Humans may not be able to 'hibernate' on long-term space travel, why?
When sending humanity to Mars and Venus, problems such as maintaining the health of the crew, food problems, and managing the psychological state must be solved. In the science fiction world, crew members often 'spend long space trips in artificial hibernation' to solve this problem. Roberto F. Nespolo of the Millennium Institute for Integrated Biology and Francisco Bosinovic of the Catholic University of Chile have published a study revealing the relationship between the weight and energy consumption of hibernating animals.
Why bears hibernate? Redefining the scaling energetics of hibernation | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Here's Why Hibernation in Space May Not Be Possible For Humans After All
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-common-sci-fi-solution-for-long-distance-space-travel-could-be-pointless-for-humans
Sci-fi movies such as ' 2001: A Space Odyssey ' and ' Aliens ' show scenes of spending decades or even hundreds of years of artificial hibernation.
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When it comes to hibernation, many people think of bears staying in their burrows and spending a long winter. Sure, bears hibernate during the coldest months, unlike the hibernation of small animals such as squirrels and bats.
When Nespolo et al. Investigated the energy consumption of various hibernating species, the daily energy consumption of hibernating animals was adjusted to a fairly balanced state for each animal. For example, in the case of small mammals such as flying foxes weighing 25 g and squirrels weighing about 800 g, the energy consumption per 1 g of body weight was almost the same. Small mammals awake during hibernation, eating stored food and consuming stored fat.
On the other hand, when a large animal such as a bear hibernates, it lowers body temperature, lowers metabolism, slows heart rate and breathing, and constantly consumes fat. This eliminates the need for unnecessary hunting and foraging, and reduces energy consumption by 98%. Even so, it continues to consume the energy stored in advance even in hibernation, so it seems that one quarter of the body weight may be lost by the end of hibernation.
Large mammals such as bears consume more energy per gram of body weight than small mammals, and their total energy expenditure during hibernation is almost the same as that at rest. In other words, large mammals consume less energy during hibernation than smaller mammals.
Applying the same calculations to humans as bears, rather than recreating the artificial hibernation state of 'cooling the body to reduce heart rate and respiratory rate and artificially lowering metabolism' with risk and effort inside the spacecraft. It is said that it is enough to take sleeping pills and sleep quietly.
For humans, even if the energy consumed per day is limited to hundreds of kilojoules, a year of space travel in hibernation will result in a weight loss of approximately 2 kg per year. There is no problem if you are traveling in a relatively short distance, such as another planet in the solar system, but if you try to travel in space for decades, you may get hundreds of kilograms of fat, or you may wake up from hibernation and get fat in between. I have no choice but to drink many cups of milk shake with plenty of lard.
In any case, a study by Nespolo et al. Argues that it is not very realistic to outperform long-distance space travel in artificial hibernation. Live Science, a science-based news site, said, 'In order to stay bored and not eat up the ice cream on board, it may be better to watch a science fiction drama, take a large amount of sedatives, and fall asleep to Mars. Maybe it's not worth the effort to force humanity to hibernate. '
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