X-Message-Number: 2182
Date: 29 Apr 93 21:11:33 EDT
From: Mike Darwin <>
Subject: cold room

Re: Reliability of LN2 suppliers.  They are very reliable.  There are now
four liquefaction plants in the greater LA area.  Holding times for the
bigfoot dewars are in the vicinity of 90 DAYS.  This is a long time.

Re: Patient Pods.  Brian's scheme for storing patients in sleeping bags
with no protective outer casing is not workable.  Alcor tried this for a
long while and it took patients actually smacking into the side of the
dewars and getting hung up out of the liquid to convince everyone to go
to the system of pods.  In fact, this was the one area of patient care
where Trans Time was ahead of Alcor for many years.  I am speaking from a
deep reservoir of personal experience here when I say that it is simply
not possible to safely handle patients without "boxing them."  I have
seen patients' fingers broken off and other damage due to bumping into
things while being maneuvered around  -- even when great care was being
exercised to avoid mishandling them.

	An added reason for a pod or casette is to provide thermal
protection during transefers or removal from the storage unit.  At this
point I feel there is little danger of Brian's system of sleeping bags
only being adopted since virtually all cryonics organizations have seen
the wisdom of pods and gone to them.

	The pods that Alcor uses (largely designed by Hugh Hixon) strap
the patient into the pod in several spots such that the patient's head is
not resting on anything and the load is more evenly distributed.  Yet
another advantage of pods (among MANY) is that they provide a container
for records, microfilm, diskettes, a few nonvaluable personal items, and
the maze of thermocouple wires that trail off the patient.

	I stand by remarks about small plastic containers.  Also, these
containers are liable to be glass brittle and/or spontaneously crack at
the temperatures being proposed for their use.  I think your best bet
would be to have cells and ballast compartments engineered out of welded
polypropylene.  There is technology to do this (which, when Brian is next
out here I will endeavor to show him) which is very elegant and which will
I believe remove Brians fears about leaks and expansion damage. 
Incidentally, expansion damage can be avoided by the expedient of putting
compression cells into ballast compartments.

----Mike Darwin

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