The effect of sustained excess G forces is cerebral hypoxia. The brain can’t stand being hypoxic for very long, but one minute is very unlikely even to cause severe long-term neurologic dysfunction. The evidence is that brain cells take at least four minutes to start dying.

In this “ride,” death is much more likely to result from sudden deceleration at the end of the ride. The body doesn’t withstand negative Gs nearly as well as it does acceleration. Even so, a few race car drivers have survived, with no permanent ill effect, deceleration forces calculated to be in excess of -200 Gs.

From my view, I’m delighted to see this thing talked up. I trust the common sense of most people to sense its absurdity, and they will naturally — and rightly — think that the inventor is absurd, too, as well as his attempt to enshrine suicide as something “elegant” and “humane.”

Raymond has it right.

Strangely, in an era when opinion is ending the death penalty for convicted murderers in many countries, and in some states in the US, we are making it easier to kill the innocent, often in the very same jurisdictions.

“There is no special ritual, nor is death given special meaning except that of the legal procedures and psychological preparation. It is like death is divorced from our cultural life…” Urbonas writes. “…But if it is already legal, why not to make it more meaningful?”

…You came to this room. The weird door made it look like a good place for a fun-death, such as you poor castaways liked to seek, except that there was not much sport in dying unless other people know that you did it intentionally, and know how you did it. “

Cordwainer Smith, “Under Old Earth”

I hope the artist is playing a massive joke on us. If he speaks of such with a proud, earnest face and deeply committed to what he views as a humane mission, well…