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Peter1469
10-07-2014, 05:48 PM
Stasis for space travel? (http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/making-the-180-day-trip-to-mars-let-nasa-put-you-in-a-deep-sleep/)

Certainly from science fiction, but can we do it?


The form of stasis they're looking at, called torpor, is commonly used in critical-care hospital units, but has so far only been used to keep people in deep sleep for far less time than the 180-plus days it'll take to get astronauts to Mars. To push the boundaries beyond the current timeframe, NASA has partnered with SpaceWorks Enterprises (http://www.sei.aero/), an aerospace engineering firm, to study how a stasis-reliant flight might work.

"We haven't had the need to keep someone in (therapeutic torpor) for longer than seven days," Mark Schaffer, aerospace engineer for SpaceWorks Enterprises said at the International Astronomical Congress (http://www.iac2014.org/) in Toronto last week. "For human Mars missions, we need to push that to 90 days, 180 days. Those are the types of mission flight times we're talking about."


To go into stasis, astronauts would basically have a tube stuck up their nose that releases a cooling agent, which gradually lowers the body temperature to the 89 to 93 degrees Fahrenheit range needed to induce torpor. A nasal solution, says SpaceWorks Enterprises, while less comfortable than external cooling pads, would be preferable since pads could cause tissue damage. The crew could be woken up either by stopping the flow of the cooling agent, or by using warming pads to speed up the process.