Remember ‘Bio-Sphere 2’? There’s a Documentary for That

I'm going full "nerd alert" for this post. Since I'm on summer break from my crossing guard duties, I've been staying up way past my bedtime, and I've been searching for movies and TV series to stream that either I've never seen or I'll watch something again for comfort.

When I first discovered the Spaceship Earth documentary, I saved it in my queue on Hulu. However, I forgot about it. Maybe I'll get to all I've saved in various queues this summer. I saved it so long ago, that it's no longer available on Hulu. It's not cool, but I didn't think about it again until Friday night when I was browsing Max and there it was.

If you don't remember the story, back in September of 1991, eight people, representing various aspects of scientific research were sealed for two years in a large structure in Arizona that contained an ocean, a rainforest, a desert, a farm, and a large garden. It was called "Bio-Sphere 2". I know I saw the headlines but I never thought about it again.

What I didn't know was that this idea came from a group of mostly non-scientists, who were a theater troupe from San Francisco. They wanted to find ways for the Earth to survive aka keeping a a watch on climate change. I guess you could say they were idealists who did fulfill part of their journey by building a commune, and the theater troupe, and they built several large structures around the world after they built a huge sea ship to explore.

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The big downfall of Bio-Sphere 2 was the constant threat of carbon monoxide poisoning, which became so bad, that the crew had to relent to liquid oxygen being pumped in. I think if the structure had been bigger, they may have had a chance at a self-sustained atmosphere. Needless to say, this experiment hasn't been attempted since 1993. We're still trying to get to Mars.

Spaceship Earth is available to stream on Max.