Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey,
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Vulk bomb here, Every nutton bolt, every
Speaker 1: plastic zip tie, every container of tang that's part of
Speaker 1: a manned space mission has to be thoroughly checked out
Speaker 1: before it gets blasted into the stars. It only makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: Space is no place for surprises. Testing these things, all
Speaker 1: of them, and how they'll act and react and potentially
Speaker 1: hazardous environments falls on a veritable army of professionals at
Speaker 1: NASA's White Sands Test facility in New Mexico. One group there,
Speaker 1: the Materials Flight Acceptance Workforce, analyzes the space suitability of
Speaker 1: different materials to make sure nothing will surprisingly catch on
Speaker 1: fire or put off some toxic gas, or act strangely
Speaker 1: in the near vacuum of space, or react poorly with
Speaker 1: other materials on board. All this is done with a
Speaker 1: never wavering eye on the safety of astronauts. And then
Speaker 1: there's the testing area that's made the Materials Group a
Speaker 1: sort of quirky star in the NASA Solar System, the
Speaker 1: odor panel, what an astronaut smells in space, it turns out,
Speaker 1: is mission critical too. We spoke with Susannah Harper, the
Speaker 1: Materials Flight Accepted Standards testing manager at White Sands. She explained,
Speaker 1: if you don't like the smell of fish down here
Speaker 1: on the ground, you open a window and let it
Speaker 1: air out. We don't have that option up in space.
Speaker 1: The potentially smelly halibut or a farting co pilot is unpleasant,
Speaker 1: but NASA is concerned with way more than simple stinkiness. Well.
Speaker 1: After all, some smells, especially in the relatively tight quarters
Speaker 1: of say the International Space Station or Oriyan, just can't
Speaker 1: be helped. Harper said. We want to make sure we're
Speaker 1: not creating an environment that's uncomfortable or bothersome to the
Speaker 1: astronaut so they can be focused on their mission. But
Speaker 1: beyond the comfort of astronauts, which is important, NASA wants
Speaker 1: to keep unnecessary smells out of spacecraft for a more
Speaker 1: practical reason. Too many unfamiliar odors in a tiny space
Speaker 1: can mask odors that the astronauts need to detect, like
Speaker 1: perhaps a pneumonia leak or the smell of something burning.
Speaker 1: You can't have so many odors on board that the
Speaker 1: astronauts missed the important stuff. Harper explained, our first line
Speaker 1: of detection is our human sense of smell, so even
Speaker 1: though we have worked with companies and there are certain
Speaker 1: types of detectors on board, in the end, we know
Speaker 1: that the human sense of smell is our most sensitive
Speaker 1: detector for those hazardous smells. NASA, through the Materials Group,
Speaker 1: has an odor panel that evaluates what can go up
Speaker 1: into space and what's just two dar and stinky. Five
Speaker 1: volunteers put their shnazes to everything in the astronauts habitable space.
Speaker 1: The smell is captured first in an air chamber, then
Speaker 1: the air is injected through syringe directly into masks that
Speaker 1: each panel member wears. They then rank the smells zero
Speaker 1: being the least offensive, up to four for get this
Speaker 1: out of here. In order to determine what's allowable and
Speaker 1: what should be grounded, another group first tests the materials
Speaker 1: for toxicity. Any odor over two point five fails. The
Speaker 1: panel's most decorated member is George Aldrich, a sixty four
Speaker 1: year old chemical specialist who's been sniffing around NASA for
Speaker 1: some forty six years. He's lent his proboscis to more
Speaker 1: than nine different sit down smell tests, way more than
Speaker 1: anyone else ever, which has earned him a bunch of nicknames,
Speaker 1: including a nasal knot a few jaw dropping media appearances,
Speaker 1: including one in which he made like a police dog
Speaker 1: and seemingly impossibly sniffed out a mere smidget of drugs,
Speaker 1: and the admiration of astronauts. He was once given the
Speaker 1: Silver Snoopy Award, an honor bestowed for excellent and mission
Speaker 1: important work. And yes, it's shaped like Snoopy wearing a
Speaker 1: space suit. Though Aldrich has been doing this since he
Speaker 1: was a teen, his is not some cushy seniority post.
Speaker 1: He has to qualify for the panel every four months.
Speaker 1: To do that, NASA puts Aldrich and the other volunteers
Speaker 1: through what's known as a ten bottle test. They have
Speaker 1: to identify seven smells and then point out the three
Speaker 1: bottles that have no smell. Aldrich told us, as we age,
Speaker 1: eyesight is not always the first thing to go. The
Speaker 1: day I go up there and can't pass that ten
Speaker 1: bottle test is the day they're going to retire me
Speaker 1: from the Odor panel. The seven smells in the test
Speaker 1: are what are often known as primary smells. Aldrich rattled
Speaker 1: them off for us much more smoothly than I'm going
Speaker 1: to be able to musky minty, floral etherist, camp voracious, pungent,
Speaker 1: and putred. Aldrich does not, it should be pointed out,
Speaker 1: to have a particularly prominent nose, a size he noted
Speaker 1: don't matter. He's generally unbothered by allergies, which he credits
Speaker 1: with helping his sense of smell, but he also constantly
Speaker 1: tests himself, often following a smell through a hallway to
Speaker 1: try to white deify it and its source. Harper said,
Speaker 1: from my perspective, I also feel that he has developed
Speaker 1: his sense of smell, much like a weightlifter develops his
Speaker 1: muscles or a wine taster develops a sense of taste.
Speaker 1: He does smell so many materials, and he focuses on
Speaker 1: what those smells are like. I feel like he's been
Speaker 1: working that like a muscle, and it's become more sensitive
Speaker 1: over time. Aldrich was a member of the NASI fire
Speaker 1: department at White Sands. When his boss told him about
Speaker 1: the Odor Panel, he told us, I had no idea.
Speaker 1: I just thought I was doing something great for the astronauts.
Speaker 1: Since then, the Materials group has kept him busy, constantly
Speaker 1: giving him and the other members of the Odor Panel
Speaker 1: all sorts of materials to work with, including some truly
Speaker 1: awful bits. He recalls the odor given off by undoing
Speaker 1: a velcro strap as being particularly nasty. You'll get no
Speaker 1: complaints from Aldrich, though, for a near half century he's
Speaker 1: been proud to stick his nose in wherever he can,
Speaker 1: all in the name of science. Today's episode was written
Speaker 1: by John Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang. For more
Speaker 1: on this and lots of other topics, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radio.
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