X-Message-Number: 1776 Date: 20 Feb 93 02:49:59 EST From: Charles Platt <> Subject: CRYONICS Ettinger storage plan To: Cryonet February 20, 1993 Kevin Brown mentions the plan circulated by Robert Ettinger for storage of patients at a temperature above the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. I received a copy of this plan, which basically consists of wrapping the patient in thermal insulation (to buffer temperature variations) and suspending the patient in liquid nitrogen vapor by supporting him in some sort of harness on pontoons floating in the liquid nitrogen. Several questions come to mind. 1. Since liquid nitrogen is relatively cheap, and CI must have a good supply, they could make a simple scale model of this setup and see if it actually works. A letter informing us of the result of an experiment would be a bit more useful than a letter speculating on what the result MIGHT be. 2. If the patient's temperature is above the temperature of the bath of liquid nitrogen, this surely means that heat is being allowed in from outside. In that case, I would imagine that losses from boil-off would be very high and the storage would be expensive. 3. I'm not entirely happy about the idea of being floated on pontoons in a liquid at -136 Celsius. Most materials become brittle at that temperature. What happens if one of the pontoons cracks and springs a leak? I imagine the patient gradually sinking. I imagine people from CI having to monitor some sort of alarm system, and trying to fish patients out repair leaky pontoons when necessary. I imagine that the alarm system, in turn, might suffer some sort of malfunction. This all makes me a little uneasy. ------------------------------------------------------------- Re science fiction conventions: People have been chiding me for my grudging attitude. Please bear in mind that I have spent about thirty years interacting with the science-fiction community, and those interactions have been endlessly frustrating and disappointing. Many writers are friends of mine, but science-fiction fans are another matter. To phrase it politely, they are less progressively minded than their literature would lead one to expect. As a result, almost all editors and many writers are extremely cynical about the science-fiction readership. However, I AGREE we have a better chance to find people interested in cryonics at a science-fiction convention than, say, at an auto parts swap meet, so I'll be very glad to do my bit, whatever that bit may be. --Charles Platt Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1776