The Stasis Foundation Research By Stephen Valentine, RA (NCARB)
INTRODUCTION Timeship, the primary project at the Stasis Foundation Research Park, will be a stateof-the-art next generation cryonics facility. Timeship will provide secure long-term cryostorage for the DNA of endangered species, organs for transplantation, and both neuropatients and whole-body patients for future reanimation. It will also house laboratories for advanced life extension research.
Model of Timeship viewing the lower cryostorage area divided into twelve communities. The hierarchy of Neighborhoods and Communities allows for security and redundancy. The inner square is for LN2 storage and cryogenic equipment.
The site is approximately 800 acres in Comfort, Texas, less than one hour northwest of San Antonio. Plans are currently being drawn up for the first phase of a fabrication and testing laboratory to further develop an advanced intermediate temperature storage system referred to here as the Temperature Controlled Volume (TCV), a cryostorage container with Timeship Cold Volume features. Once we have a proven working prototype of this container, the next phase will be the development of the Cold Volumes to be used in Timeship. While there have been decades of research in cryopreservation, there is also the issue of the contextual requirements www.alcor.org
for cryostorage. While most buildings are for well understood activities, just about everything that will take place at Timeship will be unique and technologically demanding, including determining the site of the building in terms of climate, safety, infrastructural and social issues. There will also be the need for architectural and mechanical systems of high reliability requiring minimal maintenance for extended time periods. These requirements necessitate that Timeship be not just an architectural and construction project, but also a major ongoing research project. Years of research have been committed to the project, often involving the world’s leading engineers. Timeship has been designed to be a “building of immortality” both in its program and its construction. The products of this research to date are contained in a massive multi-volume Program Report and summarized in the book, Timeship: The Architecture of Immortality. In this article we will focus on the cryostorage systems at Timeship, very briefly list some of the Foundation’s studies of the literature of cryopreservation and life extension, and briefly describe the library being established by the Stasis Foundation. There are four components to the Stasis cryostorage systems: Pods, Transport Containers, Temperature Control Volumes (TCVs), and Cold Volumes. Until Cold Volumes at Timeship are operational, cryonics patients would have to be shipped in Transport Containers (which are not addressed in this article) to a secure location where they would be placed in TCVs. Once Timeship is operational, the patients will be removed from the TCVs and placed in Cold Volumes where they will remain until reanimation. One of the features of this system is that once a patient is placed in his Cryonics / April 2015
or her Pod, he or she will not be removed from that Pod until reanimation. PATIENT & ORGAN PODS There are two types of Pods, “wholebody” Pods and “organ” Pods that are used for both organs and neuropatients. Pods must provide both impact and thermal protection for the fragile vitrified patients. Toward this objective, a complex design was developed with multiple layers, each layer having a protective or thermal role in bringing the patient safely to eventual reanimation. From the outsidein, the layers of the whole-body Pod are as follows: first is a protective enclosure tube with removable top and bottom. Within this tube goes a stainless steel vacuuminsulated volume and an aluminum heatconductive liner to assure that the patient is kept at an even temperature. The patient capsule is placed inside a liner, and inside that the patient cradle is inserted.
The multiple components of the Full Patient Pod
The Pod is the basic module of Timeship, and the entire building is designed outward from the Pod. The Pod design must accommodate the shape of the patient on the inside, and the way Pods are 9