Artificial torpor

[james_davis_nicoll]

Apparently they've induced hibernation in animals that don't normally hiberate.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4469793.stm

Comments

[rosefox]

I think that's bbc.co.uk, not bbc.uk.

And it's pretty damn nifty.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Fixed.

Say, could this be used to reduce the tedium of long distance flying?

[rosefox]

The Jaunt immediately comes to mind. By which I mean, uh, yes, probably; though it would play merry hell with your body clock.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Strike that. I just thought about what happens to luggage....

[rosefox]

A state of artificial torpor can be induced in luggage?

Or do you mean the whole depressurized compartment thing?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Sleeping passengers might find themselves accidentally delived to the wrong destination. I wonder if Robert Sheckley ever used this idea?

[rosefox]

It would probably be optimal to wake them at the end of each leg of the flight, to reduce the airlines' liability for misrouting.

[penguinicity.livejournal.com]

Ah - that raises an interesting possibility. Part of hibernation is reduced O2 demand. I wonder if it's enough that you wouldn't need pressurized cabins to fly at high altitude.

How far would air travel costs drop if the passengers could fly stacked like cordwood without needing the extra weight and complications of pressurization, flight attendants, little sacks of peanuts, etc.

[rosefox]

This could be combined very plausibly with a "peak oil"-inspired scenario of airlines desperate to cut costs in the face of skyrocketing fuel prices.

[rosefox]

Hm, would also permit high acceleration, altitudes sufficient to induce near-weightlessness, etc. without concerns about the passengers getting sick all over the cabin.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Hm, would also permit high acceleration, altitudes sufficient to induce near-weightlessness, etc. without concerns about the passengers getting sick all over the cabin.

Or they'd upchuck in their sleep, which couldn't be good.

[rosefox]

I'd think that unlikely if the metabolism is slowed down. A lot of motion sickness has to do with being consciously aware of it.

There's probably the makings of a weight-loss craze somewhere in there.

I wonder whether the brain would still absorb sensory data. What happens if you're torporized and someone plays you recordings of, I dunno, foreign language instruction or meditation guides? It'd be very interesting to find out.

[liveavatar.livejournal.com]

I need to read more. Because your post immediately brought to mind Valley of the Dolls, with Neely's sedation for weight-loss purposes, and of course Demolition Man, where the prison pipes in rehabilitation programs to flash-frozen convicts.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I'm getting claustrophobic just thinking about this. I hate flying now and the idea of being strapped in, placed in a stupor and then packed in like cordwood is not helping.

The A380-800F cargo plane can deliver 150 tons. Call those tonnes because I am lazy. Say the close-pack capsules each mass 50 kg and each passenger masses 100 kg, then they could deliver 1000 people. That's about double the number of people the A380 passenger variant is good for.

No inflight hijacking (except by flight crew).

[penguinicity.livejournal.com]

But the A380 isn't optomized for this sort of operation. Figure your Average Human is fairly close to the density of water, 7 pounds per US gallon. 150 tons of humans work out to a tad over 6300 cubic feet (apologies - this can't be good for your claustrophobia). The A380 has a cargo volume of 40,000 cubic feet. So you'd need the A380's wing mated to a smaller fuselage - a 757 would probably work out about right. Smaller fuselage means less fuel consumption. Also, the payload would be a few (several?) tons higher since you only need to pressurize the crew compartment.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

That's ok. I can't think in Imperial so 40,000 cubic feet means nothing to me. No claustrophobia.

Humans are about 1/10th of a cubic meter, right, but they need airflow and cooling so give them 2/10 m^3, for a total of 200 m^3 for 1000 people. Or a cube ~6 m on a side, not that people lend themselves to being stacked in cubes and not that cubes are good shape for planes.

Are you assuming the passenger cubbies each have their own air supply? Because if not, you do need to pressurize the plane because even sleeping people need to breathe.

[penguinicity.livejournal.com]

I'd say a person is closer to 0.15 m^3 (1m waist circumference, 2m tall) - but close enough. Our volume estimates are around the same (1000 people in a 757-767 sized fuselage, depending on how much baggage they want to bring along).

Since the hibernating people are running with a metabolic rate that's 10% of an awake person, their O2 demand is similarly reduced. My assumption is that their O2 demand can be satisfied at a lower atmospheric pressure. If I have time I'll go digging around for a graph of O2 saturation versus ppO2, and see how low of a pressure you can go and still satisfy a hibernating sea-level-acclimatized human.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Lungs work almost well in reverse as they do normally, or so humane experiments involving dogs and hard vacuum indicate. I'd worry about low pressure killing the people, which gcould negativelt impact the company's image.