By Aaron Zhao
This is the beginning of a new series, The Next Chapter, where we explore the endless possibilities of science fiction’s impact on science today.
– From the Generation Z Team
The human mind is curious and constantly searching for new answers and information. This thirst for the unprecedented, for the unknown is especially evident in space exploration where agencies are on the search for new planets that can potentially host life or simply want to arrive on distant planets like Mars.
However, what is rendering us unable to penetrate into deep space with live astronauts on board is health problems and aging. Long-term stays in space has crippling effects on the human body, from muscle atrophy and spaceflight osteopenia to lowered red cell production and weakened vision. And, aging? Who can stop that? Faced with these obstacles, travelling far out from our home planet seems like an impossible feat. Turns out, scientists have a plan and it’s borrowed from science fiction.
Promises of sleep chambers
Seen in sci-fi shows and films like “The 100” and “2010: The Year We Make Contact”, sleep chambers have the potential to change the course of space exploration. Imagine being able to lie down in a chamber and waking up 33.9 million miles away from Earth with the Red Planet right before your eyes, waiting for you to explore its red lands. Imagine sleeping at 32 years old for just a century later, and waking up to find yourself in an unexplored universe, still 32. Just imagine what sleep chambers could do for the space exploration! Once we have this technology at hand, astronauts could be propelled billions of kilometres away from their home planet, something that was previously only seen in the fictional realm.
How do sleep chambers work?
The point of sleep chambers is to induce some sort of rest in the astronaut after they lie down. But what does this rest look like? And what is the science behind this mystical, induced sleep tech? There are two paths that scientists are taking for the development of suspended animation. Hibernation and cryosleep. We could either transform astronauts into Sleeping Beauties or refrigerate them.
The first prototype mentioned above utilizes hibernation as a method of extended dormancy. The result of the implementation of this would be a significantly slowed down heart rate, metabolism, and breathing. With the small exertion of energy required, animals are able to lie dormant for long periods of time.
What is exciting about hibernation is that it potentially slows down ageing.
Published in a research study in Biology Letters, Dr. Christopher Turbill and his team found that the telomere (a region at the end of a chromosome which acts a cover) shortened, believed to be a sign of ageing. However, the animals that hibernated longer woke up with relatively longer telomeres. While this is isn’t a concrete conclusion, it sheds more light on how hibernation does slow down aging. In addition, the anti-aging could also have been from the minimized cellular processes going on within the body.
The second approach of inducing a long sleep in astronauts is using coldness. Another perspective of looking that this mode of sleep is mild hypothermia. Essentially, what happens is the body temperature of astronauts are cooled down to around 32 degrees Celsius, so that heart rate slows and your metabolism (just nearly) stops. Anesthetics will be given to them so they cannot feel the coldness. In the meantime, the chamber provides protection against space radiation.
Cryosleep was inspired by medical practices. We have been exploiting coldness in medicine since the days of Hippocrates (around 2,300 years ago). When someone is wounded and blood is rushing out, ice would be placed on it to slow down the flowing and give the skin adequate time to heal.
You may have also heard of incidents that involved people being trapped in cold water for an extended duration of time and surviving. In May 1999, Dr. Anna Bagenholm was skiing when she fell headfirst into the icy water, only to be rescued 80 minutes later. Her pulse stopped, thus the circulation of blood followed suit. Fortunately, the unconscious Bagenholm was brought to the hospital and “thawed”, her heart rate slowly returning to its usual thump-thump. From this incident, we see that coldness can definitely be implemented to put someone into a mild hypothermia, in other words cryosleep.
The future
Sleep chambers are going to become an integral component of space rockets at one point in time. We already have SpaceX planning to land on Mars by 2024, and NASA by 2033. Of course, sleep chambers are still underdeveloped and requires much more attention from investors, the government, and the science society. This technology is definitely a new kid on the block and he needs to be introduced to the neighbourhood. But until then, space exploration’s potential has not been maximized.