On 04Jun2020 0908, xxxxxx@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Now other things I think make sense:
>
> 1. Failures would occur at two places - the initial shock/damage of
> freezing and the struggle to revive (plus attention needs paid to
> damage to the unit and its effects)
> 2. Failures going in might be detectable during freezing and a backout
> or some mitigation steps might be possible (not sure what, but worth
> pondering)
> 3. Failures on exit might be detectable and you might have two options
> - stop the partial defrost and freeze again until you get to a better
> situation (better doc and facility) or go ahead with thaw
That sounds likely to be worse than finishing the thaw. They've now just
had a bad thaw and an emergency freeze on top of each other.
I agree that could be a possibility. I'm assuming whether you proceed or stop may depend on when in the process you detect a problem. If it is in the first say 10-15% of the process, the refreeze might be quite safe. If you tried it at the 60% point, you are right, it would probably be a bad bet.
> 9. Durations in the literature I've seen have been weeks but
> stretchable to up to 30 months (vs. a decade) so some sense has to
> exist that will allow the story-interesting long term freezing that we
> know from extant fiction and there's perhaps no good reason to make
> energy demand high.... it may just be a very efficient chest freezer
> (in a sense) and ongoing energy use might be quite minimal. (And
> battery tech at high TLs should be amazing).
I was surprised to find in MgT2 a basic limit of about 6 months (implied 'and then you die'), but a number of added descriptors for the low berths, if you are able to stack them, could push time frame to 30 months. That might be on battery though - have to check how it was worded again.
TNE's text assumed that they were good for decades at least. Also that
they were safe enough that bored nobles might use them to 'skip ahead'.
Such people would be assuming that they'd have proper attendants upon
thawing, of course.
That'd be what I'd expect.
And yes 'Timing Forward' is always a risk. Your fortune could be gone, larger events could have changed things a lot, or you might never wake up. But it could work and I'm sure in some cases it'd be a good strategy.
I've always assumed that if the environment the berth is in is cold
enough they would draw almost no power (perhaps even none, though
without power the user wouldn't be thawable), so a ship in a distant
stellar orbit could power right down and passengers and crew in low
berths could last for decades until either it's found or a timer goes
off, restarts everything and thaws everyone out.
I think our problem is batteries at very cold temperatures can (at least in most I know of) have higher internal resistance. Battery efficiency could drop off at lower temps. Esp closer to absolute zero.
Sudden Query: Do we know what temperature you are stored in a low berth? Are we talking no molecular activity ('absolute zero', 0 K) or a fraction of a degree Kelvin? Or some more mild 'freezer' temp?
On the other hand, if you couldn't wake up, you might also be able to rest for a long time without any power if it was cold enough. When you were found, someone would need to mate a valid power source to power the thawing process and likely you'd be a bit groggier or perhaps a bit more difficult to waken without injury, but it could work. I think Newton's Law of Cooling ought to work in your favour.
> (Is there a 'Rich Time Traveller' company? If I was on a developing
> world, had a massive liquid wealth, and could pop 20 years forward
> after making diverse investments in secure types of financial
> instruments, that might be a great way to grow wealth for the uber
> rich....)
Low berths were being used in MT as a way of skipping past the war. This
suggests to me that the idea that said war could actually destroy
nobles' fortunes was not something a lot of them really comprehended.
Apparently 1000+ years of the Third Imperium made it eternal to a good
chunk of its population.
Well, I suspect it was that way for the British Empire and the Roman Empire in the past. Also the empire of Alexander and the Persian Empire.
"The Sun Never Sets Over The British Empire"
--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
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