X-Message-Number: 1776
Date: 20 Feb 93 02:49:59 EST
From: Charles Platt <>
Subject: CRYONICS Ettinger storage plan

To: Cryonet


February 20, 1993


Kevin Brown mentions the plan circulated by Robert Ettinger 
for storage of patients at a temperature above the boiling 
point of liquid nitrogen. I received a copy of this plan, 
which basically consists of wrapping the patient in thermal 
insulation (to buffer temperature variations) and suspending 
the patient in liquid nitrogen vapor by supporting him in 
some sort of harness on pontoons floating in the liquid 
nitrogen. 

Several questions come to mind. 

1. Since liquid nitrogen is relatively cheap, and CI must 
have a good supply, they could make a simple scale model of 
this setup and see if it actually works. A letter informing 
us of the result of an experiment would be a bit more useful 
than a letter speculating on what the result MIGHT be. 

2. If the patient's temperature is above the temperature of 
the bath of liquid nitrogen, this surely means that heat is 
being allowed in from outside. In that case, I would imagine 
that losses from boil-off would be very high and the storage 
would be expensive. 

3. I'm not entirely happy about the idea of being floated on 
pontoons in a liquid at -136 Celsius. Most materials become 
brittle at that temperature. What happens if one of the 
pontoons cracks and springs a leak? I imagine the patient 
gradually sinking. I imagine people from CI having to monitor 
some sort of alarm system, and trying to fish patients out 
repair leaky pontoons when necessary. I imagine that the 
alarm system, in turn, might suffer some sort of malfunction. 
This all makes me a little uneasy. 

-------------------------------------------------------------

Re science fiction conventions:

People have been chiding me for my grudging attitude. Please 
bear in mind that I have spent about thirty years interacting 
with the science-fiction community, and those interactions 
have been endlessly frustrating and disappointing. Many 
writers are friends of mine, but science-fiction fans are 
another matter. To phrase it politely, they are less 
progressively minded than their literature would lead one to 
expect. As a result, almost all editors and many writers are 
extremely cynical about the science-fiction readership. 

However, I AGREE we have a better chance to find people 
interested in cryonics at a science-fiction convention than, 
say, at an auto parts swap meet, so I'll be very glad to do 
my bit, whatever that bit may be. 

--Charles Platt

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