X-Message-Number: 18543
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 12:45:50 -0500 (EST)
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: money and nitrogen

George Smith writes: "One of the things I have always liked about CI has
been their dedication to remaining debt free and striving to be as self
sustaining as possible."

I agree that CI appears to be in a good financial position, but I don't
know about "self-sustaining." I can't think of any organization, in the
entire history of cryonics, that has been self-sustaining in the sense
that its schedule of regular charges (membership fees plus preservation
fees) was sufficient to cover all operating costs. So far as I know, all
organizations have depended, and still do depend, on donations, bequests,
and volunteer labor. This is not self-sustaining as I understand it.

As for "debt free," I believe Alcor does not own its entire building
outright, but on the other hand, it leases more than half of the building
to other tenants, which I think has been a successful financial strategy.
This kind of "debt" should be of little concern, and so far as I know,
Alcor does not have any other kind of debt.

While I appreciate George's good intentions, I do feel that his seemingly
positive post has an implicitly negative implication about other
organizations.

As for the liquid nitrogen boiloff rates, Bob Ettinger merely said that
the rate has been reduced, without giving any numbers. This is good
cheerleading stuff but does not enable a meaningful evaluation or
comparison.

Paul Wakfer at CryoSpan was getting 11.5 liters of boiloff per day from a
slightly modified bigfoot dewar similar to those at Alcor. I don't know
the volume of this type of dewar, but it is designed to hold four
whole-body patients. Paul introduced some additional modifications which
he believed would reduce boiloff to 9 liters per day, or less. From these
numbers we can assume that Alcor's boiloff rate is no more than 3 liters
per whole-body patient per day, and may be less. I am expressing the rate
in these terms, so that a meaningful comparison with the CI design is
possible, bearing in mind that CI prefers to accept whole-body patients
only. Of course, the meaningful comparison would require CI to reveal its
actual boiloff data.

I would guess that CI achieves some efficiency advantage by using larger
storage units, but I believe that the pearlite insulation is less
efficient than the vacuum insulation used in conventional dewars. In the
past, CI has expressed concern that a dewar might suffer vacuum failure
(which has never actually happened, outside of a case in New Jersey long
ago, where an unsupervised delivery person abused the dewar). On the
other hand, I believe CI has to use a vacuum pump regularly on each
cryostat, unless the design has been modified in the past year or two.

More information on these issues would be welcome.

--CP

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