Forward Time Travel

[koopkooper]

Here in Sydney the very first Cryogenic facility is being set up. What do you think of the possibility of future time travel via this means. Sure the tech is unproven at this point in history but consider the leaps and bounds in the last 200 years in medicine.

 

[Hurricane Jack]

Setting aside the tech for the moment the procedure is very expensive & therefore will be available only for the wealthy. When baseball legend Ted Williams died in 2002 the procedure to prep him cost $136,000. I believe there are annual maintenance fees after that although this article doesn't mention them.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ted-williams-frozen-in-two-pieces/

 

[Fading Fast]

Reach out to me again when they find a way to take you back in time. On our current trajectory, I have no interest in waking up a hundred years from now.

Kidding aside, I have a feeling that the science today isn't there, but these failed attempts might be the groundwork for success decades or, probably, longer in the future.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I hate the cold.

 

[Fading Fast]

I hate the cold.

If your heat goes out for 24 hours at the wrong time, you'll be your own cryogenic experiment.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

Since you can only be cryogenically frozen when you're dead, any future boffins who have the idea of defrosting the stiff because his sell by date is up, will not only have to deal with the slush of certain organs & body parts (various body tissue requires different temperatures & freezing techniques which is impossible with cryogenics) but they will also have to be able to raise the dead & cure whatever it was that killed 'em in the first place.
Reckon a beefburger in a freezer will do more time travelling & be more useful when defrosted.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

I hate the cold.

Don't worry, you're destined for a warmer place.

 

[LizzieMaine]

On the other hand, the prospect of a baseball team made up entirely of Ted Williamses does offer some degree of interest.

 

[Benzadmiral]

In the '70s, SF writer Larry Niven suggested that being frozen would not come with a guarantee that you'd be revived, if a future administration passed a law restricting revivals -- if, for example, that society needed your body parts for transplants. You could "wake up a piece at a time," in the organ banks.

Before that, Robert Heinlein, in The Door Into Summer, postulated that the insurance companies would take charge of cold sleepers. You'd have to establish that you'd have resources, that you wouldn't be a public charge when you were awakened. (I highly recommend DIS, both for the extrapolation of how cold sleep might be handled legally and in business, and for the charming relationship the hero/narrator has with his cat, Petronius the Arbiter, aka "Pete.")

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

In the '70s, SF writer Larry Niven suggested that being frozen would not come with a guarantee that you'd be revived, if a future administration passed a law restricting revivals -- if, for example, that society needed your body parts for transplants. You could "wake up a piece at a time," in the organ banks.

Before that, Robert Heinlein, in The Door Into Summer, postulated that the insurance companies would take charge of cold sleepers. You'd have to establish that you'd have resources, that you wouldn't be a public charge when you were awakened. (I highly recommend DIS, both for the extrapolation of how cold sleep might be handled legally and in business, and for the charming relationship the hero/narrator has with his cat, Petronius the Arbiter, aka "Pete.")

Reading that book now it comes as a shock that when the narrator goes to the insurance company the first thing the salesman does is offer him a cigarette. Heinlein's imagination was vast when imagining the future, but it never occurred to him that within half a century smoking would have the same social cachet as pedophilia.

 

[MikeKardec]

Robert Heinlein, in The Door Into Summer, postulated that the insurance companies would take charge of cold sleepers. You'd have to establish that you'd have resources, that you wouldn't be a public charge when you were awakened. (I highly recommend DIS, both for the extrapolation of how cold sleep might be handled legally and in business, and for the charming relationship the hero/narrator has with his cat, Petronius the Arbiter, aka "Pete.")

A great book though the ending needed a bit more set up. I was about to go right to it regarding this thread but you beat me to it. It seems to me that cryo (the current version) does damage, death does damage ... that's two serious strikes against the "sleeper." I'd definitely want an investment program that benefited those who woke me up only after I was healthy happy and whole!!!

 

[tonyb]

In the next life we'll all be ones and zeroes. The case can be made that we already are.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Don't worry, you're destined for a warmer place.

Oh, c'mon! Not even a "like"? I thought that was very funny.
Tough crowd.

 

[shadowrider]

A couple of years ago I attended an astronomy conference where the relator briefly touched the issue, stating that with current technology, the "defrosting" part would do a lot of tissue damage because it would destroy the cell cores (roughly translated).

Anyway, I did some research about the issue as I find it very interesting, and what I gathered is companies are offering two options nowadays: freezing up your whole body, or your severed head only, at a cheaper price.
The present legislation about it is also very muddy, at best, because what happens if a person signs up and pays the huge fee for being cryogenically frozen, but then dies of a violent death where their head or body is destroyed?

Best bang for your buck at present time is invest in a used freezer, put it in your grandkids' basement, and ask them to stuff you in it when time comes...

 

[GHT]

Here in Sydney the very first Cryogenic facility is being set up. What do you think of the possibility of future time travel via this means.

Do you mean to lie in a frozen state to be revived in the future? Time travel will never happen, because if it were possible, how come we haven't met tourists from the future?

Oh, c'mon! Not even a "like"? I thought that was very funny.
Tough crowd.

The hell it is!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Do you mean to lie in a frozen state to be revived in the future? Time travel will never happen, because if it were possible, how come we haven't met tourists from the future?

Just the other day I saw an angry looking Scotsman in a long blue coat wandering around town mumbling something about a phone booth. Wonder what that was all about.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Time travel will never happen, because if it were possible, how come we haven't met tourists from the future?

One sci-fi answer to that Q is that the system is rigged so that future time travelers can indeed time travel, but they cannot go back in time before the moment when the time machine was first invented. I rather like the symmetry of that answer, although one does have to come from planet Gallifrey to know for sure.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

how come we haven't met tourists from the future?

What do you think all those senior tourists from Florida are ?

 

[Lean'n'mean]

what happens if a person signs up and pays the huge fee for being cryogenically frozen, but then dies of a violent death where their head or body is destroyed?

Seeing as they are already dead, it wouldn't stand up in court.

 

[GHT]

It wouldn't stand up in court.

That's why I didn't sue when I tried viagra and it didn't work.