Smelling Space

What does it smell like?

            Connecting to nature:

            Our 5 senses help connect us to nature. Smelling, tasting, seeing, hearing, and feeling allows us to form opinions about what we experience, what we think and how we feel about that experience. If you love science and nature, then you want to understand your surroundings.

            Imagine if you had never gone to the country and experienced the breath-taking mountains, streams, valleys, and bubbling brooks. You lived in the big city full of lights, smog, and hardly any foliage.

            If you had never been camping, and someone explained the sounds of a rolling babbling brook, the winds through the trees, the birds calling to one another, a largemouth bass jumping up out of the still pond, or the wave of the prairie grasses blowing in the fields, it would be all left to your imagination to try to recreate what you thought it would be like! It certainly would not be the same thing; you would not know where to begin!

            If you had never seen the constellations, or stars due to the bright city lights, and someone told you how beautiful the night sky was, you would want to go experience it! You would not want to be left out.

            Those of us who are curious to see the world and know what it is like, would want to go to the country and fish, or go hiking. If we lived in the country, we would not want someone to try to explain city life but would want to experience it for ourselves.

Smelling Outer space:

            Space is not a friendly atmosphere. It is a rough environment full of dangerous and harmful gases that we cannot take in. There is no oxygen to breathe and even if we held our breath, we would not be able to survive because outer space is like a vacuum! Your body fluids would be affected in many bad ways if you decided to free-float into space without your space suit and helmet!

            First of all, how do scientists know this?

            That is a good question. Believe it or not, they took 100 dogs, and put them in an atmosphere similar to space to see what would happen. (They did not want to use a human of course as that would be too cruel!)

            What they found was very interesting! Not only were the dogs’ lungs emptied of all oxygen, also, their bowels lost all feces so um, yes, you’d probably have an accident in outer space right at the start! Wow!

            First off, your blood would boil, and your spit would evaporate out of your mouth! The air within your lungs would also expand violently!

Molecules, hold scents, and because there are no molecules to smell in outer space, they would have to have a way to put off that scent (such as an astronaut’s clothes)

            We need special gear as well as oxygen to spacewalk.

            There is no way you can stick your nose into space and take a nice long whiff! Or hear the raw sounds the stars emit!

            Since we have never been to outer space, the first thing we would want to do is talk to someone who has!

             But have you ever been curious about what space might smell like?

Of course! Surely you have wondered!

            No one has ever floated around smelling outer space, even though there must obviously be the scent of gasses.

             After a spacewalk, entering back into the space shuttle, many astronauts have talked about the smell that was left on their gear, or that wafted in after they had air-locked the door. A special odor is smelled as they first enter the shuttle, and there’s been a lot of talk about what causes the smell: if it is the suits interacting with particles in space, the air lock smell mingled in, or if it is actually the smell of space riding on their gear!

Many astronauts, three being Thomas Jones, Tony Antonelli, and Don Pettit have described the smell mingled with hot metal, seared meats, gunpowder, sulfur, or a pleasant smelling of metallic welding fumes.

How would you bring that scent down to earth for people to smell? By trying to mingle scents found on our planet in order to give others the same experience they had while in space.

            The person to do this was Sfumato and he did it for the Detroit Space Party at the Michigan Science Center.

            To recreate the smell of space, he chose birch tar, it almost has a campfire smell. For the hot metal meatiness, he used the Helichrysum flower. It gives off a ham or bacon type scent in floral form. Anise, and they misted it into a jar with aluminum foil for guests to smell at the party! What a cool surprise!

            The fact that someone wanted to bring a special experience to earth was so very thoughtful, and exciting, wasn’t it?

            When we get saved, we experience something that nothing on earth can explain!

            It’s hard to describe what happened in your life, and it is certain some will mock you for trying.

            It’s true not everyone cares about whether or not space has a scent. For these, if you tried to tell them, they would probably think you were crazy! They may even doubt you were ever in a space shuttle to begin with! Those cynical people help to challenge us to be kind and patient to everyone no matter how they treat us.

            Anyone who has not experienced the Love of Jesus through his Salvation, will never understand what we have found! It is up to us to try to tell them and show them how very important this is!

            Just like Sfumato desired to do what he could to take this special scent he experienced in space all the way down to earth for others to enjoy, it is up to us to present the Gospel of Salvation to others by our own experience.

            All we have is our testimony. And we must do all that we can to explain what Salvation is and how they need Christ.

            The Salvation message:

• All mankind were plunged into sin when Adam and Eve disobeyed God.

• We are all guilty of disobeying God’s 10 commandments.

• Our sin against God means we will die.

• Eternal life is a gift from Jesus His Son.

• Jesus came to earth was born of Virgin Mary was God in the flesh.

• He came to die and shed his blood on the cross as payment for our sin.

• He died on the cross, was buried, and three days later rose from the dead to show us that he has defeated death, Hell, and the grave!

            All we have to do is believe this with all our hearts that Jesus is the only way of Salvation, be sorry for our sins we have committed against God, accept his forgiveness, and payment for us and then Jesus gives us eternal life!

            As a special gift to us, to guide, comfort, and direct us, God gives us his Holy Spirit that lives within our hearts! He guides us to share our faith with others! And many are interested in Eternal Life!

            No one understands how this works but as God’s children, we know that voice, and follow the Lord, and it makes us want to tell others about what we have!

            In the same way that Sfumato shared in the best way he knew how, may we also share our experience that is completely something out of this world!

Moral Value: Sharing our faith with others.

References:

• journals.physiology.org/doi/pdf/10.1152/jappl.1968.25.3.230

• www.businessinsider.com/what-happens-to-a-human-body-in-space-2015-3

• imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/ask_astro/space_travel.html