Re: Re: starship-design: unmanned missions

[KellySt@aol.com]

In a message dated 2/13/98 12:30:24 AM, lindberg@olywa.net wrote:

>Steve, (dropping AI now)
> sounds like a neat idea. honesty requires that i confess my ignorance
>of suspended animation, except what i've picked up at the movies. May i
>ask how sus anim would work, or alternately, if you feel that human sus
>anim has any kind of future at all.  I do know that some people are
>being frozen immediately post-mortem, but my dad (who is a doctor) says
>that this behavior is in the same class as 'crystal healing' etc. On the
>other hand, certain other vertibrates (some kinds of frogs, i think) do
>this naturally.  I can't yet judge. Please edify me.
>-Nels Lindberg

We havent a clue how to do suspended animation.  Some animals can hybernate
for the winter, but we have no idea how to do this with humans, or how to
adapt the process to work for years not months.  Frankly its unlikely to be
worked out in the next couple decades.

People do have themselves cryonically frozen after death, but have no idea how
they could be revived.  The freezing process does tremendous damage to all the
cells.  On the other hand, their already dead!  They literally have nothing to
lose.  If in a hundred years some one figures out how to fix them, and is
willing to do it, they get a secound chance at life in the future.  If it
never happens, they just stay dead.  So they still didn't lose.

However the crew of a starship has a different situation.