro, and green banana. There were sliced beets, a mixed vegetable dish, baked sweet potatoes with a banana sauce, and tossed salad. Dessert was sweet potato pie topped with slices of fresh fig.

Less than an hour later, Taber and Roy were doing the kitchen cleanup, which included sweeping and mopping the floor. They cooked the day’s food scraps in a large pot on the electric stove, and these leftovers were now ready to go down to feed the goats. Taber started on the next day’s breakfast. He began slow cooking the porridge overnight in a crock pot, and preparing rolls and sweet potato patties on baking sheets in the refrigerator along with other foods for tomorrow’s lunch.

Sally and Laser worked together in the command room summarizing the day’s events in the captain’s log and sent it via the network to Mission Control and SBV management. At 8:15, Mark started his night rounds—a twenty-to-thirty-minute tour through the agriculture, rainforest, savannah, and desert, noting the manual thermometer readings in each area. He also turned off whatever lights that had been left on, and then checked the algae scrubber room, the recirculating fans, and the wave machine in the ocean. He also glanced at the alarm screen in the savannah tunnel for any temperature red alerts, and then checked another alarm board nearby for any yellow lights indicating technical malfunctions. He then copied his readings in a logbook which was kept near the alarm screen monitor.

Linda settled in with her computer to log onto the WELL, a communications network run by the Whole Earth Catalogue. She checked a general bulletin board for useful information and examined WELL’s array of electronic conferences. Linda frequently contributed to conferences on Biosphere 2, as well as many others on politics, the environment, and cutting-edge technologies. Roy was on the phone with friends in Los Angeles. Taber and Jane were watching TV, and Gaie was reading.

Our apartments were our castles. When we wanted to be alone, that is where we’d retreat. Each biospherian had a two-story apartment with a downstairs area that includes desk, bookshelves, TV/VCR and radio/CD/tape player, sofa and easy chair, and clothes closet. Up a circular staircase is the loft bedroom with a clothes bureau. There were ten apartments in Biosphere 2, the extra two were allocated for visiting scientists who may use them in the future.

Before closure, the crew had the opportunity to decorate their ‘pads’ with whatever they wanted. So, we had our favorite paintings, souvenirs from travels around the world, books, and music collections. We also chose rooms with views that we liked—though all the views were out of this world. Some looked out over the agriculture area and south to the Santa Catalina Mountains, others looked out over the ridge to the west and were good for sunset-watchers. Some had a view of the area in front of the habitat, where gleaming, white tents sprung up during special events at Biosphere 2.

Laser transformed his apartment into a video studio with gear for making documentary films. A piece of blue plastic in his window mystified visitors until he explained that he was protecting his equipment from harsh sunlight. Linda decked out her apartment with beautiful artifacts from native cultures around the world. Roy’s apartment was decorated with art pieces from artist friends. Mark’s was dominated by his huge library of books, Australian Aboriginal carvings, and colorful paintings.

Most of the crew kept a personal record of their experiences, and before turning in at about 9:15, Mark made his daily entry in his computer. Others kept long-hand notebooks. By 10:00 PM, the hallways of the habitat were dark, although light seeped out from under the doors of a few apartments.

For all eight of us, another day of the 731 days we would spend in Biosphere 2 had come to a close. As we drifted into sleep, our world continued to hum around, above, and beneath us. Almost all of the crew have remarked upon the special intensity of dreams inside Biosphere 2, but no one noted any particularly unusual dream that night. A few of us may have noticed the sliver of the new moon rising outside, refracting through the beautiful geometric glass sky of our miniature world.