Book: The Human Experiment

Mentioned in the book on Mars, this is an account of the Biosphere 2 experiment where eight people locked themselves in a sealed greenhouse in Arizona for two years.

Fights broke out.  They almost died several times from various technological catastrophes.  In the end, the science they explored was probably a lot less important than the realization that eight individuals locked up together will inevitably get at each other's throats.

The author, Jane Poynter, so far is an excellent writer.

That sort of thing has been a concern for a long time. We bridge players know that the answer is to make sure the crew are all bridge players and have a good number of decks of cards on board.

2020 documentary on Hulu called "Spaceship Earth" tells the same story from a bit wider perspective.  Lots of vintage footage from within the dome, as well as the group's activities before.

1971 film "Silent Running" with Bruce Dern is about creating biospheres in space, which Jane mentions as inspirational.  Oddly, I already have a copy on DVD.

Odd serendipity with other books I've recently read. The doctor inside Biosphere 2 discovered that insecticide toxins stored inside fat, like DDT and DDE, were released into the biospherians' bloodstreams as they metabolized their fat.

At the tail end of the 2 years, Ed Bass the funder fired the two principals John Allen and Margret Augustine because of financial improprieties. Guess who he brought in to straighten the books?  Steve Bannon. Bannon immediately fired almost all the scientists on the project, destroyed all the data collected and brought in a bunch of investment bankers. Somehow he thought Biosphere 2 could be made into a moneymaking proposition. 

No surprise then that the whole enterprise fell apart almost immediately afterward, and hasn't seen another habitation since.