The Arizona Biosphere; Failed Experiment That Should Have Shocked Us

By James Donahue

January 2005

I noted with interest a story in a recent issue of the Arizona Daily Star that said the Biosphere 2, a multi-million dollar experiment in creating a closed ecological system within our planet’s natural environment, is up for sale.

Used as a museum and tourist center since the $200 million project by Edward P. Bass of Space Biosphere Ventures failed in 1994, the company is offering its 140-acre site, complete with 137,000 square-foot biosphere, 3.1-acre glass terrarium, a hotel, and 70 other buildings at Oracle, north of Tucson, Arizona, for sale to the highest bidder.

“We’re looking at everything from government entities, universities and private schools to church groups, resorts and spas and potential owners,” said Christopher T. Bannon, company general manager.

The biosphere made headlines when Bass first constructed the facility and announced plans by a team of researchers to seal themselves within its doors without coming out for several years.

The project was designed to see if humans could manufacture an artificial environment that will sustain life. This was something NASA needed to know if it hoped to accomplish missions lasting several years into space.

There is another, unspoken, and more foreboding concern that may have been behind Bass’s decision to build the biosphere. Even in the late 1980s, when the project was first conceived, scientists were looking at a failing world eco-system brought on by overpopulation, pollution and dwindling resources.

Thus there was an interest in determining if humans are capable of creating a world within the world we live in, where a remnant of mankind can escape if and when the world’s ecology goes into complete failure.

What scientists at Oracle learned is that they can’t.

There were two sealed missions at the site. The first was from Sept. 26, 1991 to Sept. 26, 1993. During that time the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels failed. The group lost credibility when the team was forced to seek oxygen and other supplies from the outside world just to continue on.

A second mission that lasted only six months also failed in 1994 with the same results.

The international space platform, maintained by Russia and the United States, exists because of shuttles that make regularly scheduled trips from Earth to restock supplies. It came close to being abandoned in 2004 after the oxygen machine failed for awhile and the astronauts nearly ran out of food.

The Columbia disaster in 2003 temporarily stopped the U. S. Space Shuttle program until an investigation and changes were made. This has put a strain on the Russian shuttle program, which has been the only link the world has had with the platform.

Humans cannot live anyplace but on the Planet Earth.

We know this.

The question then, is why are the failed results of Biosphere-2 not being shouted loudly across the land? Why are we not doing everything possible to take care of our planet? Why are we continuing to ravage our planet’s natural resources, overpopulate, and carelessly pollute our soil, air, land and water?

Could big business interests and the lust for money have something to do with the strange silence about this looming dilemma?

Our planet is already dying. The signs are everywhere. The warming of the Earth, the meltdown of the ice caps, the extreme weather changes, and the fact that good drinking water, lumber and crude oil are already in short supply, are but the first warning signs.

Psychic viewer Aaron C. Donahue warns that unless humans take drastic steps to change the way we live, and do it quickly, humans are racing toward mass extinction.

Even with drastic measures, Donahue believes the best future we have is no more than about 300 years. Without doing anything, we could be extinct within the next 30 years.

It is possible that people living today will face horrible deaths by choking on polluted air, drinking contaminated water, or starving to death for lack of food.

Death will not be an escape. When the planet dies, the soul goes with it. The loss of the soul means the loss of the spark that makes each of us uniquely human. It is the stored memory of our past. The consciousness of our existence.

Thus when the planet dies, our light blinks out. We are forever lost in the blackness of eternity.