Hi All

Two odd news items relevant to deep-space flight. Firstly a Japanese man survived 24 days of hypothermia by apparently going into suspended animation...

Suspended Animation

...and secondly new work has tracked down the cellular mechanism of aging...

Aging Genes

...defective versions of certain genes cause accelerated aging in humans and mice. This suggests that DNA repair might allow aging to be delayed - though just how and for how long is speculative at present. Eventually DNA damage accumulates in every cell and aging can't be avoided as DNA isn't stable enough for the long-haul. But what if we can repair it?

The suspended animation 'experiment' is probably more near-term as it opens up new avenues of research on this latent potential in human beings. If it can be reliably triggered and a suspended human can be adequately cared for by machines then it makes long-haul space-flight a bit easier.

Thermodynamics makes DNA decay inevitable, but perhaps we can do better than nature. If suspension and DNA repair were combined then perhaps starflight isn't so ridiculous afterall - tedious, but not absurd.

Adam