'Spaceship Earth' revisits controversial Biosphere experiment

Biosphere 2 was touted as a new Noah's Ark, a new Garden of Eden, a way to test how humans might colonize other worlds and study the effects of greenhouse gasses on Biosphere 1 -- aka the Earth. Eight carefully vetted and uniquely skilled "Biospherians" would enter the gleaming glass and steel vivarium in the desert in Oracle, Ariz., (that's right) in 1991 and spend two years inside the sealed environment with plants and animals, even a coral reef, collected from all over the world and try to sustain themselves with what they could harvest inside. It was a real-life version of the prophetic 1972 science-fiction film "Silent Running" from director Douglas Trumbull ("2001: A Space Odyssey") and co-writers Michael Cimino ("Heaven's Gate") and Steve Bochco (TV's "Hill Street Blues"). But were the "Biospherians" really scientists? Or were they the offshoot of a cult-like group that had started life as a pseudo-theater collective in hippie-era San Francisco led by a "genius" named John Allen, who is described by one enthusiastic at first follower as a "mind musician"?