Over on Nature online there's an article on inducing hibernation in humans, with applications to space travel. Long story short, it's at least a decade away, and there are lots of unknowns. The first thing that springs to mind for me when I think about this is that before hibernation is applied to something like a Mars mission they'll have to send some poor sap up to ISS and leave him passed out cold up there for 9 months, just to be sure there's no unforeseen problems due to hibernation in microgravity. In practice the experimental subject would probably have to spend at least a couple of weeks up there prior to hibernating and also a month or so after coming out, so it wouldn't be as bad as just flying up, going to sleep and then coming straight back. Still, being a mission specialist whose task is a nine month nap is a little shy of the image of the Right Stuff.

Well, even if you can't get true hibernation, getting close by allowing someone to sleep for maybe a week would definitely cut down on consumables. Sounds like an interesting life extension mechanism too: "You know, this entire economy sucks. I think I'll set up some buy limit orders and take a year long nap."

Interesting take on the subject, Mike. Sounds like there might be a business opportunity there - long stay hotels with paid staff to take care of your affairs while you nap until the economy warms up, or the election is over :-)

Yea, just think of all of the embarrasing moments we could have saved ourselves if we could have just slept through the 1970s....

> send some poor sap up to ISS and leave him
> passed out cold up there for 9 months

Maybe the Russians will give you a discount, if you send him up as cargo rather than a passenger.

There have been some stories that have dealt with that. In Heinlein's "A Door Into Summer" you would sign up with an insurance company and be frozen for a certain number of years, or to be wakened when a certain event happened. In Vinge's "Marooned in Real Time" they had a "stasis bubble" and some people wanted to see the future, but got more than they bargained for. Or Farmer's "Dayworld" where people are placed in suspended animation 6 days out of the week to save space.

If it was reasonably safe and you didn't age significantly, I could see some people without family ties hibernating for, say, a year at a time and "visiting" for a month. Call it temporal tourism. It also might be helpful for people with some terminal diseases but still healthy enough to take the hibernation stress. Cancer growth, for instance, might be almost stopped.

I've been noticing a lot lately that we're starting to actually live in the future. A lot of the things that were in the SF books I read when a kid (and which most people thought wasn't even real literature) is now the stuff of headlines.

Still no flying cars, though.

I don't think I would like it. I hate taking naps as it is. I'm one of those people that lives off of 5-6 hours sleep a night. As the saying goes, "Plenty of time to sleep when your dead."

Hefty: Which does beg another potentially interesting question, that of long-term health effects from hibernation. It's not implausible it might actually end up increasing expected lifespan somewhat, though probably reducing "experienced" life overall; the heart beats at a significantly lower rate, for example, if memory serves.

Now that would be fun...

I'm sure if I tried this on a space voyage, the on-board computer would open the cargo doors and kill me while I lay there. Way too risky if you ask me. ;-)

The military has already been testing drugs that keep people awake for several days at at time with little or no signs of fatigue. Imagine being stapped into a space craft, put into a drug induced coma, wake up in orbit around Mars, land on the surface, and then take other drugs that keep you awake for several weeks at a time. Of course if I were on Mars I'd imagine having an even harder time sleeping anyways.

I'm not at all opposed to the idea that humans will have to be gentically modified to survive space travel. I would think a modified person that was about a midgets height, resistant to microgravity, resistant to being frozen, heightened homeostasis, low light vision, and a prehensile tail to free up the hands while in microgravity.

"I'm not at all opposed to the idea that humans will have to be gentically modified to survive space travel. I would think a modified person that was about a midgets height, resistant to microgravity, resistant to being frozen, heightened homeostasis, low light vision, and a prehensile tail to free up the hands while in microgravity."

Congratulations! You have just invented they Monkey!

Congratulations! You have just invented they Monkey!

Mike - congratulations. You have just won the "funniest blog comment" award for this week.

Thanks Andrew! I have my moments! Few and far between though they may be.

We must be careful with monkeytech, we all remember that nasty episode when intelligent apes from the future got a hold of one of our post-apollo FTL craft, recovered it from an inland sea, made it flyable and returned to earth circa 1974. It's a shame NASA doesn't have Dr. Milo on staff to fix the shuttle, shame about being choked by that sick gorillia.

P.S. Rand, if you are listening, I want my monkey butler now!

...and remember [tispeaknspell]"Pray for Bobo!"[/tispeaknspell]

P.S. Rand, if you are listening, I want my monkey butler now!

Sorry, all out of stock. Try Amazon.

Quote from Mike: "Congratulations! You have just invented they Monkey!"

Yea I couldn't decide between a tail or a abnormally long beard that one could tie themselves down to something with. Maybe call it project Gimli