X-Message-Number: 13876 Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2000 13:24:29 -0400 From: James Swayze <> Subject: RE: Affordability, supply & demand, advertising, life insurance and LN2 References: <> RE: Affordability, supply & demand, advertising, life insurance and LN2 evaporation All, Let me first apologize to everyone as this is going to be a long one...I hope. ;) I've been watching the various arguments going back and forth regarding the high cost of cryonics and the reasonable causes for it. The word reasonable here really only applies for those of us who understand the worth of cryonics and the possibilities for the future and who are able to overlook the fact it is not yet proven. For the uninformed person the cost is certainly not reasonably explained. When I say uninformed I refer to, I would hazard a guess, 99.99% of the worlds population. I would guess also that less than 1% of the worlds population has even heard of cryonics mush less understand it. When I tell someone about it most often they know nothing about it or they say "Oh do you mean cryogenics?". Misnaming the term is a clear indication of their level of misunderstanding. Out of the general population of the world, not just the technologically developed countries, how many people are even science fiction fans I wonder? I would bet that far less than those are scientifically informed. It should come as no surprise that cryonics is not widely known. How much media coverage does it really get? Not much. The occasional ill informed treatment by hollywood. These are hardly ever positive...take the "Phantasm 3" movie as an example or even "Austin Powers" (the first one). I watch every science and technology show I can find time for on the science oriented cable channels. To date I've seen less than a half dozen documentaries that mention cryonics. I've never seen one dedicated solely to cryonics. Would a documentary solely dedicated to cryonics be helpful? Yes, but only a little because it won't reach your average person especially if they are tuned into some mind numbing sitcom. Let's face it most people only want to escape the reality of their quiet lives of desperation. They don't want to deal with reality or their mortality, just take their minds off the serious for a few hours then back to the reality of surviving another day. Many people can't even be persuaded to provide themselves adequate health care insurance and life insurance or retirement for "normal" circumstances let alone something clearly outside the envelope. We need a "Mission Impossible 2" or a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" for cryonics! We need a block buster movie that most people will go see that is centered strongly around cryonics. Has it been done? Some would say yes and I can think of two movies where cryonics was central to the story, but I'd say they weren't what I am calling for. In the first place neither could be considered block buster. In the second neither were even close to accurate. In the third their plots drifted far from the mechanism of how the characters got where they wound up. Cryonics must be central to the story. Also it would be a good opportunity to deal with the religious and environmental objection issues. Perhaps a story where a hero comes back to save the earth from destruction and had he not been frozen all are doomed. Maybe the hero is secretly frozen because some religious zealots teamed with wrongly informed anti technology environmental zealots manage to outlaw cryonics. Here is an opportunity to make the general public sympathetic to the legal issues involved such as estate preservation and the rest. The use of nanotechnology can be introduced to show reason for hope that, though unproved, cryonics will work. Not that it requires nano but nano should be made more widely understood as well. Perhaps the hero has the key to anti aging and relative immortality but dies before perfecting it for general use or something such. This is another method to showcase what cryonics is truly about...immortalism! I know we have among us the imagination and talent to put something of this nature together. After cryonics becomes more widely known then the factors of supply and demand can be considered as applying. Then advertising can come into play and not be such a risk. Personally I think a suspension should cost about $10,000. It should be close to the cost of a funeral but not ridiculously low. People should have to pay enough to take it seriously. It's something that requires advanced planning. Funerals are often left to be paid for by relatives and especially the children of the deceased. I doubt that funeral insurance already in existence, so called purple shield, is widely purchased. For one thing the commercials for it are down right morbid. Again no one wants to be reminded of their mortality. However, cryonics needn't be considered so. It should be advertised as simply putting life on hold for a time. A commercial could easily make note of a number of scientific and medical advances that relate to cryonics that the potential user can see as incentives. Anti aging and advances in the curative powers of modern medicine are but a few. It could be pointed out that cures for cancer and other diseases are on the increase and so those that are suffering it or have relatives that are would be made to see the benefit of putting "life on hold" until they are available. An analogy that anyone can relate to is the rapid advance of aeronautics. For instance an announcer could say, "We've progressed from no flight at all to space travel in a single lifetime and more is yet to come. Imagine friends what we can do with medicine! Why miss out when it what you need could be just around the corner". Now what about insurance? Funeral insurance exists, why not straight cryonics insurance? Perhaps someone who knows the working risk mechanism for funeral insurance could help us here. How about group plans? The risk factor for the insurer would of course be greater than normal life insurance because potentially every client wants to use the service. Not everyone will be able to though. This is so for those involved in cryonics now. I'm reminded of the recent deaths of friends of this list that were not able to be suspended. The number who would be unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at death to be suspended would of course go up if the cost were brought down so more people could be involved. This might provide the margin an insurer needs. Another incentive for people to choose such a policy and for an insurer to offer such a policy could be that the policy would convert to a standard funeral policy at a much lower cost to the insurer should they be unfortunate enough to not be in the right place at death. Cryonics needs to be shared with more regular people. Right now we who are interested are a tiny tiny minority, even smaller yet are those actually signed up. We can be perceived of as being elitist. I'm reminded of the bitter sentiment fostered in everyday folk by the extreme right politically towards the so called elitist left. I'd hate for the same to be used against cryonics enthusiasts. As long as it is not widely understood the unknown becomes fodder for the deathists to use against cryonics and immortalism. We need to come down from our crystal palace on the mountain and share our dream with the common folk. Not that any of us would want to keep it to ourselves, but price and lack of general knowledge alone accomplish that well enough. Now as to some of the causes of the high cost. It shouldn't be the responsibility of the cryonics organization to keep a trust for reanimation nor for preservation of estate. Right now it's necessary because of the legalities involved. I feel that if cryonics became more widely known and hence the legal land mines as well, people would begin to vote them out of existence. Perhaps reanimation should remain the responsibility of the cryonics firm but maybe it could be elective. Maybe some would pay less and take their chances that the medical industry would provide the means. Or perhaps another industry could evolve to fill this niche. Along with putting away something for estate preservation people might opt to entrust seed money to some investment firm made especially for this purpose. This would have the effect of removing from general knowledge the often asked question or remark I've heard from the uninitiated, such as, "Oh I heard of a cryonics company that was only in it for the dead peoples money" or "I've heard of that....I just thought it was a scam to get hold of the estates of foolish dreamers". An investment firm made solely for the purpose of cryonics patient's estate preservation could both create wealth for the suspended customer and profit for the firm from a minimal investment. This is so especially if they took the very long term view. Removing this responsibility from the cryonics firm should result in a savings from lowered legal costs, less paperwork, fewer lawsuits and I'm sure the more imaginative than I can think of more. Such an investment firm could gather the strength to take on the legal issues involved. It would have the power and the political clout to fight and lobby for delicate issues such as cloning. Even more power, wealth and profit could be gained by the same type of firm or consortium of like firms by also providing the cryonics insurance policies. Relieving cryonics firms from these responsibilities and headaches should free them to expend their moneys and energies more on research product improvement. Now as to LN2 evaporation, I believe there has to be a better way. Thanks to those that took the time to explain the physics to me. I've been chewing that nut for days now. Being a problem solving type person it just bugs the hell out of me the amount of waste this process involves. I find it so hard to believe that a closed system couldn't be made and made to be cheaper in the long run. Emphasis on long term here. I have in mind a system that refrigerates and recompresses the evaporated gas back to a liquid in a closed loop recirculating system. Heat can be scavenged in many ways and can even be used to provide some of the power such as with materials that use a temperature differential to produce electric current. The additional power needed can be derived from solar, wind power, hydro-electric or geothermal depending on the area. With Alcor for an example, solar and wind I believe are good candidates for their location. The right combination would have them totally off grid and even selling some power back even with some stored for reserves. I think the cheapest would be a linked system where each dewar would not have it's own closed loop. There would of course be pressure safety valves in redundancy. There would also be a backup or two for the recirculation/recooling apparatus. Heat leaking into the dewars could be kept to a minimum by lowering their outside environment temperature. It seems to me they should be kept in a well below freezing refrigerated room to begin with. Having this exist below ground where the temperature is lower and constant helps even more. It makes it safer as well. All you engineers tell me if this is a viable start on a system. First the evaporating gas enters an expansion chamber to immediately deal with the pressure. To turn heat into mechanical energy the gas could pass through a turbine at the near end. To further convert heat the other end could be a piston that the gas would push to turn more of the heat energy into mechanical energy. Plenty of devices could be attached to scavenge this energy back into the loops apparatus. An alternative could be a chamber with a balloon inside. As the balloon fills with N gas it expands against the walls of the chamber reducing the area for normal air. This air is pushed out past another turbine as an alternative to the piston method for converting some of the heat energy. A second like chamber would be connected so that as one inflates the compressed normal air flows to the other to collapse the balloon full of N of the other chamber. In alternating fashion the expansion energy of one helps conduct the N to the next stage. One-way valves and alternating valves help control this. Also the materials used for balloon and chamber can be such as to exploit the temperature differential method of creating electrical current, even further robbing heat energy from the gas. The next stage is a heat exchanger where refrigerated coolant further cools the N gas. Now from here it goes through the process that I assume normally creates LN2. I don't know how this is done except that compressing it is involved. Some help here please providing I'm not totally off my rocker. On the other hand, here's a thought. Buy a LN2 production plant and keep replacing boiled off LN2. I don't mean a factory. Read the following then go to www.cryomech.com/lnp.html. ______________________________________________________________________________________________ Description: Cryomech, Inc. manufactures reliable, fully automatic 10 and 40 liter per day Liquid Nitrogen Plants (LNP's). The LNPs require only electrical power and compressed air to produce LN2. A nitrogen generator separates nitrogen from the other components of the air, without any moving parts. The 98% pure nitrogen flows into a 35 or 160 liter dewar, where it is liquefied at the cold end of either our AL60 or AL200 Cryorefrigerator. The liquid level in the dewar is automatically controlled and observable at all times to the operator. The LN2 is easily transferred from the dewar using the low loss, vacuum insulated extraction valve and line conveniently located on the dewar. The LNPs have been designed for ease of operation and do not require a full-time, trained operator. Cryomech, Inc. extends a warranty on all parts and workmanship for three years or 8,000 hours, whichever comes first, after satisfactory installation, provided the owner (operator) operates the equipment according to the specifications and operating procedures set forth by Cryomech. ______________________________________________________________________________________________ This device is about the size of a paint shop air compressor. Pipe the nitrogen rich boiled off air to the plane and make it even more efficient. Oh btw, guess what else they make? ______________________________________________________________________________________________ Cryomech, Inc. manufactures single and two stage cryorefrigerators based on both the Gifford-McMahon and the Pulse Tube Cycles. The Pulse Tube Cryorefrigerator obtains cryogenic temperatures as low as 2.7K without displacer motion, eliminating vibrations and increasing mean time between maintenance. All two stage units supply cooling below 10K with a higher temperature stage to cool shields, leads and supports to 30-80K. Our single stage cryorefrigerators now cool to minimum temperatures of approximately 10K, with the largest unit producing a maximum cooling capacity of 300 watts at 77K . Cryomech, Inc. manufactures water and air cooled compressors for each cryorefrigerator. Cryomech, Inc. has manufactured cryorefrigerators since 1963. Cryomech's Standard Gifford-McMahon Cycle Cryorefrigerators are either single or two stage. The AL-Series single stage G-M's, reach a low temperature of 25K in 20 minutes and are maximized for price and capacity from 10-80K. The GB-Series two stage G-M's, cool down to 6.5K on the second stage with another stage, the first stage, which supplies cooling from 10-80K. When cooling devices to below 20K, the second stage of the G-M supplies the 20K while the first stage supplies the power to intercept heat at a higher temperature, therefore unloading the second stage. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Now all that's left to do is hook these up to a constant FREE power source. How hard can it be? ;) James Swayze -- "Quod de futuris non est determinata omnino veritas" NOSTRADAMUS 15TH Century Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=13876