It turns out that space smells awful. Many astronauts note that, upon coming in from a spacewalk, they smell something like "welding fumes," "seared steak," or "sulfurous." These smells are of great interest to NASA, because they want to replicate the space experience to the greatest degree possible. They've hired a "smell artist," whose previous work was to recreate the smell of the Russian space station Mir (we're assuming it smelled like vodka), to recreate the smell of space.
Alternately, if you'd like to recreate the smell at home, go make yourself useful and weld something.
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"This is Aldrin as fuck."
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Starvation Smells Like Fruit and Alcohol
Once you stop taking in food, your body becomes the scene of one of those lifeboat stories where someone's about to get eaten. First it metabolizes the carbohydrates. Once those are gone, the body will start breaking down the fats, and eventually the proteins. That's known as starvation, and it's less funny than a Jeff Dunham comedy album. So it's more than a little ironic that starvation, in fact, smells wonderful.
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"Well, at least one part of this had to not suck."
The scent can best be described as a combination of fruit and alcohol, known locally as "your alcoholic mother's usual breakfast."
The smell happens when those aforementioned fats are broken down into molecules called ketones, which are also common in fruits like raspberries. And just like that, you smell like dessert when you're dying.
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"I feel a strong craving for fruit cocktail."
On the bright side, beach season is coming. Tight abs and a natural aroma of raspberries isn't the worst way to kick it off.
Chris Zeigler writes about superheroes and ethics at Subculture for the Cultured.
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