X-Message-Number: 2134
Subject: CRYONICS Square buckets; ice sublimation; earthquakes
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 93 13:28:41 -0400
From: 

These are all minor points in response to Brian Wowk's suggestion of
using buckets (barrels?) of water as ballast.  None of them defeat the
idea.

If you're assuming round buckets, then you have to decrease the amount
of ballast you expect to store because circles don't tile the plane.
You may have done this already.  I suspect there will be enough
ballast either way.

Patient cross sections don't tile the plane either.  Some wasted space
is inevitable, so maybe dealing with buckets wasting space isn't
important.

I wonder to what extent the ice will sublime from inside the buckets
and redeposit itself on the outside of the buckets?  Things could
conceivably become an unmanageable block of ice despite the use of
buckets.  Sealing the buckets isn't an option because there has to be
a hole to let the air out as the ice expands.  (I guess that if the
ice cubes in Bedford's capsule were still recognizable as ice cubes
when he was moved, sublimation shouldn't be an issue.)

Tall piles of buckets of ice seem to not be earthquake-proof.  If you
hanged them from the ceiling you wouldn't have to worry about the
stacks falling over.  Or you could just assume that the cold room is
not built in an earthquake zone.  Or you could pile them up in some
bricklaying-like configuration so that the pile is as wide as it is
tall.  (But then making room for another patient is awkward.)

Tim Freeman

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