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

[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.