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Meet the Nasalnaut
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."
Seems to me it was Soyuz 21?
The shuttle uses a variety of devices to remove solid and not so solid waste from the crew. There was one mission where the fan which drives the system failed. While it did not end the mission, it was sure a stinky trip.
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
I am sure its not as bad as flatus odor judge !!
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That is true unless you are smelling toxins or very caustic substances. Or you're a smoker...
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
771 flawless missions. That is actually pretty impressive, you'd think someone's sense of smell would degrade after so much time and so many tests. I wonder if he has to prepare himself in any way before he carries out one of these "missions".
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.
I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects
IIRC he complained a lot about the awful smell. Although I couldn't find anything directly related to that, in this report he talks about related problems (vomiting, waste disposal).