FOURTH DOOR NEWS – October 2025
Inside Biosphere 2 – photo Institute of Ecotechnics
FOURTH DOOR NEWS – October 2025
SPACESHIP EARTH – One-off showing of the film about the audacious Biosphere 2 experiment.
With original Biospherian’s Abigail Alling and Mark Van Thillo in after-film conversation
October 26th – Spaceship Earth
5.15pm – Depot cinema, Pinwell Lane, Lewes BN7 2JS map here.
Tickets £9/£5 via Depot cinema here (and trailer.)
This documentary recounts the audacious 1991 Biosphere 2 experiment – an engineered greenhouse in the Arizona desert simulating the ecological conditions on Earth, initiated to test the prospects of space colonisation. Eight ‘Biospherians’ volunteered to be locked into the structure for this real time experiment over two whole years!
Directed by Matt Wolf, Spaceship Earth documents the quixotic two year space odyssey; how the Biospherian’s grew their own food, researched and maintained Biosphere’s 2’s ecosystems, and how they managed – or didn’t – with the psychological stresses and strains through such a protracted period. When the two years were up, just how well the eight volunteers navigated their extended foray into earthbound outer space, as much as the success of the experiment whole, is dramatically retold.
With an after-film discussion with Biospherian’s Abigail Alling (Gaie) and Mark Van Thillo (Laser)
To find out more about the Biosphere 2 story take a look at the official website or the in-depth Wikipedia page. Rebecca Reider’s Dreaming the Biosphere. (University of New Mexico Press, 2009) provides a fascinating account of the project, written by a sympathetic outsider.
For those who wonder where the Eden Project might have gotten their inspiration from…
In Depth
You really don’t have to look any further than Biosphere 2. The photos below, courtesy of ecologist, Biospherian and director of the Institute of Ecotechnics, Mark Nelson, illustrate something of the life inside the vast space frame for the Biospherians, growing, testing, data recording and conducting scientific and technical experiments.
Apart from picture 3 the photos above are part of Biospherian and director of the Institute of Ecotechnics, Mark Nelson’s archive, used originally for a research paper. These are the captions that have come with the photos.
1 – Harvesting grain in the Intensive Agriculture Biome. From left, Laser (Mark Van Thillo), Mark Nelson Taber MacCallum, and at rear Sally Silverstone.
2 – Sally Silverstone holding a baby goat. There were five born during the two years.
3 – Grain growing in Biosphere 2 – photo Institute of Ecotechnics
4 – Mark Nelson measuring CO2 emitted by soils – photo Mark Nelson
5 – ‘The lousiest job but we did it to safeguard the health of the ocean: cleaning mats in the algae scrubber room’.
6 – ‘The care and weeding of your coral reef ocean. Gaie (Abigail Alling) checking the reef and removing algae. Eleven pounds a week were removed, helping the corals retain access to the light they need for photosynthesis.’
7 – ‘Sharing some of the stories with Oleg Gazenko and John Allen. Gazenko was the unofficial confidante and psychologist for generations of Russian cosmonauts. His opinion was that he’d seen much worse conflict amongst Russian space crews! His observations indicated the Biospherians had fully adapted to our environment’ – photo Marie Harding
8 – ‘Team of glaziers working on the glass space frames. They installed over six thousand, six feet on a side. This work was often done at night because of blazing daytime temperatures. Many of the space frame crew were rock-climbing mountaineers’ – photo Peter Menzel
9 – Lightning over the Santa Catalina Mountains, with the cyclotron for the life sciences in the foreground – photo Peter Menzel
Biosphere 2 lit up at night – photo Gill C. Kenny (c/o Mark Nelson)
Organised by Fourth Door with Depot cinema
Fourth Door – is a media, communications, events, and research platform, generally working in collaboration with a variety of partners. In addition, Fourth Door Research provides one-off consultancy and research.
For further information please contact Oliver Lowenstein, Fourth Door:
0044(0)1273 473501
0044(0)7527 206856
editorial@fourthdoor.org
www.fourthdoor.org
Pioneering the Potential 2025 is supported by Lewes District Council and the Chalk Cliff Trust
Fourth Door – Making the Connections
*Organised by Fourth Door and supported by Making Lewes