Over on Nature online there’s an article on inducing hibernation in humans, with applications to space travel. Long story short, it’s at least a decade away, and there are lots of unknowns. The first thing that springs to mind for me when I think about this is that before hibernation is applied to something like a Mars mission they’ll have to send some poor sap up to ISS and leave him passed out cold up there for 9 months, just to be sure there’s no unforeseen problems due to hibernation in microgravity. In practice the experimental subject would probably have to spend at least a couple of weeks up there prior to hibernating and also a month or so after coming out, so it wouldn’t be as bad as just flying up, going to sleep and then coming straight back. Still, being a mission specialist whose task is a nine month nap is a little shy of the image of the Right Stuff.