Cryonics Mission to Mars

By Jim Yount

Why not send a frozen guy to Mars? The British have just landed, kind of. The American Rover's shutterbug gallery is postcard perfect (see: www.NASA.gov). So when are we going to send a person? And when we do send a person, why not a frozen guy?

We could freeze him here, put him on a rocket, thaw him at the other end, and put him to work. Then when his work is done, freeze him again. Don't bother to bring him back. He will be frozen. He will have no appointments! Just keep him on ice until there are plenty more people on Mars, and they can thaw him. By then he probably won't have to work. He will be a celebrity, do Martian talk shows, and judge talent on Martian Idol. A cool gig for a cool cat.

Don't we wish? But we aren't quite there yet. We can't freeze a whole human, or any animal with a backbone, for any significant period of time; with recovery, that is. Or can we?

A Great Big Jar of Frozen "Little People"

One of the thorniest problems with colonizing Mars is the huge cost to transport people. How better to transport them than as tiny "frozen guys"? We freeze fertilized human eggs (blastocysts, also called early stage embryos). We keep them frozen for as long as is needed. Ship a couple hundred, or even several thousand, to Mars in cryogenic dewars, then bring them to term by incubating them invitro, or even implanting them in human mothers.

Teeny Boppers Take Flight

With humans acting as incubators, there would be no reason to have any men as the first colonists. The crew and colonists of the expedition would consist entirely of prepubescent girls: just big enough, smart enough, and old enough to be mentally and physically capable of establishing a permanent settlement. By "manning" our space flight with teenyboppers, we keep down the weight of astronauts, and minimize the perperson nutriment requirements inflight.

The weight of the astronaut, and the expected food and water consumption, is a prime consideration in keeping the overall payload within mission "specs." A review of the growth and mental maturity curve for girls indicates that girls of age eight would make ideal astrokids. Assuming inflight time of 260 days (consistent with minimum transit time estimates) the tykes would go though an entire school year making the trip. Their teachers would be video and computer programs, and live Earth teaches in radio contact with the crew.

According to the U.S. CDC National Center for Health Statistics pediatric growth chart, an "average" (50 percentile) girl of age eight weighs in at a trim 55 pounds, and can be expected to put on only about five pounds growth weight in the 260 days it takes to fly from lowearth orbit to a landing on Mars. Even that weight gain can be curtailed by control of human growth hormone. They could be deprived of growth hormone during the trip, and then given booster shots to allow their growth to catch up on arrival at Mars when weight is no longer such a prime consideration.

Upon arrival on the Red Planet, the young (nine years old) crew can have as many as six and a half years of work (aided, of course, by our best robotic workers) to establish living quarters before they reach childbearing age. Although adolescence can bear children as young as age 13, delaying the deliver of the first children to be born on Mars until the expectant mothers are at least 15 ½ is probably in order. The only "doctors" on the expedition, will be kiddoctors trained by computer and video programs, so there is every reason to keep the risk of childbirth as low as possible.

How many astrokids/colonists would be needed for our girlpower crew? Because most of the future colonists are being transported as fertilized eggs, we need not be concerned that the small number of astrokids will result in low "genetic variation." In his 1971 "Jenken's Report," Morris Jenkens called for five mission specialists in his suggested "there and back" scenario. His specialists included: Mission Commander, Systems Engineer, Geologist, Physician, and Geochemist. The crew of the oneway only "children's crusade" could certainly number at least twice that count of diminutive passengers. The experience of Jenken's crew would be more than made up for (in some situations at least) by "expert systems" in the computer, and the expected long years to gain experience by the youthful spacers.

Each mother could bring to term six to eight frozen tots in her lifetime. In theory, the young women could do twice that, but that would be to turn them into nothing but walking baby factories rather than colonists and explorers with big families.

The second generation of Martians (the first generation born on Mars) would be ready to procreate about 16 years from birth. From a standpoint of buildingup the colony, there is no reason for more than a couple of males born every generation, and those purely as "backups" should there be a failure in the frozen people program. However, from a sociological standpoint, the number of males would probably be increased above this minimum. I would be content to leave such decisions to the Martians; they are the ones who will have to live with such choices.

Given that six out of eight Martians born in the first four generation after planetfall would be female, and that the colony is able to expand living space and other resources apace with population increase, the buildup would look like this:

Martian Population Increase

Female Male Generation Total Overall Total At Year

Planetfall generation: 10 0 10 10 0

2nd generation 60 20 80 90 1635

3rd generation 360 40 400 490 3251

4th generation 2,160 720 2880 3370 4867

As you can see from the chart, starting with just ten preteen female colonists, the Martian population would be two to three thousand after just sixty earth years.

The years are "earth years"; zero death rate is assumed. When death finally does start to claim nativeborn Martians, the prospect of cryonic suspension may be especially appealing to them. They will, no doubt, remember that a good many of them arrived on planet as "frozen guys".

This scenario is not attractive to teenage boys of our generation hankering to be space cadets or Martians. But all those unmated females on Mars might be an added attraction for future male tourists on Martian vacation!

There is another interesting scenario where all births are invitro, and there is no need for females as baby incubators. Under those circumstances, the numbers of female vs. males given in the chart above could be completely reversed.

It must be emphasized, however, that having a population of Martians as the originally colony, and later to largely be made up of teenage and preteen boys is definitely NOT a good idea. Once they tamed Mars, they would, likely as not, return to the earth to try to take over a second planet!

Frozen Guys of Mars

By having our women found Mars, there is no need to waste valuable fuel and payload on a return trip. Another way a oneway trip could be achieved is as a variation of the old "suicide mission" scenario. We would recruit, as Mars missioners, people who wished to be frozen when they died and who had some terminal medical condition, which made death likely within a few years.

With the ambient temperature on the red planet averaging about minus 53 degrees Celsius, a death anywhere on Mars would assure one of being frozen. That temperature is low enough to provide a pretty good "freezedry," but not nearly as cold as a cryonicist would hope for. Still, there are some of us who think that even temperatures of a Martian hotspell might be good enough for adequate preservation of enough information describing "the person" to be worthwhile. If the spacecraft and exploration crew consists of several terminal ill cryonicists, then it may well be possible to set up selfservicing "cold chambers" on Mars that use wind or solar power to run generators to liquefy gas from the atmosphere, which would then act as a media for keeping the astronaut/cryonaut cold. Two point seven percent of the Martian atmosphere consists of Nitrogen gas, just waiting to be liquefied for us cryonicists!

Under this scenario, given a crew of two or more, there would (of course) be a "last man standing" who would either have to freeze himself, or depend on the ambient Martian temperature to keep him cold.

The future revival of these cryonaut missioners would be dependent upon 1) the eventual permanent colonization of Mars; 2) the attainment of a level of technical sophistication on Mars commensurate with cryonics revival; 3) the attainment of some technology, somewhere, capable of reanimating the subjects; 4) the will of people of the future to undertake the reanimation. On this last point, there is good reason to believe it will come about. The cryonicist who dies and is frozen under such circumstances will likely be regarded as a hero to future Martians.

Choosing cryonicists for this mission would not be easy. The medical condition would have to be such that it is highly likely that the person will not live an extended time, but such that the medical condition would not interfere with doing active work for the expected duration of the mission, perhaps several years.

Use of the services of the terminally ill cryonicists on a oneway trip to Mars would be a fairly quick way to achieve a permanent Martian settlement. Such cryonicists could establish rocket fuel processing centers, for example, to make routine EarthMars round trips practical. The Martian atmosphere could be "mined" to produce hydrogen, hydrocarbons, or argon gas as propellants for earthbound (return trip) spacecraft. Other chemicals, taken from the atmosphere or from Martian soil, can produce other useful chemicals, such as ammonia for growing vegetables in the colony greenhouse. Interestingly, liquid nitrogen is a byproduct of a number of those chemical processes! Permanent settlers or twoway trippers would find a working habitat in place when they arrived, along with some frozen cryonauts! And all thanks to the Frozen Guys of Mars!

Reality Check

Space exploration has proved to be dangerous work. There is no reason to believe that tripping to Mars, and establishment of colonies there, will be any less hazardous. Neither of the proposals made here, are apt to be adopted, at least not by the US. NASA seems always in a publicity campaign to justify itself and its programs as somehow benefiting us in the short term, rather than simply because we need to do science! The idea of sending little girls with frozen human eggs on a oneway trip to Mars is not apt to become a NASA proposal! Neither is the plan to recruit cryonicists with terminal medical conditions to do a "suicide" mission.

When we finally do send men and women to Mars, and later attempt colonization, the loss in lives, squandering of resources, and waste of time may prove far more foolish and costly than implementing either of these "radical" proposals.