Sad indeed. The major failing of Biosphere, which I visited in 1999 or early 2000, was its being run by eggheads. One early experimental run failed because the oxygen levels kept mysteriously dropping to dangerously low levels despite the einsteins' best computer models. Turned out, they forgot to factor in the microbial life in the soils.
Never occurred to them that aerobic bacteria are called that for a reason.
