Scientists are reviving a mind bending sci-fi idea of putting astronauts into coma like hibernation to survive deep space. It sounds like the future, and turning humans into “sleeping passengers” is still far from reality.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-future-astronauts-be-put-into-comas-for-space-travel-like-in-project/
20 Comments
Any chance they can just mind wipe and copy. Then send clones to be aged as needed, then install memories? Then you can have smaller ships.
People in a coma require constant care and even after they awake need months if not years of physical therapy
It is a ridiculous thought, the only alternative is finding travel that defies the laws physics as we know it
How would that help with the radiation? Space is an unfriendly place.
Can they put me in a coma for a 12 hour flight to Asia?
Because I’m totally up for that.
So the plot to the film ‘passengers’.
If it ever works reliably, you’ll see it in your local hospital LONG before you’ll see it in space.
Just being able to buy people time to treat them properly would make many procedures far simpler and more successful. We already do it there to so extent, and people are put in induced comas for certain reasons. But… they’re still just ageing and operating normally and reliant on regular food, oxygen, etc. under that type of coma, so it is worthless for the sci-fi space-travel reasons that we want it for.
But if we ever invent a way to “halt” the body successfully… medicine has far more use of it than space travel ever would, and it would be the safest testing ground on which to do it first. If anything goes wrong… oh, look, a bunch of doctors and experts on-hand in a medical environment.
When we’ve cracked it and medics are routinely using it… then you can translate it to space. Not the other way around.
cryosleep is not mind-bending, it’s just hard. it’s also like the most common sci-fi trope there is whenever non-ftl travel is described.
As anyone who has done physical therapy with people who have been in a coma or bed ridden for an extended period of time this is a massively stupid idea
I’m just going to assume this is some kind of sneaky ad campaign for a movie
Even attempting to send humans beyond the moon is insane with current technology.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Jargon|Definition|
|——-|———|—|
|[cryogenic](/r/Space/comments/1s0z255/stub/obx6627 “Last usage”)|Very low temperature fluid; materials that would be gaseous at room temperature/pressure|
| |(In re: rocket fuel) Often synonymous with hydrolox|
|hydrolox|Portmanteau: liquid hydrogen fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
|[scrub](/r/Space/comments/1s0z255/stub/obx6hg6 “Last usage”)|Launch postponement for any reason (commonly GSE issues)|
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|GSE|Ground Support Equipment|
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Yeah, it’s all fun and games until a Facehugger breaks into your cryopod.
Cannot understand this “need” to put human bodies in space when we can put tech in space and relay everything back.
Over time telepresence robots and whatnot can only improve.
Heck at some point put AI personas, with very strict safety controls, in the bots and let them get on with it and report back.
Why risk squidgy, easily damaged humans? It doesn’t make sense.
You secure that shit, Hudson!
In the film, 66% of the “sleeping passengers” die in their sleep. Just like the majority of the sleeping astronauts in 2001: A Space Odyssey, although that was a case of murder.
Doesn’t provoke much confidence if something goes wrong along the way.
Hell yeah, im gonna passenger someone SO hard
It’s longer than you think, Dad!
They’d need a way to mitigate or repair DNA damage from cosmic radiation. A body in stasis would accumulate it if everything is shut down.
This idea has been part of sci-fi for almost a 100 years.
I spent a week in an induced coma once because of pneumonia, it took me MONTHS even YEARS to feel somewhat normal again. I had to do physical therapy to learn how to walk again
This wouldn’t work