"fried steak, hot metal and even welding a motorbike"

Outer space smells like my kitchen?!

Lets hope he doesn't have to create the smell of a fart in a spacesuit.

We all know how bad that can be the morning after eating your freeze dried vindaloo.

How can they "smell" outer space through their rebreathers and helmets and so forth?? Are they actually saying that this is the smell the air scrubbers give the atmosphere they are in?? I doubt anyone has ever smelled actual outer space....it's not actually possible is it??

I'm sure a wet cat has more of a smell

Just how *do* you smell outer space? Opening the door and taking a quick sniff would seem to be out of the question.

From the article, I reckon the smell they're after is: "stale spacestation airlock with a hint of used spacesuit". But that doesn't sound as impressive.

Presumably a good deal of this depends on the air recently vented from said spacesuit which would, in turn, depend on what the Astronaut ate last and how long the spacewalk was. I suggest that NASA review their meal inventories and find which wag has added "Pureed motorcycle components avec welding torch brulee" to the menu.

...but how about getting a piece of metal really hot and frying some steak on it? I claim my £5 reward.

Anyways, I suspect that space actually smells of your sinuses exploding when you open your visor to have a good sniff and all that nice hard vacuum gives you a smack in the face...

So its not really the smell of outer space, but rather the smell of space suits that have freshly been brought in from a space walk (where they were no doubt bombarded by radiation). Since our sense of smell relies on the molecules of various gasses entering our nose, space itself cannot not have a smell detectable by a human. Darwin Award to anyone that tries...

Title chosen because I just watched 'Alien' last night after having picked it up for 50p in VHS format...

I'm just curious: how does welding a motorbike smell differently from welding a bicycle? Or a car?

Personally, I think the "hot metal" and "fried steak" smell components come from the interaction of high-energy particles with the space suits' metal parts and organic filling, respectively.

SPACE ! ..... THE FINAL BURNT STEER ! Boom tish!

"I love the smell of space in the morning, it smells like, I dunno, breakfast" Boom tish!

"Space - it tastes like burning!" Ralph Wigumm Boom tish!

When the aliens finally invade, I will gladly welcome our new motorcycle riding bovine overlords.

Alien, no brainer.

It's full of dust particles and stuff. They come in with you when you open the airlock.

..did it first with the "Smell-o-scope".

PS - welding motorbikes? Who welds motorbikes anymore? Most modern machinery is so light and so fast, that any "off" is usually a write-off. For rider and steed.

Being blasted off the face of the planet strapped to the back of a huge amount of very explosive liquid at what? Mach 7? I'd be very suprised if it didn't smell like someone had soiled themselves.

It has an odor.

...

Yeah, yeah, I know. Coat! Bye!

Anybody working with metallic vacuum chambers and who is worth more than his weight in steaks knows a very similar smell. Vacuum-baked metal has a tendency of becoming highly chemically reactive. This leads to alterations of the organic molecules which we exhale and which strike such a metallic surface freshly exposed to air. Once we breathe in again, these modified molecules nicely tickle our noses, producing that hard-to-describe "smell of vacuum".

My coat is the one with the pair of 13 mm wrenches in the pocket, ta very much.

I notice that the amount spend was somehow not mentioned. I'm sure the price was astronomical (heh, see what I did there?).

Can a near-perfect vacuum smell of anything? Talk fucking sense.

Its probably the effect of high-energy particles bombarding the brain and stimulating the olfactory centres of the astronauts, rather akin to epileptics reporting an odour before having a fit.

It doesn't smell of Uranus.

What no Futurama references to the Smell-o-scope???

Heh, would you believe there is a practical side to this?

A poster on Slashdot mentioned that quite often, to be able to tell if the hydraulic fluid leak was burning or not, would actually change his chosen fix when sitting in a light airplane cockpit.

So he was positing that teaching/acclimatising to the norm would be good.

Unfortunately there are too many variables to be able to simulate all the "bad" smells, or rather smells arising from bad scenarios.

Oh and to the person saying what smell is vaccuum, some "smells/tastes" propogate across vaccuums. Just research what the blue glow is and the ensuing "smell/taste" (wikipedia has the answer to this...).