Here it is! Who has not read or watched in films how people are put into a special capsule and then they come out of there after 100 years of flight to a distant planet as cheerful as cucumbers. Tired of running around a spaceship, once, and again sleeping in a capsule for about 50 years.
Maybe everything is not so similar, of course, but already now an American company is developing a technology for immersing a person into a state of hibernation (similar to hibernation in animals), which will help reduce costs during space travel.
Here are the details …
In 2006, a resident of Japan, Mitsutaka Uchikoshi, went on a picnic in the mountains with friends. When the picnic was over, he decided to walk down the mountain instead of taking the funicular down with the others, but on the way he got lost, slipped, broke his hip bone, and eventually passed out. After 24 days, climbers accidentally discovered him: Uchikoshi's body temperature dropped to 22 ° C, his pulse was barely discernible, and his metabolism practically stopped.
Nevertheless, despite numerous injuries to internal organs and a lot of blood loss, Uchikoshi was able to fully recover from this incident. This is the world's first documented case of human hibernation, and it was he who prompted Spaceworks President John Bradford to use this condition during space flights.
“I'm a big fan of science fiction literature, so I always dreamed a little about making it a reality,” says Bradford. “But first of all, I'm a space engineer working on space missions to Mars and other places within the solar system. From this point of view, human hibernation can make a big difference."
The company is currently focusing on therapeutic hypothermia, which is already being used in clinics around the world to help patients recover from cardiac arrest or traumatic brain injury. This technology is based on lowering the body temperature to 32-34 ° C, and the patient usually spends several days in this state.
Promotional video:
According to Bradford, Spaceworks' goal is to increase that timeframe to a few months. The company has already developed a design for a shared hibernation chamber, which includes cooling and heating systems, as well as robotic arms and a monitoring system to monitor and care for astronauts during hibernation. The company plans to conduct the first tests on animals in 2018, after which the first experiments with human participation will become possible.
However, there are skeptics: There is one fundamental reason why "hibernation" for a period of more than 1 month is generally not feasible for a person … regardless of the success of the "freeze" and subsequent revival. if you stay in the "freeze" for more than a month, then after the "revival" you are guaranteed to die quickly.
The problem is that a person's only protection against radiation is to constantly renew the body and replace damaged cells. while you are "alive" - the cells have time to renew themselves, but if the metabolism is stopped, the irradiation will not stop and the cellular damage will quickly reach a fatal level, and after waking up you will at least have cancerous tumors all over your body.
The option with shielding does not work either, because there are already a lot of radioactive isotopes inside each person, which emit continuously and under normal circumstances their radiation is completely harmless.
And more news. American scientists announced the start of the next isolation experiment HI-SEAS, in which six volunteers will spend eight months in isolation on the slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano to simulate life on the surface of Mars.
“This place is the most convenient and the most obvious place to conduct such research for two reasons. The slopes of Mauna Loa are reminiscent of Mars in themselves, and the University of Hawaii, located nearby, has all the necessary experts to conduct an “expedition” to the red planet,”said Kim Binsted of the University of Hawaii at Manoa (USA).
The HI-SEAS experiment differs from many isolation studies, including the Russian Mars-500 and joint projects of NASA and the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in that the members of its “crew” simulate not a flight to Mars or the Moon, but life on their surfaces in a permanent base. Project participants can leave the base at any time, however, for this they will have to wear a spacesuit.
Life at the base, according to the university's press service, is as close as possible to Martian - there is a 20-minute delay in connection with "Earth", the expedition members receive water and food only once every few months, and observe all safety measures that may be applied when creating a NASA base on Mars.
This project has been sponsored by NASA for five years, and within its framework there have already been four "expeditions" to Mars, which lasted from several months to a year. The last such experiment ended in August 2016, and the current experiment began in late February.
It involves four men and two girls who agreed to spend eight months in complete isolation from the rest of the world. Among them are both professional scientists - a biologist, rocket engineer and a specialist in space exploration, and simple volunteers - a programmer from Google, an engineer from Boeing, and a writer.
As part of the current expedition, scientists plan to focus on autonomous life on Mars and conducting scientific research on the surface of the "red planet". The results of these experiments, NASA hopes, will help prepare for the creation of a real base on Mars or the Moon.
All this is, of course, wonderful, but in my opinion, technical breakthroughs on the topic of engines have never been heard. And to fly to the same Mars for several years there and for several years back is unlikely to be advisable to anyone.