A few weeks later, on April 1, the managers of the
project, Space Biospheres Ventures, were served a
restraining order by armed federal marshals, and
control of the project was handed over to their finan-
cier, Edward P. Bass. In order to deal with the storm
of criticism surrounding the venture and with hopes
of restoring its scientific credibility, Bass had re-
placed the management team with a group of highly
respected scientists.
On April 3, outside air was unexpectedly intro-
duced into the complex. Abigail Alling and Mark
Van Thillo, both crew members from Mission 1, were
accused of breaking into the complex and damaging
seals that allowed outside air to contaminate the ex-
periment. Both Alling and Van Thillo had been
barred from the premises. Alling later said that she
and Van Thillo broke the seals and entered the com-
plex in order to inform the crew members inside of
the dismissal of the management team and to give
them an opportunity to leave the experiment. She
said all the crew members chose to stay and within an
hour the biosphere was resealed.
On June 1, Space Biospheres Ventures was dis-
solved, and on September 6, Mission 2 was ended
four months early. On that date, the system was
opened to the outside world and the sealed bio-
sphere experiment was ended. It has not been re-
sumed. Bass kept control of the project through the
scientific committee he had installed until January,
1996, when a five-year lease of the facility was
granted to Columbia University for use as an educa-
tional facility.
Impact The knowledge gained by this experiment
has proven valuable to researchers seeking to im-
prove agriculture and nutrition, to build space or
underwater habitats, or simply to understand hu-
man stresses in close environments. Even though
the unrealistic expectations, the hyperbole, and the
circuslike atmosphere at the beginning of the exper-
iment destined the project to end in disappoint-
ment, taken in its entirety its long-term scientific im-
pact has been positive.
Further Reading
Alling, Abigail, et al. “Lessons Learned from Bio-
sphere 2 and Laboratory Biosphere Closed Sys-
tems Experiments for the Mars On Earth Proj-
ect.”Biological Sciences in Space19, no. 4 (2005):
250-260. Discusses the “Mars on Earth” project in
view of the Biosphere 2 experiment.
McKinney, Michael L., Robert M. Schoch, and Lo-
gan Yonavjak.Environmental Science: Systems and
Solutions. 4th ed. Sudbury, Mass.: Jones & Bartlett,- Offers a comprehensive overview of envi-
ronmental science that is designed to be accessi-
ble to nonmajor undergraduates. A companion
Web site includes study aids and exercises. Illus-
trations, index, glossary.
Poynter, Jayne.The Human Experiment: Two Years and
Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2.New York: Thun-
der’s Mouth Press, 2006. Insider’s account by a
crew member details what life was like in Bio-
sphere 2. Photographs, bibliography, and index.
Wayne Shirey
See also Agriculture in the United States; Air pol-
lution; Architecture; Earth Day 1990;Earth in the Bal-
ance; Global warming debate; Inventions; Mars ex-
ploration; Organic food movement; Science and
technology; Space exploration; Sustainable design
movement; Water pollution. Blair Witch Project, The
Identification Horror film
Directors Daniel Myrick (1964- ) and
Eduardo Sánchez (1968- )
Date Released on July 30, 1999
Shot on a ver y low budget and marketed aggressively, this
motion picture was a critical success and set a record as the
most successful independent film ever produced.
The Blair Witch Projectwas the creation of Daniel
Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, two film students at
the University of Central Florida. Inspired by the
sensational, heavily fictionalized “documentaries”
then being broadcast on television, they constructed
an elaborate background story involving a witch,
Elly Kedward, living in the eighteenth century Mary-
land town of Blair. Kedward, so the story went, was
responsible for the deaths of many of the town’s chil-
dren, and her malign influence has continued to the
present day, apparently inspiring later atrocities.
Myrick and Sánchez then hired Heather Dona-
hue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael C. Williams to
play three young, grungy filmmakers investigating
the supposed witch. Given only the most general in-
structions, they ad-libbed their dialogue and spent a
grueling week in the woods. The resulting twentyThe Nineties in America Blair Witch Project, The 103