Hibernation recap

Last week Roberto F. Nespolo, Carlos Mejias, and Francisco Bozinovic submitted doi 10.1098/rspb.2022.0456 on the logistics of hibernation. Last weekend this got applied to space travel.

Hibernation is a proven strategy to get through lean months by bears, groundhogs, and maybe Neanders and Triassic survivors. Much depends upon what "hibernation" means - we will get to this.

If we're going cheap-seats such that we're even considering the hibernation option then we're using the cheapest travel possible. The baseline is Hohmann-transfer, to deliver all the freight and all the wrapping, which then stays at the (solar) orbit until the next "window" opens for return (to 1 AU). Certain cycler-orbits be cheaper for the investors and insurers back home, who want their metal back not trusting the passengers to return it. Such orbits get to the destination faster, at cost of carrying a detachable shuttle with its own tank of delta-V (fuel). Either way we are talking many weeks of transit, even to Venus (SVL2?) and Mars (Deimos?); well within the hibernation-range.

We have not considered the effects of long microgravity. Some good news, at least short-term: tech to counteract that. Nespolo, Mejias, Bozinovic assume either that this tech is perfect or else the artifical ms^-2 is good-enough, like we're spinning two Starships around an axis.

NMB here say that humans "hibernate" more like bears than like dormice. That is: there's no point in chilling ourselves before the trip and thawing out at the end. We're better off simply going into torpor, maybe just sleeping and occasionally playing a video game. (h/t to, guess what, 4chan.) CLOTS 4/13/23: I'd forgotten the Thrombosis but, here's the bear-protein.

The NMB study assumed present-tech and affects how we travel inner-system. We do have to start somewhere and the study has value for that much. I agree that Event Horizon's backstory - wherein a big bulky ship that doesn't spin somehow gets human cargo to Neptune - can't happen. Not in this century.

I do think, though, that future tech might offer future hibernation options. This might not take many centuries.