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NASA Eyes Crew Deep Sleep Option For Mars Mission
astroengine writes: A NASA-backed study explores an innovative way to dramatically cut the cost of a human expedition to Mars — put the crew in stasis. The deep sleep, called torpor, would reduce astronauts' metabolic functions with existing medical procedures. Torpor also can occur naturally in cases of hypothermia. "Therapeutic torpor has been around in theory since the 1980s and really since 2003 has been a staple for critical care trauma patients in hospitals," aerospace engineer Mark Schaffer, with SpaceWorks Enterprises in Atlanta, said at the International Astronomical Congress in Toronto this week. "Protocols exist in most major medical centers for inducing therapeutic hypothermia on patients to essentially keep them alive until they can get the kind of treatment that they need." Coupled with intravenous feeding, a crew could be put in hibernation for the transit time to Mars, which under the best-case scenario would take 180 days one-way.
My teenager sleeps all day but still can walk and talk when she gets up.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
going to watch the kettle? so to speak.
I imagine they would have to have one hell of an upgrade in remote control or assisted
intelligence to handle any emergencies.
~G
One just has to be careful of the acronym used for the computers name, and assiduously avoid omnipresent red-glowing video eyes. Then you'll be fine.
If anything goes wrong, they'll just wake up in a distant future where everyone is really stupid, or they're a delivery boy, or the Earth is ruled by damned dirty apes. Either way, hilarious hijinks and adventures will follow. Problem solved!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Nasa is using a combination appropach to this statis project. Whereas before drugs and temperature controlled environments had to be used, the far more economical approach of C-SPAN recordings of US Senator Robert Byrd are used to maintain a comatose like state. This is induced with a combination of John Kerry lectures and once astronauts must be awakened, the system automatically switches to arguments against climate change as presented by the congressional science committee.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Captain: "Please re-animate the mars crew!"
HAL 9000: "Windows 420 refuses to boot in secure mode.",
"Would you like to play a game of solitaire on Windows XP instead?"
And pollute the vaccuum of space with all that radiation? Some of us have to breathe that stuff!
Plus by the time the ship arrives at its destination, the good astronauts will be separated from the bad ones.