A study funded by NASA is looking into a novel way to plan a manned mission to Mars, put the astronauts into a sort of hibernation state for much of the journey.

The deep sleep, which is called torpor, would make a manned mission to Mars more feasible by reducing the astronauts metabolic functions, which would drastically reduce the cost of such a mission, according to a report from Fox News.

Torpor occurs naturally in hypothermia cases and inducing torpor has been a medical idea for nearly three decades.

"Therapeutic torpor has been around in theory since the 1980s and really since 2003 has been a staple for critical care trauma patients in hospitals," said aerospace engineer Mark Schaffer, of SpaceWorks Enterprises, the company conducting the study. "Protocols exist in most major medical centers for inducing therapeutic hypothermia on patients to essentially keep them alive until they can get the kind of treatment that they need."

To induce torpor, the astronauts would have a tube stuck in their noses which would funnel cold air into the body, reducing body temperature to between 89 and 93 degrees Fahrenheit, CNet reported.

The astronauts would be fed intravenously while in torpor during the trip to Mars, which would take about 180 days in the best circumstances. One minor problem is that current medical technology has only produced a maximum torpor state of seven days.

"We haven't had the need to keep someone in (therapeutic torpor) for longer than seven days," Schaffer said. "For human Mars missions, we need to push that to 90 days, 180 days. Those are the types of mission flight times we're talking about."

Putting a space crew in torpor would save money on not only food, but on smaller spacecraft. If hibernating, the crew would need smaller and fewer areas for congregating, excessing and storage.

A preliminary design of such a spacecraft has a spinning habitat to provide a lower-gravity environment that would help reduce bone and muscle loss.

The SpaceWorks study claims that a crew in torpor would need five times less space and would reduce the mass required of a spacecraft by three times. A hibernating crew would cut spacecraft weight from 400 tons to 220 tons, the study says.

"That's more than one heavy-lift launch vehicle," Schaffer said