I have long puzzled over something in Andy Weir’s 2021 book Project Hail Mary: Why did two of the three fictional astronauts die during an interstellar trip?
It might be because Weir put his travelers into four-year-long medically induced comas, says Haig Aintablian, an emergency physician and flight surgeon who directs UCLA’s space medicine program.
“How cool would it be if you went to sleep a few hours after launch, and you woke up right as you arrived on the planet or the celestial body that you’re approaching?” But, he says, “I don’t think keeping the human alive and in a comatose state is necessarily the best option.”