Brit chemist conjures smell of outer space NASA has commissioned a British chemist to recreate the fragrance of outer space - variously described by astronauts as resembling "fried steak, hot metal and even welding a motorbike", the Daily Mail reports. Steven Pearce of Omega Ingredients has taken to the lab in order to "help astronauts prepare for the conditions they …
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...
"fried steak, hot metal and even welding a motorbike"
There seems to be a link here, fried, hot, welding (specifically a motorbike though wtf?!) all suggest the astronaut is smelling their somewhat irradiated suit after coming in from out of the cold.
Maybe this geezer could try ironing spacesuits with an x-ray machine to reproduce the scent.
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.
They mean the smell of their equipment once they get back inside, which is probably from the dust and trace gasses.
I'd heard about this before and wondered exactly what they meant by "smell of space". I didn't think anyone who would have had good gasp of space would be in a suitable condition to describe it (although the notion that you would explode or your juices would boil is a misconception, you'd just asphyxiate). Although they could have meant the smell of a leaking suit, which has happened to at least one guy on the moon.
Space is weird.
I suppose the obvious thing to do would be open a sealable container while on a spacewalk, then analyse the contents - although seeing as it's probably a few hundred H2 molecules per cc it might be contaminated by the near vacuum (but still many times denser than actual space) that escaped out the airlock a few minutes ago.
If they're talking about the smell you get from spacecraft life-support systems, why don't they say?
Will stop "detecting" an odor that it's been exposed to for a while (this is why people often put on way to much cologne) - so I doubt they're "resmelling" the air from their suits (never mind that that would be some freakish BO)
If the airlock smells of roses when you leave and steak cooked on a Harley with a blow torch when you get back... chances are good you picked up something while you were out. Pretty interesting stuff imho.
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.
So, the only source they have for the smell of space is the smell astronauts get from their suits when they return from a space walk. Correct me if I'm wrong (like you lot need an invite) but Space walks nowadays are more often than not are done to repair the ISS. The astronauts pop outside to, ooh, I don't know, weld things together and the like.
And the predominant smell they get when they come back in is hot metal and welding.....
So, NASA. Not really all that smart after all then.
Space in low earth orbit isn't empty. It's full of ionized reactive molecules heated to like 5,000 degrees. Sure it's too thin to breathe, but it's very hard on the exterior surfaces of sattelites, space stations, etc. I expect what you smell when you come back inside is the heated, damaged external surfaces of your gear.
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.
C'mon guys. These are American astronauts - the right stuff. Their earliest memories are of the macho American lifestyle these guys were born into - barbecued steaks their Moms cooked, and the stripped down hot-rods their Dads did. Space is just putting them in touch with their primal prime emotions - those buried deep in the limbic system.
If they research some more, they'll discover space also smells like napalm in the morning, and like Mary Jane.
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...).
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