Sci-fi has been telling us for decades that in order to truly travel the stars, were going to have to knock ourselves out for a while. Well need to enter whatever kind of suspended animation pod the space industry has designed and just go to sleep, and when we wake up, well be in another galaxy.

The thing is, that kind of futuristic tech might not be that far off. According to Jennifer Ngo-Anh, a research and payload coordinator with the European Space Agency, we may be able to start testing human hibernation in as little as 10 years.

Of course, we need to finetune everything before we can apply it to humans, Ngo-Anh said in an article for Space.com. But I would say that 10 years is a realistic timeline.

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This kind of hibernation, also known as torpor, is more than just a long sleep. And beyond just making it less boring to get from point A to point B, it has the potential to solve several of the major issues with extended space travel, the first of which being the physical impacts of long-term microgravity exposure on the human body.

Studies have shown that living for a significant amount of time in microgravity can have the same kinds of effects on the body as being confined to bed rest, including a loss of bone and muscle mass. Humans deteriorate fast when we arent using our bodies in the gravity theyre built for, and even though astronauts follow very strict fitness routines when in space, they often come back far weaker than they left.

When a mission both begins and ends on Earth, thats not a huge problem, as doctors can nurse the astronauts back to health as needed. But if they took a long trip to, say, Mars, there wouldnt be space rehabilitation specialists waiting on the other side of the trip.

Interestingly, however, the same deterioration doesnt happen if a body is in torpor. Research has shown that the bodies and minds of animals who hibernate suffer from almost none of these issues upon waking up from their long sleep. Figuring out how to induce a man-made hibernation in humans could functionally save them from wasting away on a road trip through the stars.

In addition, humans in torpor would need a lot less to keep going. There is always a weight concern when trying to launch a spacecraft, as more weight is both more difficult and more expensive to get off the ground. On a long distance journey like the one to Mars will be, astronauts will have to pack a substantial amount of food, water, and oxygen to make sure they will make it thereand backsafely. People in torpor need significantly less of all three of those things, thereby minimizing how much cargo needs to come on the trip.

And to top it all off, astronauts are not the only people who could benefit from this technology. Considering many of the effects space travelers are trying to ward off are nearly identical to those of a patient on bedrest, it stands to reason that the technology could also be used to protect the bodies of people on bedrest, or in such states as medically-induced comas. In fact, Alexander Choukr, a researcher and professor of anesthesiology at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Germany, believes that the first place well see torpor tested in a human subject wont be an astronaut, but a person in severe medical distress.

At a certain point, there is a case number one where you apply [the new technique] because the risks and benefits are in a balance, and leaning more to the benefits of the subject. And then you can start from there, Choukr said in an article for Space.com.

The benefits are numerous, and the claims that we might be able to access this tech just 10 years from now doesnt come from nowhere. Researchers have already figured out how to induce torpor in rats (which do not naturally hibernate) and bring them safely back into the waking world a few days later.

Obviously, theres still a lot to work outeverything from getting tech that works on rats to work on humans, to figuring out how to get AI to effectively monitor people in a state of torpor while theyre off-world. But we may be ready to fall asleep and wake up above another planet sooner than we thought.

Associate News Editor

Jackie is a writer and editor from Pennsylvania. She's especially fond of writing about space and physics, and loves sharing the weird wonders of the universe with anyone who wants to listen. She is supervised in her home office by her two cats.

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Astronauts Might Be Able to Hibernate Within Just 10 Years - Popular Mechanics