Getting Back to Earth

After two years under glass, the men and women of Biosphere 2 emerge to speak their mind

For two years the Biospherians held their silence. Locked inside a palatial 3.15-acre glass-and-steel structure outside Oracle, Arizona -- but connected to the outside world by telephone, television, computer and fax -- they heard the reports hinting at scandals and cult connections. They read the accusations of scientific fakery. They watched the parade of embarrassing -- and sometimes inaccurate -- disclosures: the "hidden" food stash, the duffel bag of covert supplies, the fresh oxygen pumped in from outside. But through it all, almost nothing was heard from the four men and four women living within the $150 million prototype space colony...

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