X-Message-Number: 27239
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2005 22:51:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jeff Davis <>
Subject: Re: Cost of cryonics

In message #27234, "Jordan Sparks"
<> writes:

> I know I've seen cost breakdowns in the past. 
Someone else will probably point you towards them.  

> But as for your thinking that there is a
fundamentally less expensive method, there simply is
not. 

There are many different economic formulas.  For
instance, wouldn't you agree that not-for-profit
enterprises using donated labor and materials have a
radically different cost structure than other more 
conventionally structured "business" enterprises? 
Another example: You can build your own house cheaper
and to a higher standard of quality than what you
could get from a professional contractor.  Why? 
Because the DIY economic formula is so radically
different from the conventional commercial formula.   
There are an almost unlimited number of ways to
accomplish a given end on the cheap.  Your assertion
that "it can't be done" is offered with a certain
brash confidence, but without facts and without
consideration for the many different ways available by
which to achieve a given end.  Please forgive me if I
remain unpersuaded.  
   
> Solar power is incredibly expensive.

Depends if you're talking retail or nonconventional.

I can make a solar oven out of tin foil and cardboard.
For pennies or even for nothing at all.  It will bake
bread just as well as an oven fueled by electricity or
natural gas, but the fuel costs will be zero.

Solar insolation in the desert southwest is on the
order of five megawatts per acre.  An acre is a plot
of land 209 feet on a side.  If you use solar
concentrators for steam generation to directly power
the LN2 plant (ie avoid conversion), and if your
cryogenic storage chamber is underground, sizable,
with a high volume to surface ratio, and, of course,
well insulated, then fuel cost would be low(zero?) and
the heat loss per patient would be srikingly lower
than for storage in individual dewars.  These two
factors alone suggest a lower per patient cost.  

> Your start-up costs for a LN2 generator would also
be huge.

I've looked at various LN2 production methods, cost
and availability of second hand industrial scale LN2
plants, as well as smaller scale setups, and also
looked at what would be involved in putting together a
liquifaction system from separate components,
purchased or fabricated by the thriftiest of methods. 
It does not have to be a megabucks undertaking.  

Maybe I'm wrong, Jordan, but I think your dismissal
may have been a bit premature.

Best, Jeff Davis

   "Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
                           Ray Charles


	
		
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