Discovery news is running an article on work which explores placing Astronauts in deep sleep for Mars missions.
This study investigates using existing techniques to induce torpor during the trip, using a technique know as therapeutic 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.”
Although this approach involves considerably longer periods than are currently used (by an order of magnitude), the approach has considerable advantages in terms of consumables and living space, and builds from existing technologies.
Overall, putting a crew in stasis cuts the baseline mission requirements from about 400 tons to about 220 tons.
There's a presentation from February (PDF) with more detail on the proposal, and project blog available, as well as a Fox News article from earlier this week.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday October 10 2014, @02:02PM
Perhaps someone can find another source than Fox News ..? they are a cesspool of blabbering junk.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday October 10 2014, @04:06PM
I think you need more coffee. The first link was to Discovery News, the second to Wikipedia, and the third to NASA's site. Fox seemed almost an afterthought.
I came here with a suggestion for the vessel's name: How about the Botany Bay?
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 4, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Friday October 10 2014, @02:16PM
This study investigates using existing techniques to induce Torpor during the trip
Why would they send a pregnant woman? And why did her parents name her Torpor?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 10 2014, @02:20PM
How do hibernation (e.g. bears in winter) and induced coma (e.g. for heart surgery) actually differ? Seems to me the hibernation is a much more 'natural' state and would require less 'equipment' on the space ship. side note: Does that 180 ton reduction in baseline mission requirements take the hibernation equipment into account?
I seem to remember an account of a young girl, having slept more than a month in one go, earlier this year but I can't find the story anymore. Some further investigation shows there are several cases of 'human hibernation' as I'll call it in recorded history but nothing that seems to flow from a scientific study. blogspot [blogspot.com] Nor how exactly to induce such a hibernation.
I think it will be very interesting to experiment or examine how we can induce hibernation in animals known for hibernation (bears) and see how it affects them when in space. At least we'll know if this is an easy solution and we just need to figure out how to trigger it in humans, or if hibernation alone isn't enough and we'll need to go closer to 'stasis'-like things.
Either way, sending a bear into outer space should be cool enough on itself to maybe warrant a tv-series or movie.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 10 2014, @02:45PM
Well, one obvious difference is that hibernation is an existing genetic program that hibernating animals possess, while induced coma is an artificial state our body is not programmed to do by itself.
(Score: 1) by mckwant on Friday October 10 2014, @03:21PM
Reality Series: Join 10 would-be astronauts as they do competitions, one of which is one-on-one time with the bear.
Movie: "Get these mutha@#@%ing bears off my mutha@#%#ing spaceship!"
I can't tell.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday October 10 2014, @03:35PM
"We strongly believe that all the press coverage of the last two Mars crew massacres is just a Liberal plot, per Hollywood's usual agenda, to infringe on our 2nd amendment right to bear arms in space" the NRA
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 10 2014, @04:36PM
"We strongly believe that all the press coverage of the last two Mars crew massacres is just a Liberal plot, per Hollywood's usual agenda, to infringe on our 2nd amendment right to arm bears in space" the NRA
FTFY, commie.
(Score: 3, Funny) by rts008 on Friday October 10 2014, @06:23PM
I think this is a Bad Idea of the highest order.
Do you realise how hungry bears are when they awake in the spring?
Lean, mean, eating machines...from outer space, bent on revenge gorging!
You have doomed us all!!
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Saturday October 11 2014, @02:24AM
Bears with Lasers? That almost writes itself.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 1) by Darren on Friday October 10 2014, @05:48PM
Fox news tends to reach to the impractical I noticed. For current trends in extra terrestrial colonization the first step is the establishment of a facility for operations to be performed and most importantly for longevity is maintenance including fabrication. Sending both a person and habitat stretches budget and practicality, sending a small robotic package which unfurls in slow repetitive actions to create a structure much larger than itself is however more realistic given recent excellent robotic performances on mars. While sending a human would be exciting, a facility like this would be the seed of exo planet ground exploration and set the technological standard of what is necessary mechanically to survey these terrains. Work is being led already by Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis [bkhoshnevis.com] from USC, he gave a TED talk [youtube.com] on the subject as well.
Web Designer - darrencaldwellwebdesign.ca
(Score: 2) by Covalent on Saturday October 11 2014, @01:24AM
Radiation protection. The trip to Mars will involve a serious dose of cosmic / solar radiation. Shielding the entire ship is going to be very expensive (in terms of weight and money). But shielding the tombs, er, beds that the hibernating astronauts will be sleeping in is significantly cheaper. There's serious radiation on Mars, too, but I'm going to assume that the base they are traveling to has been pre-built by robots out of / in to / underneath Martian rock (which should be a pretty good radiation shield).
There was an episode of TNG where a Klingon ambassador (a rather attractive one, actually) traveled in a photon torpedo. I would like to submit that the beds that the astronauts hibernate in look exactly like that. As an additional bonus, if any of the astronauts die in flight, they can just be "fired" on to the planet's surface.
Let's just hope Mars doesn't have the Genesis effect...
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.