The absence of food was a greater problem than Nelson’s diary suggests. The crops were supposed to be pollinated by honeybees and hummingbirds, but the birds and bees all died. Nelson lost 25 pounds, and at least one other crew member lost twice that much. Yet this medically supervised “healthy starvation” would have likely ranked only third on the laundry list of Biospheric problems. The most pressing issue was that the facility was running out of breathable air. Microbes in the soil were producing carbon dioxide faster than photosynthesis was creating oxygen. After sixteen months, the oxygen
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