Mousternauts

The solution to our cryopreservation problems.

As mentioned in other ideas we've been able to freeze, thaw and resuscitate hamsters (some of) who then go on to live full productive lives, for decades now.

But the techniques don't translate successfully (for any given value of 'successfully' .. that doesn't also involve a barbeque, or perhaps a casserole dish) to anything bigger.

Which is a bit of a problem for our dreams of galactic dominance really.

So what SkewCo would like to propose is the requisitioning of [Max's] intelligent mouse project to a new goal.

Now size is a limiter for intelligence so we start by first resuming the hamster cryo experiments to determine the largest size of rodent we can freeze, defrost and then resuscitate with an acceptable success rate so we know how big we can breed them.

We then breed mice for both intelligence and (at least a generalised) human appearance (we want them to handle tools etc .. and because of species vanity of course) with a far more direct & hands on approach than in the original mouse project, including bringing more modern gene splicing tech to bear to introduce helpful traits (like the antifreeze proteins found in arctic fish) rather than relying purely on a selective breeding program.

The ability to hibernate may be useful as a precursor to full cryo to help ameliorate the expected discomfort likely with both ends of the process, so I was thinking we might use Dormice as our starting species.

The Woolly dormouse or those populations of the Garden dormouse found in that species most northerly range are the ones most likely to have useful cold climate adaptions.

Maybe we can hybridise those two to start with.

Muscardinidae Sapiens, substituunt hominem usque iter gelida?

[Brought to you by Google translate ^]

Or Muscardinidae Algernonsiensis?

These proxies being much smaller than us will also help reduce some of the payload > fuel issues with interstellar travel .. if we can't (or won't) go ourselves maybe we can send someone in our place? .. even if we have to make them first.

..

Extrapolated from [a1's] link (its title, he was joking? but here we are) on [Cryogenic Tubes] with elements from [The intelligent Mouse Project] & [Project Tinkerbell].