The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2 [Hardcover]

Jane Poynter (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

On September 26, 1991, Poynter, along with seven others, entered Biosphere 2, a three-acre, hermetically sealed environment, for a two-year stay. Their goal was two-fold: to demonstrate that humans could live under the necessary conditions for survival in bases on the Moon or Mars, and to conduct experiments to improve our understanding of ecosystems. In her first-hand account, Poynter describes all aspects of the much-debated project, from crew selection to life on the inside, while addressing the nature of the scientific undertaking and the politics that embroiled everyone associated with it. She is at her best recounting how the eight "biospherians" devolved into a dysfunctional family and commenting on the import such patterns will undoubtedly have on long-distance space travel. Her analysis of the science is weaker, more congratulatory than incisive. She provides only a brief discussion, for example, on the addition of thousands of pounds of oxygen into the structure on two occasions despite the goal to make the artificial biosphere completely self-contained. While the writing is sometimes overly precious ("So, with as much emotional energy as the space shuttle has rocket power on liftoff, I launched myself into a life of adventure and discovery"), Poynter's story makes for instructive reading. (Sept. 12)
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From Booklist

On September 26, 1991, eight bold-spirited adventurers entered the 3.15-acre, hermetically sealed, ecologically engineered environment in the Arizona desert known as Biosphere 2. Two years later, they emerged, thinner and wiser, proud of their accomplishment, yet devastated by the psychological and emotional tolls the experiment exacted. From her earliest days as one of the hand-picked candidates for admission into the Biosphere program, Poynter exhibited a fervent belief in the revolutionary scientific goals of the mission and an idealistic faith in the ecumenical brotherhood such an isolated atmosphere could engender. When climatic and other life-support systems began to malfunction, however, the biospherians' utopian vision soon devolved into a dystopian nightmare as paranoia, jealousy, and mistrust became a greater threat than any loss of oxygen. As an electrifying testament to the strength of their commitment and an indictment of the self-defeating power of ego, Poynter's explicit insider's account of the creation and completion of the controversial mission exposes both the successes that were ignored by the media and the failures that received excessive attention. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (August 18, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156025775X
• ISBN-13: 978-1560257752
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #305,176 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jane Poynter is one of only eight people ever in history to live sealed in an artificial world for two years. Jane's preparation for Biosphere 2 involved training to survive in the Australian Outback and onboard a concrete research boat in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea. She was part of the Biosphere from the start, ultimately managing the farm where the crew grew its food.

She is now President of Paragon Space Development Corporation, an aerospace firm that she co-founded with fellow biospherian, Taber MacCallum, while inside Biosphere 2. Since leaving the project, Jane has had experiments flown on the International Space Station, the Russian Mir Space Station, and the U.S. Space Shuttle. Currently, she and Paragon are developing life support systems for astronauts and Navy deep-sea divers - and Jane recently started The Carbon Company, which consults on international environmental projects.

Jane and Taber married a year after exiting Biosphere 2. They live in Tucson, Arizona, where they race motorcycles on weekends.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Life in hermetically sealed environment was no picnic, December 5, 2006

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Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2 (Hardcover)

Many people in 1991 were fascinated by the idea of Biosphere 2, a closed, hermetically sealed, self-sustaining, man-made ecosystem with a desert, an ocean, a rainforest, a savannah, a marsh, a habitat and an intensive farm, all in three acres. On September 26 eight people entered the structure for a two-year stint living "as if on Mars, farming all our food, recycling our water, our waste and even the oxygen we breathed..."

But bad publicity dogged the project even before the team went in. The public grew skeptical, as the Biospherians were dismissed as frauds, cult figures, publicity hounds and charlatans. None of which, strictly speaking, was completely false. Or completely true.

Jane Poynter, who celebrated her 30th birthday in Biosphere 2, and went on to found an aerospace firm with fellow Biospherian (and later husband) Taber MacCallum, attempts to set the record straight with this emotional and wide ranging account.

Poynter was an upper-class English girl who joined the Institute of Ecotechnics at age 20 for travel and adventure - and, no doubt, to escape her parents' conventional expectations. The IE group, headed by charismatic and authoritarian John Allen, were Synergists who believed in a "strict adherence " to three avocations - theater, philosophy and business - to keep themselves in intellectual, emotional and economic balance. This was the group that went on to conceive and build Biosphere 2.

Poynter was an early candidate for the team. Her training included stints on a Ferro-cement research vessel built by IE staffers and an outback ranch in remote Australia populated primarily by large meat-eating ants, plagues of flies, and termites who ate the tires off cars. Lessons in resourcefulness, difficult physical conditions and close, isolated living may have been useful as Poynter says, but nothing could really prepare any of them for the Biosphere experience.

"After thirteen months in Biosphere 2, we were starving, suffocating and going quite mad."

Inadequate food had plagued them from the start. In part this goes back to the cult-like group dynamic.

The Biospherian candidates worked on design and construction of Biosphere 2 (earth being Biosphere 1), and were shifted to different tasks in order to have well-rounded experience. In practice, shifts were sometimes made to punish a staffer for disloyalty, i.e., criticism. Criticism was also dealt with in less subtle ways.

Poynter, as agriculture manager, was asked to draw up a report showing that Biosphere 2 could produce all of the food they would need. When she could only arrive at a total of 80 percent she, and two others who sided with her, were fired from the team. Poynter and another woman were taken back three days later without explanation - the third was shunted to some other aspect of the program.

This type of behavior was common and served to keep all of them cowed, off balance, and unwilling to point out snags. When a certain root fungus was cited as a potential problem, John Allen's response was to make the scientist "jump up and down, screaming `pythium, pythium.' " The fungus was indeed a persistent rice-crop killer.

Their second big problem was a steady, unexpected drop in oxygen. For months they did intensive experiments, but the debilitating riddle remained unsolved until an outsider provided a clue in a casual phone call. Serendipity and science working together would seem to give the Synergists' creed of balance a lift.

But the "going mad" part never really got better. Much of Poynter's book focuses on the interpersonal acrimony, which eventually divided them into two groups of four. Difficulties were exacerbated by backbreaking work on inadequate diets in low oxygen, but even when these problems were somewhat alleviated relations stayed poor.

Of course, the manipulation by outside management never got better and it was that that separated them into loyalists and non-loyalists. Poynter was a non-loyalist. When she walked out of Biosphere 2 her time as a Synergist was done too.

But her book seems balanced and open - something of a catharsis. She celebrates the science, such as it was, and laments that more was not done later to study closed-ecosystem reactions. There was one more 6-month group sojourn inside, but the project was too expensive to continue.

Though the two years were arduous she counts them a success - "we had proven that a man-made biosphere can successfully sustain life, including human life, for an extended period of time without inexplicably crashing, or devolving rapidly into green slime." True, but they did need two infusions of oxygen, which would not have been possible in space, and for all their psychological problems they always knew they could walk out at any time.

Naturally many questions remain, particularly about the environmental science. Though the environment was carefully engineered and controlled they still had ceaseless problems with insect pests (including ant intruders from outside) and plant diseases.

Poynter is at her best describing daily life; the "dysfunctional family" they became, the feasts and famines, and the daily grind of work, though you get the feeling she's leaving a lot out to avoid pressing on old wounds. An absorbing, varied and often suspenseful read.

-- Portsmouth Herald

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The inside story of the Biosphere 2, September 26, 2006

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Bittek106 (Tucson, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2 (Hardcover)

First, I am not a professional reviewer or writer. I am an like everyone else who likes to read a good book.

I liked this book for a few good reasons. It was easy to read and follow. I didn't get tired from reading it. At times I would get so engrossed in reading it that time would seem to fly by.

This book gives you the inside story of the Biosphere 2 experiment. It tells about the relationships of the people involved and some of the History leading up to the experiment. It even gives you a bit of the science behind the Biosphere told in a way that a non technical person can understand. It tells about the fun times and some of the bad times even some of the funny times. It is certainly not a dry read. I think that Jane Poynter did a good job writing this book. It certainly answers some of the questions raised in the past about the Biosphere 2 experiment. It is a good read, I recommend it. I own it, I am going to keep it and I look forward to reading it again.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Revealing book about Biosphere 2, September 5, 2006

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Avid reader (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2 (Hardcover)

In past books written by other biospherians, the science behind Biosphere 2 was well covered, but the tomes came across "whitewashed" and impersonal. This memoir definitely stands out. The author shares stories of conflict between the crew members. It seems that although these biospherians went in as friends, no amount of training prepared them for the life in isolation that ended some of their relationships while still inside. Definitely an interesting analysis of the effects of living in seclusions a person's psyche. I found this to be an "edge-of-your-seat" read.