- Human hibernation could become a reality within 10 years
- It would facilitate manned space travel
- However, this solution would have its own limitations.
How to ensure that an astronaut will be in good health when he arrives on the Moons of Jupiter or Saturn? Such missions could take decades, and in the vacuum of space, muscle atrophy risks plunging astronauts into a state of paralysis.
In order to fight against the ravages of time, the ESA, the European Space Agency is trying to find solutions. One of the theses mentioned by Jennifer Ngo-Anh, coordinator within the agency, is based on a process already seen thousands of times on television.
She simply proposes to put the bodies of astronauts in “hibernation”. If this idea refers, in the collective imagination, to a distant future, Jennifer Ngo-Anh is not of this opinion. In the article she has just co-written on the subject, she assures us that the first ground tests could take place in the coming decade.
From science fiction to reality
Using hibernation to preserve astronauts in their conquest of the solar system is not a new idea. From the 1980s, this thesis was seriously evoked by NASA, which was then experiencing the great hours of its space shuttle. On the European side, interest in hibernation is more recent.
Over the past decade, the space agency has opened up to the question and several studies have been conducted on the subject. A group of Chilean researchers in particular showed very recently that the human body was not designed to hibernate and that the latter’s reserves are not sufficient to last for years.
The study explains that the larger the animal, the higher its energy expenditure during hibernation. The Bears are thus the mammals that lose the most weight (in proportion to their starting weight) during a hibernation season.
On the contrary, the small marsupials who also took part in the experiment seem to benefit from a much more efficient “energy saving” system. Bats seem to be the queens when it comes to hibernation, they lose almost no energy during this phase of their life.
6 grams of fat per day
By doing some calculations, the scientists managed to get a figure out of these experiments. A hibernating human would lose about 6 grams of fat per day. Over a 90-year journey, this corresponds to 204 kg of body fat lost. This equation shows the limits of space travel and hibernation.
This solution could thus be used to go to Mars or Venus, where the trip only lasts a few years, but it would be impossible for the ESA to send a team of sleeping astronauts to Alpha Centauri b, the exoplanet closest to the solar system, 4 light-years away, or 40,000 billion kilometers. With a Falcon Heavy the trip would take about 80,000 years.
In order to travel such distances, ESA and NASA are considering another, even more drastic solution, cryogenization. There is no question of leaving the astronauts alive this time, they are frozen at -196°C awaiting a miraculous resurrection in thousands of years. This solution would make space travel possible, but it raises major ethical questions and few studies have looked into the subject today.
