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6 months seems to be the outer extremes of medically induced comas (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-a-medicall...) and that's nowhere near long enough to get anywhere useful.

Although I guess you could wake people up every 3 months for some muscle replenishment exercise and mission updates.

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But as far as I know you still age while in a coma. So while you may be in a unconscious sleep - it won't do you any good for long term space travel. Then you might as well be awake and look at the scenery along the way.

I guess the bigger problem is that you'd almost certainly need a staff of medical personnel to monitor and manage the sleeping people (whether they're in a medical coma, held at a low temperature to slow everything, etc.) and you're back to the same problem of how they cope with the time and distance.

Can't find any definitive pages but a quick search indicates you're correct - plus there are many disadvantages to being in a long-term coma. Which are avoided by waking up every 3 months but then I guess you're not really avoiding the aging there...

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