Spaceship Earth

I remember this in the news when I was a kid and thought it was intriguing, but I only vaguely remember the controversy. I didn't understand the problems with what they did (it was an experiment after all, not a dare or a bet) and still don't. At the end, they had a better idea of what was needed before they began. That's what you get from an experiment, generally.

It started slow but it picked up nicely. I wish there could have been interviews with all eight of the Biospherians and maybe a little more about what they learned, but this documentary is about the people behind the experiment, not the experiment itself. And that's OK. Not what I was hoping for but I was pleased with what I got. I'm glad they showed that these people weren't part of what most people would consider a commune. I would have enjoyed having been part of a group like that, especially once they left San Francisco. It would have been absolutely fascinating.

Totally worth a watch.

I knew very little about this story going into the movie and so I enjoyed all the background it presented. What makes this film work so well is the mass amount of archival footage it has. It has great characters and well shot interviews with a good message.

The first 30 minutes was a little slow and I wanted to get into the main story sooner is my only negative.

A very cursive treatment of a bizarre and expensive project that fails to touch on any real explanation how a $200M investment achieved nothing.

Welcome to the fantastic future of 1991 as the human petri dish project BIOSPHERE 2 is underway! What looks like a kooky SciFi piece of last century fiction, turns out to be a bizarre true life experiment, sequestering idealistic science nerds in their self-sustaining eco bubble.

Rife with cult overtones and extraordinary characters, "Spaceship Earth" documents a group of giddy dreamers as they pave the way for future planet colonizations by creating their own pressure cooker mini earth. What could go wrong?

Well, much does indeed go wrong, but unfortunately, nothing of the sensational variety. There is no physical rebellion. There are no monsters spawned. There are no lives lost. Yet it is damn fascinating: the spectre of a tight army of red uniformed humans scurrying about their self made ant hill aquarium, whilst the world literally looked on.

There is a "Truman Show" aspect at play here, as organizer, impresario, Grand Poobah and owner of a wacky combover, John P. Allen (aka Johnny Dolphin) dictates the inner proceedings from an outside control room. That is, until there is a power struggle featuring, wait for it, Steve Bannon. Yep, you can't make this stuff up.

Strangely the BIOSPHERE 2 phenomena, which at the time was a world wide sensation that predicted genius nutbars like Elon Musk, is relatively forgotten.

That mistake has now been remedied. Enjoy.

• hipCRANK

I remember as a kid the whole idea of the biosphere 2, but I was too young to pay attention at what was going on around it.

At first I was excited to watch this documentary, I thought this would narrate the whole idea of the project, construction, challenges and results. How wrong was I ?

First 45min is a hippie review on the lives of each of the biosphereans. Zero science. When they finally go to the biosphere they show very little of their routine, challenges, etc. They keep focusing on some drama and again no science.

Finally the project is over. The documentary mention not a single scientific finding, and enters the final stage showing some financial drama.

Such a potential topic and such a lazy approach to do a documentary.