X-Message-Number: 18543 Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 12:45:50 -0500 (EST) From: Charles Platt <> Subject: money and nitrogen George Smith writes: "One of the things I have always liked about CI has been their dedication to remaining debt free and striving to be as self sustaining as possible." I agree that CI appears to be in a good financial position, but I don't know about "self-sustaining." I can't think of any organization, in the entire history of cryonics, that has been self-sustaining in the sense that its schedule of regular charges (membership fees plus preservation fees) was sufficient to cover all operating costs. So far as I know, all organizations have depended, and still do depend, on donations, bequests, and volunteer labor. This is not self-sustaining as I understand it. As for "debt free," I believe Alcor does not own its entire building outright, but on the other hand, it leases more than half of the building to other tenants, which I think has been a successful financial strategy. This kind of "debt" should be of little concern, and so far as I know, Alcor does not have any other kind of debt. While I appreciate George's good intentions, I do feel that his seemingly positive post has an implicitly negative implication about other organizations. As for the liquid nitrogen boiloff rates, Bob Ettinger merely said that the rate has been reduced, without giving any numbers. This is good cheerleading stuff but does not enable a meaningful evaluation or comparison. Paul Wakfer at CryoSpan was getting 11.5 liters of boiloff per day from a slightly modified bigfoot dewar similar to those at Alcor. I don't know the volume of this type of dewar, but it is designed to hold four whole-body patients. Paul introduced some additional modifications which he believed would reduce boiloff to 9 liters per day, or less. From these numbers we can assume that Alcor's boiloff rate is no more than 3 liters per whole-body patient per day, and may be less. I am expressing the rate in these terms, so that a meaningful comparison with the CI design is possible, bearing in mind that CI prefers to accept whole-body patients only. Of course, the meaningful comparison would require CI to reveal its actual boiloff data. I would guess that CI achieves some efficiency advantage by using larger storage units, but I believe that the pearlite insulation is less efficient than the vacuum insulation used in conventional dewars. In the past, CI has expressed concern that a dewar might suffer vacuum failure (which has never actually happened, outside of a case in New Jersey long ago, where an unsupervised delivery person abused the dewar). On the other hand, I believe CI has to use a vacuum pump regularly on each cryostat, unless the design has been modified in the past year or two. More information on these issues would be welcome. --CP Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18543