Antonio C T Rocha wrote:
> An acquaintance of mine underwent an accident last year and the doctors chose to put him under an "induced
> coma" to improve his chances of recovery. I was told that this also lowered his metabolic rate somewhat. This
> seems like a start.
> Also, I remember reading (about 10 years ago) about promising research was being done on mammal - not
> amphibian - hibernation. My internet searches have not revealed much about the progress attained since then.
> If research has not been suspended, I _suppose_ that another 50 years of it could bring about enough
> knowledge to induce multi-year long periods of "suspended animation" or "hypo-metabolic state". If a 9:1
> ratio of "sleep time" to "waking time" can be obtained by then, the ship could function with "only" 20% of
> its complement "awake" at any time. I have the impression that, say, half of those would be undergoing
> exercise and recovery (or prep for their next sleep fase). Would 10% or 8% of the complement be enough to
> function as crew?
>
This sounds like a good start, when Kelly says we have no-idea I think she means we have no idea how to
completelystop and then start a body up again, perhaps "suspended animation" isn't the right name or not what we
should be trying
to do "deep sleep" or "induced coma" is probably the way to go. However we'd have to get some pretty
sophisticated AI
doctors to monitor the crew and make any changes, and have some specialist doctors in the crew.
On the crew compliment side I reckon it really depends on how quickly you can bring someone out of their sleep
state.
I see no reason why a ship can't pretty much pilot and run itself for the most part it's just stuff like course
corrections,
and if your using onboard farms to produce food, that'd need human attention. But as Kelly keeps pointing out if
something
goes wrong your going to want as many people avalible to help out. It's no good if you've only got 10% crew awake
and
something goes wrong and you have to wait a week for the resident specialists to wake up.
The other thing about crew numbers is how many your going to need Kelly says 700 to complete an exploration
mission, I
say under a hundred and Lee says twenty. I think Kelly means to do almost all the 'figuring out' on site, by this
I mean
when they discover something Kelly wants to record it, work out what it is, how it came to be etc... there and
then. Well
I reckon a hundred specialists can pretty much record everything and come up with working theories as to what it
is and
then send back the records, assuming the transmission is quicker than the ship (which is a fair bet.) back to
Earth, where
you can have the entire science community look at it. Okay your not going to get a message back saying "Well
actually guys
we all reckon its..." But they can wait until they get back to Earth and get debriefed.
> Jonathan J Jay wrote:
>
> > Hello? Is anyone even listening to me. At least 10 e-mails ago I sent the
> > following:
> >
> > >>In fact my opinion would be to send probes followed by two or three
> > small 50-75
> > >>crew ships to set up a colony and then send two Explorers with 3/4 of
> > the >>compliment in suspended animation.
> >
> > > Now the we gotten back on the subject, I've had a theory, but I
> > >haven't figured the details. I heard from a friend of mine of a
> > >surgical procedure that freezes part of the body so that the blood
> > >runs as a thick fluid, very slowly, so they don't lose much blood.
> > >With this procedure in mind, I was wondering if it would be possible
> > >to freeze the bodies at the given temperature and use nitrous oxide,
> > >ether, etc (some sort of anesthetic) to put them to sleep, using IVs
> > >and such to provided the needed nutrients to the body.
> > > I'm not trained in any sort of medication or freezing processes, so
> > >I just thought I'd ask.
> >
> > Was anyone paying attention or did I just humiliate myself in front of
> > the many newsletter members. If it must be more in depth, I also heard
> > from another that slower blood may mean slower brain function and
> > possibly slower groth rate. The anesthetic (by the way, it doesn't have
> > to be an anesthetic) is only used to get them to sleep.
> >
> > Jonathan
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > I will speak ill of no one,
> > And all the good I know of everybody. -Andrew Jackson
> > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > P.S.: If I did humiliate myself, don't rub it in.
> >
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