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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Apr 7, 2018 4:57:02 GMT
A possible (but extremely impractical) alternative may be to subject the person to obscenely high pressures in order for a then-supercritical breathing mixture (oxygen + noble gas, maybe xenon) to have its density become similar to water. Since oxygen partial pressure requirements are comparatively low, the vast majority (>99%) of the breathing mixture will be the filler. This would require pressures on the order of thousands of atmospheres, requiring a very long acclimatization period for the human and seriously straining the mechanical strengths of the containment vessel (you would probably want to build it out of VCS). Afaik, it is not known what effects this may have on a human or other animal, or even whether or not it is survivable. One certain upper limit is that water solidifies at around 1 GPa (>9,000 atm) into ice VI; you definitely don't want to solidify your crew. The highest regularly obtained pressures are with deep-sea divers going to around 50 atm (nowhere close to what you'd need). I would expect that at the required pressures even a noble gas will murder you through steric effects and whatnot by messing with membranes and proteins' hydrophobic interiors just by being there in large amounts. Hell, xenon narcosis actually seems to be a thing.Even if it didn't kill you (which it will at far lower pressures than necessary) you don't want to be nuking under influence. And super-pressurized anything is not going to be fun if hit.
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