Medical Gear

[Gelrir]

Originally Posted by dragoon500ly

Drug Kit, weight 13kg
(snip)
“Fluids in 1,000ml IV Bags”:
12 Normal Saline
12 5% Glucose
12 Artificial Blood
12 Blood Plasma

... 1000 milliliters is 1 liter. The fluids are essentially water, so 1 liter weighs about 1 kg. That's 48 kg of fluids there ...

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Michael B.

[Gelrir]

Dried plasma, or serum albumin, or even just plain saline preparation would be much lighter. Also, it wouldn't bring up the weird storage issues that decades-long storage of blood plasma would bring up. 9 grams of salt is needed to produce 1 liter of "normal saline". Lactated Ringers Solution is fairly similar, but somewhat better for acute fluid loss cases. "In a large-volume resuscitation over several hours, LRS maintains a more stable blood pH as compared to isotonic saline." I'm not sure from the various packaging labels, but LRS is about 12 grams per 1 liter of fluid. For 48 liters of fluid, you only need to provide about a half-kilo of powdered material.

If the Project invented a useful artificial blood with a long shelf life, you'd think they'd have released it for general use. I can sorta understand the "we can't share Universal Antidote with the world" theory maybe ... but a form of artificial blood with an indefinite storage life?

Providing the MPV with a really good water filter, or a small heater/still, to produce pure water, would be useful in many ways.

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Michael B.

[Gelrir]

Here's a liter of saline.

This also brings up an interesting point: for your campaign, you should decide whether or not the team members were told during training, "Oh, everything issued by the Project will remain good forever, no matter what's printed on the box, bag, container, or in the written instructions. We're just that good."

Almost any prescription medication has a "use before" date on it, even this bag of what is basically salt water.

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Michael B.

[kato13]

My brother in law is a chemist at a major pharmaceutical company. At one point he was tasked with spot testing IV saline solutions. This led to him having hundreds of extra bags (he would test one out of pallet, but they would not resell the remainder of the box).

The extras he gave to anyone who used contact lenses as it was a substitute for saline. When I asked about expiration dates he said there were only there out of an abundance of legal caution. I was possible but unlikely that the container would break down if there was a problem in its manufacturing. He expected that the container lifespan was probably 5 to 10 times longer than indicated.

[Gelrir]

Eh, but what about, say, penicillin? If the bottle of pills says "Use before November 1992" and the date is 2139 ... do you use the pills?

And if every single thing stored by the Project has stood up perfectly well to a century-and-a-half of time ... can you avoid the conclusion that the Project knew the teams would be sleeping till the 22nd Century?

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Michael B

[kato13]

Originally Posted by Gelrir

Eh, but what about, say, penicillin? If the bottle of pills says "Use before November 1992" and the date is 2139 ... do you use the pills?

And if every single thing stored by the Project has stood up perfectly well to a century-and-a-half of time ... can you avoid the conclusion that the Project knew the teams would be sleeping till the 22nd Century?

--
Michael B

Medicines will break down. The normal rules of heat, sunlight, and moisture will accelerate it. But even in a cool, dark, dry place I don't think any medicines will last multiple decades. Even if the project plans to pack gamma irradiate and then package in nitrogen, it wont preserve everything.

That is another reason I like using the team is trapped in a time bubble (where time outside passes thousands of times faster), as opposed to cryosleep. It solves the decay issues.

[robj3]

Kato13 wrote:

Even if the project plans to pack gamma irradiate and then package in nitrogen, it wont preserve everything.

It just has to preserve enough. 20% wastage of perishables is acceptable.
Heck, with enough redundancy, higher proportions are OK.
Finding out what's gone off is going to be pretty gross for the team, but it's another sign that they have overslept.

That is another reason I like using the team is trapped in a time bubble (where time outside passes thousands of times faster), as opposed to cryosleep. It solves the decay issues.

This brings up far bigger issues than supply spoilage because you've given the Project the ability to manipulate cosmic levels of energy. Why didn't they use stasis tech to win the Cold War, prevent WW3, or migrate to another solar system and settle a habitable world there?

(The ability to manipulate space time implied by temporal stasis makes interstellar travel much easier).