Posted on 06/23/2017 8:11:58 AM PDT by BenLurkin
The current state of this technology is really promising.
They use a technique called therapeutic hypothermia, which lowers the temperature of a person by a few degrees...With the lowered temperature, a human’s metabolism decreases and they fall unconscious into a torpor.
...
A few years ago, SpaceWorks Enterprises delivered a report to NASA on how they could use this therapeutic hypothermia for long duration spaceflight within the Solar System.
Currently, a trip to Mars takes about 6-9 months. And during that time, the human passengers are going to be using up precious air, water and food. But in this torpor state, SpaceWorks estimates that the crew will a reduction in their metabolic rate of 50 to 70%.
The astronauts wouldn’t need to move around, so you could keep them nice and snug in little pods for the journey. And they wouldn’t get into fights with each other, after 6-9 months of nothing but day after day of spaceflight.
...
Normally astronauts exercise for hours every day to counteract the negative effects of the reduced gravity. But SpaceWorks thinks it would be more effective to just put the astronauts into a rotating module and let artificial gravity do the work of maintaining their conditioning.
They envision a module that’s 4 metres high and 8 metres wide. If you spin the habitat at 20 revolutions per minute, you give the crew the equivalent of Earth gravity. Go at only 11.8 RPM and it’ll feel like Mars gravity.
Normally spinning that fast in a habitat that small would be extremely uncomfortable as the crew would experience different forces at different parts of their body. But remember, they’ll be in a state of torpor, so they really won’t care.
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
I always wanted one of those chairs, but they were $2000 and I couldnt afford it. Now I can afford it, but they are $4000. Can’t win. Just have to use the one at the mall. Probably just as well. If I had one I might never leave the house!
The distances are so staggeringly large. And the faster you go, you have to deal with the dilation of time.
Anyone going on a trip to another star will never see earth again, as they know it.
Rather than spending all this time and effort trying to figure out how to induce some kind of creepy, unnatural, torpor-filled state in your crew, how about spending an equal amount of time and effort figuring out how to carry more "precious" air, water and food with you (Hint, hint: Project Orion)? It's only precious because you're not doing that; air, water and food are rather cheap here on Earth. There is no reason they can't be relatively cheap in space too.
As far as I'm concerned torpor, natural or unnatural, isn't something you want in a crew member. If a guy is too dumb to have any curiosity about the natural world, leave him behind. I mean, you can get the entire Library of Congress on a computer chip the size of your thumbnail. That's more than enough material to take anyone from zero to PhD in any subject he chooses. All during a round trip to Pluto! If a guy is disruptive, then bid him night, night. But leave the others alone. I'm sure they'll be able to figure out productive things to do. Life is too short to spend any significant portion of it in a stupor.
Legacy of Herot?
George Carlin extract:
Everyone is eating nicely, and you look down and you realize that the dog is licking his balls! No one says anything. No one mentions the spectacular thing going on. Hey, if I could reach, I'd never leave the house!
Solution: Only send teenagers and launch on Saturday mornings with the admonition that the first one up has to do the dishes. They’ll sleep the entire trip.
Bingo!
Just freeze the thyroid
Actually, it worked out fairly well for him, preserving him well past the time it would have taken him to get to his intended destination. How he treated his rescuers was his problem.
You be in the sun in less than 90 days. The nearest star.
I can snag the floor model for 3K ... still out of range, but I messaged my MD and asked if there was any medical mojo in him to swing this as a therapeutic tool.
Still waiting ....
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