Meet the Nasalnaut 229
Roland Piquepaille writes "George Aldrich works at NASA and is not an astronaut. Instead, he's a 'master sniffer.' He tests everything that goes up in space on the shuttle or on the ISS for smelliness, from tennis shoes to teddy bears, and from refrigerators to socks or mascara. Why? Because things smell different in spacecrafts which experience a full day/night cycle every 90 minutes. And bad odors into a spacecraft can even lead to the abortion of a mission, like it happened to a Russian mission back in 1976. Wired Magazine tells us more about NASA's nasalnaut, a man whose colleagues call "Most Smella Fella" and has performed 771 flawless smelling missions. This overview contains more details and selected excerpts from a previous interview with Aldrich given to New Scientist. It also includes a picture showing how the NASA's nasalnaut smells things."
Smellinaut (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Smellinaut (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Smellinaut (Score:2)
Re:Smellinaut (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Smellinaut (Score:2, Funny)
You'd think... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:You'd think... (Score:5, Funny)
Somebody had to say it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Somebody had to say it: Smell-O-Scope (Score:2, Funny)
don't send him (Score:2, Funny)
Wow! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wow! (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmm, however this would contradict the need to have a nasalnaught since in space you will always smell that same odor. Oh well, perhaps the guess was not as educated as I had thought :)
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Farts! [heptune.com]
Re:Wow! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing's for sure: this man has never worked as a sniffer on board a submarine! If he had, he would have lost that keen sense of smell. After a deployment, even the crew's loved ones have a tough time being around them! It's like a gym locker room that never gets cleaned.
Re:Wow! (Score:3, Informative)
Apart from the smells induced by the bright idea of a curry for dinner, there also come to be chunks of poo floating around when someone fails to use the zero-g toilet properly. You see, poo don't fall down without gravity. Ahem.
Re:Wow! (Score:2)
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Informative)
If you were to RTFA you would learn that he does in fact need to prepare himself and that he callibrates his nose at the beginning of this mission. Also, how awesome is it that someone's job involves them CALLIBRATING THEIR NOSE? Very awesome.
An Ill Wind (Score:5, Interesting)
It revealed the presence of alien parasites when it turned out they were allergic to the garlic.
Story or not though, the idea of being trapped in a small ship with someone reeking of garlic, curry, and onions is enough to make me consider purging the atmosphere.
When I cook.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd have a problem of being stuck in space with someone with a GI problem or bad personal hygiene.
But onions, garlic, ginger, etc are the best!
Re:When I cook.... (Score:2)
I've been in a couple motels owned by Indians (from India) whose spice intake, and subsequent body smell, actually made my eyes water. Now, I love spices, but not in that concentration.
(not a troll, it's true - two motels in Flagstaff, AZ in '91)
SB
Competency (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Competency (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Competency (Score:2)
What Soviet Mission? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What Soviet Mission? (Score:3, Informative)
"...back in the Apollo days, the sniffers smelt some ink that blistered their noses. After Apollo 13 was brought back to Earth, they had to reprint a lot of the instructions for experiments..."
Re:What Soviet Mission? (Score:4, Informative)
How exactly does something smell "flawless"? (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine that - the perfect smell. Eau de Space - available in 75 ml bottles.
Re:How exactly does something smell "flawless"? (Score:3, Informative)
At no point in the articles does it describe an odor as "flawless". Wired just states that they were 771 "official" missions, and the only one to list them as flawless is the weblog cited.
what about (Score:5, Interesting)
do astronauts have to take anti-flatulence meds like Simethicone?
Re:what about (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not sure how they measured it either, but it can't have been pleasant. I think it involved a tube...
Re:what about (Score:4, Funny)
-B
Re:what about (Score:3, Funny)
Joining the 150 Mile High Club would be fun, but the aftersmell wouldn't be.
wbs.
Re:what about (Score:2, Funny)
Kid: "Mom, why does Dad always go right to the Mexican restaraunt after his capsule lands?"
Mom: "Please don't ask, dear. I don't like explaining it."
Where it hits the fan (Score:5, Informative)
Houston!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Behind the curtain of Slashdot (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess someone realized that the NASA news conference was just about to begin, and that we didn't really need to have the two stories back-to-back.
There's a lot of whining about Slashdot's editors. This article's hidden history shows that they're not just sitting around twiddling their thumbs and posting dupes. As I'm sure someone has suggested before -- if you're so upset, go make your own "news for nerds" site!
Re:Behind the curtain of Slashdot (Score:2)
I agree with you - really - so let's put some geeks together and find some advertising funding, so we can edit articles 24/7 - then listen to people whine about our editing.
It happens *everywhere*, dude.
BTW, I enjoy Ghosts of Slashdot.
SB
Wow.. A promotion path! (Score:4, Interesting)
What a Job to have.... (Score:2)
Wow... (Score:3, Informative)
God bless you, Nasalnauts. *tear*
Re:Wow... (Score:2)
Either the mod's sense of humor is as twisted as mine, or they are turning into robots.
So... (Score:4, Interesting)
Olfactory overload (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Olfactory overload (Score:2, Insightful)
A fart in a jar?! I didn't know that was actually possible.
Re:Olfactory overload (Score:2)
God, Popular Science's website sucks nowadays. Where's the text? *squints* Oh! There it is! 1 1/2 let column of links, 1 column text, 1 column links, and the rest of the page on the right side is blank.
Someone has to teach them what relative table width means. Fer chrissakes...
SB
bad odor... (Score:2, Funny)
DAMNIT Jim, I TOLD you not to eat that broccoli!!!
Re:bad odor... (Score:2)
Paint and markers (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything that goes inside the capsule. We do things like paints, magic markers, ink, fabrics, epoxies.
Paint and magic markers eh... Just how much of this does he do? Can't be healthy that's for sure.
Re:Paint and markers (Score:2)
Top 10 Problem Smells in Space (Score:5, Funny)
9. Dmitri's socks
8. Even in space, monkeys fling poo
7. When Galactus forgets to use deoderant, half the quadrant knows about it
6. Someone left the windows in MIR open again
5. Venturing too close to the Onion Planet
4. "The Phantom Menace"
3. Smell bits of alien underwear (thank you Douglas Adams)
2. Saddam's WMDs hidden on Mars (see today's Mars news items)
1. And the number one stinky problem in space: "Star Trek: Voyager"
Re:Top 10 Problem Smells in Space (Score:2)
scrubbed mission (Score:3, Insightful)
To Smell where no man has smelled before (Score:3, Funny)
Capt'n Jean Luc Picknose and the crew of the Stinkerprize are on a five year mission.
To Hell with the prime directive Number One, put on some deoderant!
Back to Apollo... (Score:5, Interesting)
Coming back from the moon, an astronaut once remarked that, going back into the Command Module some 30 minutes after it had splashed-down and was recovered, he was taken aback by the smell. "My god! How could I have stood that smell for so long???" he asked himself...
Re:Back to Apollo... (Score:2)
Re:Back to Apollo... (Score:3, Interesting)
This used to happen all the time back at one of my first real jobs. The owner of the company smoked really foul cigars. When I'd first walk in my eyes would water from the fumes, but after an hour I didn't notice it anymore. What was ironic was if you opened the windows to get fresh air, it actually made it worse... you'd get enough fresh air to disrupt the acclimitazion,
I wonder if he can smell...... (Score:2)
Finally someone qualified! (Score:2, Funny)
"Who got da funk?"
Smelling stuff thats not in the atmosphere... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sleep deprevation seems to affect ones sense of smell sometimes. As does MSG in your food.
aww (Score:4, Funny)
Mascara?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
WHY ARE WE SENDING MAKEUP TO SPACE?!
Even at a few ounces, a mascara bottle is dead weight. surely there's some nut or bolt that they'd love to have a spare of up there instead.
Re:Mascara?!?! (Score:2)
I hope we're not sending makeup into space. It's not so much for the weight (it takes a lot of mascara to equal a teddy bear) but for the personalities. Makeup is a mask. It doesn't just make you beautiful. It allows you to paint your own face and present the face you want.
Which works fine here on earth, but when you spend all day every day with a
Re:Mascara?!?! (Score:2, Insightful)
"What kind of things have you rejected?
We rejected some mascaras from Sally Ride. She was the first American female astronaut and we tested a lot of things for her."
I have seen several books of the missions Sally Ride was on, and they all included many pictures. I'd like to see you tell a woman that you're going to take pictures of her, show these pictures to millions of people, and not allow her to take up at least one tube of lipstick and one of mascara.
Re:Mascara?!?! (Score:2)
Re:Mascara?!?! (Score:2)
I don't know, take a look at this [about.com], and this [about.com].
Well (Score:2)
We rejected some mascaras from Sally Ride. She was the first American female astronaut and we tested a lot of things for her.
From the New Scientist artical.
Re:Mascara?!?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Eh, what's this 90 minute nonsense? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Eh, what's this 90 minute nonsense? (Score:3, Informative)
And while the crew cabins are likely temperature controlled, much of the craft wouldnt be, like the parts that recirculate air.
Re:Eh, what's this 90 minute nonsense? (Score:2)
Re:Eh, what's this 90 minute nonsense? (Score:3, Informative)
Yep. The internal temperature is mostly constant, yes, but not perfectly so. There are parts of the Shuttle that are less-than-perfectly insulated, and there are areas that are exposed to sunlight through windows. All of those areas are going to expand and contract during the day/night cycle. That expansion and contraction will squeeze objects like a sponge on a microscopic scale, resulting in
Re:Eh, what's this 90 minute nonsense? (Score:3, Insightful)
Worst Jobs in Science (Score:2, Funny)
Although, he can tell people he works for NASA, and leave it at that.
excuse (Score:5, Funny)
Who wouldn't love to have that excuse.
Sorry, no nose, no job. I have to protect it.
Re:excuse (Score:2, Interesting)
On the other hand, I've yet to meet a dad who couldn't manage to ensure that he was doing less than half of the total stinky diapers, often by volunteering on the ones he knew wouldn't smell...
Wouldn't the worst smells be from astronauts? (Score:3, Interesting)
Mmmm tampons (Score:5, Funny)
Perfect for anyone with a weird fetish.
Important work (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is this necessary? (Score:5, Funny)
And here I thought NASA had technology to take care of this remotely [gotfuturama.com].
Russion mission aborted because of "smell" (Score:5, Interesting)
According to other Russian reports, at least three missions have been aborted for reasons that were in part psychological. In one case, the Soyuz 21 mission to the Salyut 5 space station in 1976, the crew was brought home early after the cosmonauts complained fiercely of an acrid odor in the space station's environmental control system. No cause was ever found, nor did other crews smell it; conceivably it was a hallucination. Coincidentally, the crew had not been getting along. In the case of the Soyuz T-14 mission to Salyut 7 in 1985, the crew was brought home after 65 days when Vladimir Vasyutin complained that he had a prostate infection and couldn't urinate. Later, doctors felt that the problem was partly psychological. Vasyutin had been getting behind in his work, and he was also under pressure because he had been passed over for a flight several times before. Alexander Laveikin was brought back early from the Soyuz TM-2 mission to Mir in 1987 because he complained of a cardiac irregularity. According to flight surgeons, there had been no sign of it before flight, nor could they find any sign of it in flight or afterwards. The cosmonaut had been under stress--he had made a couple of potentially serious errors. Later, he complained of the arrhythmia. He also had not been getting along with his partner, Yuri Romanenko.
A good deal of this information is undocumented and anecdotal; it makes for good stories, but not necessarily for great psychology. U.S. psychologists sometimes fault their Russian colleagues for being stronger on anecdotes than on verifiable experiments or statistics. "Rumor, rumor, rumor," one Western psychologist said to me recently, shaking his head, when I asked him about these tales.
http://www.airspacemag.com/ASM/Mag/Index/1996/J
Re:Russion mission aborted because of "smell" (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Russion mission aborted because of "smell" (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC he complained a lot about the awful smell. Although I couldn't find anything directly related to that, in this report [spacefuture.com] he talks about related problems (vomiting, waste disposal).
Re:Russion mission aborted because of "smell" (Score:2)
If one smells an "acrid" (I'm taking that as non-organic) odor in the lifesupport system, maybe that is an indication of something really, really wrong (like burning electronics?)
IMO
SB
Russians and the Smell of 1976! (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/27/10
According to Henry Cooper, who wrote a book, A House in Space, on the loneliness of the long-distance astronaut, at least three missions have been aborted for reasons that were in part psychological. In the 1976 Soyuz- 21 mission to the Salyut-5 space station, the crew was brought home early after the cosmonauts complained fiercely of an acrid odour in the space station's environmental control system. No cause was ever found, nor did other crews smell it; conceivably, it was a hallucination. Coincidentally, the crew had not been getting along.
Re:Russians and the Smell of 1976! (Score:3, Informative)
In space... (Score:2)
wbs.
They should have used this guy on submarines (Score:5, Interesting)
The first thing I noticed was the foul, *foul* odor.
Its a wonder people could crew those things without having their noses cauterised.
Re:They should have used this guy on submarines (Score:3, Informative)
Aren't there some solutions (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Aren't there some solutions (Score:2, Insightful)
If astronauts were to use this spray to mask the smell from a particular non-hazardous source, they may be unable to detect, say, a fainter smell that could be from something potentially hazardous.
Mars Smell-o-phone (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, what if it turns out we'd have to terraform it with perfume?
Couldn't they just use... (Score:2, Funny)
Come on, people!
Re:diapers? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:it could be a problem... (Score:2, Interesting)
Q: What is that awfull smell?
A.1: If it is the afternoon, it is a san being pumpled overboard.
A.2 If it is the morning, it is breakfast being coode!
Re:why not use a mass spectrometer (Score:5, Insightful)
Psychology (Score:5, Insightful)