[PW] Re: list of astronaut emails/street addresses?

[John Germain]

A sort of cosmonautical sniffing one's cupped hands?

John Germain
Jersey
British Channel Islands

-----Original Message-----
From: project-wombat-open-bounces at lists.project-wombat.org
[mailto:project-wombat-open-bounces at lists.project-wombat.org] On Behalf Of Paul Zimmerman
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 8:45 PM
To: list at project-wombat.org
Subject: [PW] Re: list of astronaut emails/street addresses?

Lois Fundis <lfundis at verizon.net> writes:

 >What the astronauts are probably smelling isn't
 >actually space -- which is a vacuum that they aren't
 >actually exposed to -- but the air recycling in the
 >shuttle or spacesuit or space station.

As with so many things in science the translation to ordinary conversation
can be deceptive. Low earth orbit is 'space' in the sense that it is a state
of continuous free-fall, but it is not the hard vacuum of deep space. There
is a thin plasma (the outermost layers of earth's atmosphere) at that
altitude and it does have an effect on things. You can often see fabric,
such as the jury-rigged 'heat shield' of the 1970s Skylab station, actually
'flap' in the breeze up there. It is entirely possible that this plasma,
which would have a lot of ozone in it, could interact with things up there
and produce a distinctive odor. (Hmm, is ozone itself described as a 'burnt'
odor?) Notice that the description is of noticing the odor on returning from
a space walk. ("All of this is sensed once back inside") That makes perfect
sense. The space suits have been exposed to the plasma for some period of
time and some of it it would cling to them even after returning to
pressurized atmosphere.

 >In addition, I'm sure that for privacy reasons NASA
 >doesn't want the contact information for individual
 >astronauts to be widely available.

This I can agree with. Astronauts are a sort of 'celebrity' and need their
privacy protected. It might be best to ask NASA to pass the survey to them
and then return their answers. And most likely there are NASA engineers who
could provide a better answer about what the astronauts are probably smelling.
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