With Mars exploration progressing along nicely, it was inevitable that humans would follow suit after machines to see for themselves what the Red Planet is like. Human exploration has always been part of NASA's plans and it's working out a few logistical concerns to ensure the success of a human mission.
A one-way trip to Mars will take, at best, 180 days. Traveling requires supplies and for a period of time that long, that means packing in baseline mission requirements weighing 400 tons. But if a NASA-funded study by SpaceWorks Enterprises is successful, supplies needed can be reduced to almost half. All it's going to take is to put astronauts into deep sleep, or torpor, for the duration of their flight to Mars.
"Therapeutic torpor has been around in theory since the 1980s and really since 2003 has been a staple for critical care trauma patients in hospitals. Protocols exist in most major medical centers for inducing therapeutic hypothermia on patients to essentially keep them alive until they can get the kind of treatment that they need," explained Mark Schaffer, a SpaceWorks aerospace engineer.
Putting astronauts in deep sleep is essentially a cost-reduction measure. For starters, individuals participating in the Mars mission will fed intravenously. They won't be moving around so smaller ships can be employed, with fewer amenities to match. These translate to an overall drop in the number of supplies needed to get a crew to Mars and because NASA cuts back on what it needs, it can save on costs.
But is torpor safe? As it is, yes. It has been done extensively in major hospitals in the country before so NASA isn't exactly trying out experimental technology here.
The only problem is that the longest that a patient has been put under torpor is about seven days. The challenge now for SpaceWorks and NASA is to bring that number up to 180 days. At the moment, the study is looking at using a two-part torpor system called RhinoChill.
If astronauts can't be put under deep sleep for the entire duration of their flight to Mars, the alternative is to put the crew in a cycle involving two to three days of being awake and then hibernating for 14 days.
Further research is needed to determine if prolonged torpor is safe but Schaffer shares that initial results have been promising, adding that the SpaceWorks team has not seen dramatic causes for concern on both the medical and engineering side of their study.
