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Prolong How Tall?

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Prolong How Tall?
Post by Lord Skimper   » Sun Nov 23, 2014 10:03 pm

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If one is 3-4 times as old and one starts Prolong at an age when one is still growing. How tall would one be? If we start prolong at 14 and grow till be are 19 then multiply the growing years from 14 to 19 by 3 or 4 would one grow to 8, 9, 12 feet tall?
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Re: Prolong How Tall?
Post by Jonathan_S   » Sun Nov 23, 2014 10:17 pm

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Lord Skimper wrote:If one is 3-4 times as old and one starts Prolong at an age when one is still growing. How tall would one be? If we start prolong at 14 and grow till be are 19 then multiply the growing years from 14 to 19 by 3 or 4 would one grow to 8, 9, 12 feet tall?

Doesn't work that way. :?

You may be growing for more years, but it's described as slowing the growth process (which presumably means you're growing proportionately less for each of those years). People with 3rd gen prolong in the Honorverse seem to be in the same height range as everyone else.
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Re: Prolong How Tall?
Post by MuonNeutrino   » Sun Nov 23, 2014 10:27 pm

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Lord Skimper wrote:If one is 3-4 times as old and one starts Prolong at an age when one is still growing. How tall would one be? If we start prolong at 14 and grow till be are 19 then multiply the growing years from 14 to 19 by 3 or 4 would one grow to 8, 9, 12 feet tall?

I'm curious, have you actually read the Honorverse books? Because it certainly doesn't sound like it.

Honor is repeatedly described as about 190 centimeters tall, which is about 6 foot 3. She's also repeatedly described as a third generation prolong recipient and young-looking despite her age (60+ by now). If prolong resulted in lots of 8-12 foot giants walking around, somehow I don't think a mere 6'3" Honor would be repeatedly described as quite tall compared to the people around her. Not to mention she would be one of those giants herself rather than only being 6'3".
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Re: Prolong How Tall?
Post by kzt   » Sun Nov 23, 2014 10:48 pm

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Both of you need to stop engaging him on this sort of idiocy. Just put him on ignore.
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Re: Prolong How Tall?
Post by Draken   » Tue Nov 25, 2014 6:01 pm

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There is a limit of hight. Human body without tinkering with DNA shouldn't be able to have more than 7 feels of heigh. Also if we would be higher our bones will be bigger and Weber said that people's from high gee world's were shorter but much more wider, cus gravity on they world made big high useless
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Re: Prolong How Tall?
Post by biochem   » Mon Dec 01, 2014 9:44 am

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This is making me think. The publicly available versions of prolong don't do anything weird (change height etc). But techniques like this don't come out of thin air. Someone had to do R&D on this. R&D being R&D, the pre-launch versions probably had some defects. I doubt height was one of them but cancer seems like it would be a likely risk. It would make an interesting short story some time.
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Re: Prolong How Tall?
Post by JohnRoth   » Mon Dec 01, 2014 6:28 pm

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biochem wrote:This is making me think. The publicly available versions of prolong don't do anything weird (change height etc). But techniques like this don't come out of thin air. Someone had to do R&D on this. R&D being R&D, the pre-launch versions probably had some defects. I doubt height was one of them but cancer seems like it would be a likely risk. It would make an interesting short story some time.


I basically dismissed prolong - the way RFC describes it in the book - as pure handwavium. We know a lot more now than we did 20 + years ago when he was putting his tech bible together.

You'll notice that Mesan Alphas have natural long lives - prolong just gets added on top of that.

Knowing what I know now, and extrapolating a bit, I'd say that life extension and regeneration would have to go hand in hand - life extension would be more a matter of continuous in-place regeneration.

Your point on cancer is, I think, well taken. One of the biggest issues is that DNA replication during cell division isn't perfect; that's why most mutations in children come from the father - sperm have a lot more cell divisions in their lineage than eggs, and they just get dirtier and dirtier as the guy ages. Fixing that would take some pretty interesting redesign of several pieces of cellular machinery.
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Re: Prolong How Tall?
Post by Draken   » Mon Dec 01, 2014 7:10 pm

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Prolong is just shutting down few parts of our genome and if my knowledge about DNA they're in completely other place than mutation stuff and other. When Allison was explaining how was created that defect inside Grayson DNA, she said that mutation was around 22.2. Prolong is best to be described as something witch slow down clock of our body and after we end puberty it turn it off completely for few decades.
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Re: Prolong How Tall?
Post by Rob the Fiend   » Mon Dec 01, 2014 8:09 pm

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Draken wrote:There is a limit of hight. Human body without tinkering with DNA shouldn't be able to have more than 7 feels of heigh. Also if we would be higher our bones will be bigger and Weber said that people's from high gee world's were shorter but much more wider, cus gravity on they world made big high useless


Shorter? Three of the more prominent heavy worlders, (the two Ramirez(San Martino) and Thandy (N'debele)), are all 190+ cm tall.
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Re: Prolong How Tall?
Post by saber964   » Mon Dec 01, 2014 8:23 pm

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Rob the Fiend wrote:
Draken wrote:There is a limit of hight. Human body without tinkering with DNA shouldn't be able to have more than 7 feels of heigh. Also if we would be higher our bones will be bigger and Weber said that people's from high gee world's were shorter but much more wider, cus gravity on they world made big high useless


Shorter? Three of the more prominent heavy worlders, (the two Ramirez(San Martino) and Thandy (N'debele)), are all 190+ cm tall.


They are also discribed as massive IIRC Thandi weght is 100Kg or 220lbs. and Thomas is said to be 200+ kilos or 440+lbs.
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