Suspend Me, Part Deux

You wanna make the 7-month “hop” to Mars? We’ve determined ‘tis a far better thing to sleep through the trip than to look out the window. So let’s get practical.

There you are, ready for the Long Dream (hope it’s a good one), looking fine in your futuristic metrosexual undies, trusting your space-mates to take good care. Now what? 

Here’s the latest thinking (for real):

First, you get taped up for heart rhythm, blood pressure, oxygen levels, etc.

Next, you get a sedative to knock you out, followed by a lowering of your body temperature to below hyporthermia levels.

Now an intravenous anticoagulant line is inserted, that helps prevent things like blood clots, so you don’t like, die, in your sleep.

You eat via a feeding tube shoved down your throat. Sexy, right? About a thousand calories of slurry per day.

A suite of waste collection tubes and inserts whisks all your unmentionables away (Wait, WHO inserts and adjusts those…?)

And finally -- and this is the surprising part – a helpful crew member or robot wakes you up, Three Weeks Later. 

Eh? I thought the trip was seven months! Oh, it is. There’s just no technology currently on the horizon to enable that kind of stasis. Wake up, sleepy head! Time to move around, exercise, help steer the ship and take care of your co-sleepers for a 3-day stint. There’s no free rides, here.

After 72 hours, it’s time to uh, lather and repeat. Strip down, tubes in, drug up, cool and dose another 21 days. For the Mars jump, figure on doing this about eight times. “But I don’t LIKE that tubing going up my…” “Shut up and hold still. You know the drill, ensign!”

Oh, the romance. The adventure. The anticipation. The slurry!

I am so in.

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Suspend Me

Remember the movie “Passengers” from a year or two back? It’s a couple hundred years in the future and big space-liners are ferrying hundreds of humans to a new Eden-like planet that takes, I dunno, a hundred years in Earth time to get to, so everyone mounts their hibernation pods for a big sleep, so they can wake up relaxed and refreshed when they arrive.

Nice concept.

Meanwhile, back here in Earth-bound labs, there’s serious science at a furious pace getting done on this persuasion, simply in preparation for our coming shuttles to Mars, a mere 34 million miles out. Both scientists and shrinks are concerned about how we’ll deal with 7 months of pitch-black window views in a tin can livingroom, twiddling collective thumbs whilst we hurdle towards the red orb at a mere 18K mph.

And rightly so. Look no farther than the panic in people’s eyes when they wander into an earth-bound space with no cell reception: Wait: whaaaaat? Now multiply that by seven months and throw in doses of exponentially rising anxiety, depression and, gulp, animosity. It’s a recipe for disaster, no matter how chill you start out, and one we’ve seen dramatized in a dozen other on-screen space operas.

So what’s a body to do? Sleep! They zip you up in one o’ them pod thingies, turn a valve and a switch and you’re cool (like, REALLY cool) for the duration. We’ve seen how this goes: A trusted crew member wakes you up prior to landing and all’s well.  Easy, right?

Sure it is. Easy as sprouting wings-easy. More next time…

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On Auto

So I'm cruising along at 350, enjoying some big puffy cumulous formations and breathing some sweet pistachio synth air, when Boom, the dash starts flashing bright enough to wake you out of a chem dream, the car screams to a mid-air halt and a blue'n'white floats over with a sour-faced cop in the window.

 "Sir, may I see your bios and lightband?"

"Uh, sure, officer, what seems to be the trouble?"

"Sir, were you aware that you were altering your cloud course through that last bank?"

"Alter... Officer, I was just admiring the view when..."

"We have a heat impression of both your hands ON the steering stick."

"Well, I was just resting them for a moment, I mean, it's a beautiful day and..."

"Sir, when was the last time you texted during this flight?"

"Tex... I, I was just in touch with my friend about the party on Rexus9, and HE was saying..."

"Your transmit log indicates that conversation was over 5 minutes ago. Any sub-orbital texts you can produce in the ensuing time frame?"

"Well, I was about to send..."

"May I see your record of cute animal viewing for this period, please."

"Oh! I just finished that one with the kittens running across the meadow with the ducks!"

"Which played on your screen 26 hours ago?"

"Wait, I mean the puppies! The puppies rolling over each other and then falling out of the dresser drawer!"

"Earlier this morning."

"The... the parakeet -- with the Pitbull!"

"Sir, you haven't texted or participated in any form of social media for the past 34 minutes and appear to have been steering your vehicle in a random manner for the past twelve, prior to my pulling you over."

"But I... wait, look! I found these babies eating strained peaches. (laughing) Look at that, they're getting it all over their bibs and faces, isn't that a riot, don'tcha just love watching them carry on, OMG that's so..."

"Sir, please step out of the vehicle and place your hands behind your back."

"But they're... Wait: You want me to step OUT -- we're 150 feet up!"

"On to the jet-plat, sir, let's not make this any more difficult, OK?"

"Officer, I NEVER steer, I was just day-dreaming and, and staring..."

"At nothing. Step out of the vehicle please. Central, this is 34F6, requesting backup..."

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Wake me When We Get There

There was a fascinating article somewhere (that’s the problem these days –there’s so much info everywhere, it blurs together) about the realities of long-term space travel. Which means what?

Look, the thing is, for the foreseeable future, we’re going to get to places like Mars or Titan (Saturn’s most promising life-possibility moon) in the coming generation or two and by scifi standards, it’s gonna take forever-ish. Seven months each way to Mars, years and years to Titan. Wanna go? Think of what a hero you’d be on Earth. If you made it. Or didn’t. Or actually managed to get there and return in say, 40 years. Who knows, if you travelled fast enough, you might even come back younger! And wouldn’t that be a great thing to mull over with all that free time in space?

So to the practical. As of the latest science, you can’t simply seal yourself up in a pod and chemically induce some kind of suspended animation and wake up refreshed and ready to go 7 years later, as the ship’s AI calmly informs you we’re now in low orbit over our destination planet and how was your rest?

No. But not totally no. You CAN sleep big gulps of it off. You just have to be awakened every 3 weeks or so. Why? Body has to be reanimated, pumped with fresh good stuff, moved around, cleaned out – all the things we do on a daily basis, which, it appears to turn out, you cannot simply ignore for years of sleep at a time without dying. Might happen someday way in the future, but by then we’ll be folding time and travelling across galaxies just like Seth McFarlane does every Thursday now.

So sleep three weeks, wakie-wakie, eggs n bac-ie walk around, catch up on instagram, watch a movie, tighten a bolt on the holo-deck and then back to bed for another three weeks. Which means around ten cycles like that to get to Mars. Boring? How could that be boring!? Now, to Saturn and cycling oh, a hundred, 150 times, hmmmmm… Where’d we leave off on that Parcheesi game last time? And aren’t we intrepid…

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