The giant Arizona greenhouse called Biosphere-2 is up for sale, if anyone is interested. If you don't remember the Biosphere project, it was basically a bunch of NASA inspired scientists trying to create an artificial Earth biosphere. If we ever want to do any long term space exploration or set up a colony on Mars, the astronauts will need something like the Biosphere.

But I digress. I couldn't help but think this passage seemed a little too rosy.

In 1991, eight "biospherians" were sealed inside for a two-year stay. But the project was plagued by rising costs and other setbacks. . .

Having remembered something about Biosphere 2, I thought right away that "other setbacks" sounded deliberately vague. I seem to remember something about a slight vermin problem. So, I did a little digging and it turns out that the shoddy AP reporter left out the most interesting part of the story:

Biosphere 1 is planet earth. Biosphere 2 is the little greenhouse near Tucson, Arizona.

If you've never been on a tour of the place, it looks and feels like a very good idea very poorly executed. The people who conceived of it should have had basic engineering skills (Or at least should have had advisors). A major part of the problem (and they tell you this on the tour) for the first experiment was the fact that the people who put the research together were largely ingnorant of comon construction techniques involved in the building of the Biosphere. They had no clue - for instance - that concrete sets, not dries, via a chemical process (hydration) and not a thermal one (which is why you can pour concrete into water and have it set. In fact, if you use concrete on land you have to keep adding water to it so it can set properly). So the Biospherians were placed into a container where the concrete (which takes up to 8 months to fully "set") used up a lot of their oxygen. This was not newfound knowledge. Any on-the-job concrete pourer could have told them this.

Also, during the transfer of flora into the biosphere, they allowed an Arizona desert insect known as the Crazy Ant (Paratrechina longicornis) into the Biosphere. An incredibly adaptable varmint. It went about killing off all the insects needed for a sustainable biosphere as well as destroying some plants and making life difficult for some of the other animals...

The crazy ant infestation remains to this day.

Biosphere 2 was destroyed, not from poor science, but from poorly *executed* science, ignorant in the various needs involved in building and maintaining an enclosed, fully sustainable system.

Why the AP reporter left this out is debateable. I'm not going to say it was media bias, environmental or otherwise. But you must admit that the "other setbacks" are far too interesting to just gloss over.