At NASA there is a position that only needs to graduate from high school, but it is very important

Become NASA's nose.

If George Aldrich, an expert at NASA, does not talk about his work on Reddit, few of us know that the US Aerospace Agency has such a strange position: An appraisal team that smells objects before they are launched into space.

Even, Aldrich just graduated from high school to work in this position. And it is also an extremely good opportunity to advance. After a while sniffing objects, Aldrich was trained by NASA to become a technician in the chemistry room.

Now, he has been the leading chemical expert at NASA, awarded the Silver Snoopy Sniffer award for the process of devoting more than 40 years, with about 800 flight safety missions at the US Aerospace Agency.

George Aldrich - dubbed NASA's nose.

"I have been a chemist at NASA for 44 years, " Aldrich wrote in a topic Ask Me Anything recently on Reddit describing his bizarre career. "I mainly do toxicity tests on objects before they fly into space."

" I am also a volunteer on NASA's odor assessment committee. We smell all the items in the cosmological station's living area, checking for unpleasant odors that can make the phi Nausea, put their work performance and mission into risk [failed] ".

It's correct. It is a real and necessary task. It's far more important than you think, not only because of some toxic smoke, but also because . you can imagine stuck on the cramped International Space Station with a terrible smell that will how?

On Earth, you can go crazy when someone cuts onions in the office or goes to the bathroom without closing. But the air at least diluted those unpleasant odors. On space stations and spacecraft, the air is even less.

In fact, in 1976, the Russians had to completely cancel a flight to space, because astronauts could not stand the odor inside the ship carrying them.

Smell can affect the success or failure of a task - just for fun.

But NASA anticipated that. They knew that they had to check the smell of everything before sending them into space.

The smell appraisal process goes like this: 5 volunteers in the NASA odor assessment board will smell each material and rank their discomfort from 0 to 4. If a certain odor exceeds 2, 5, it will slide the test.

"We didn't see what the objects looked like before we smelled them. I almost had to be in a blind state. They didn't want us to have prejudice [with objects]. We weren't allowed to look either. enter it after we smell it, "Aldrich wrote.

Before performing the odor test, the assessment team volunteers will be given a health check by a nurse to ensure they are not ill and the olfactory is in the best condition.

Normally, objects sent to the International Space Station were carefully calculated and checked. But sometimes, a smelly material still passes through previous tests. That's why the nose of volunteers in NASA's odor assessment committee plays an important role.

"Velcro straps, we tested them, and they stink to heaven," Aldrich told of a typical example.

"They tested each individual component [of the velcro belt], so when assembled together, they would have passed the toxicity test and smell test.

But when sent into space, one of the astronauts opened the sticker and they immediately stinked in place. On a scale of 0-4, one person scored 3.6 and another gave 3.8. It's annoying and scary . "

Aldrich sniffed the unlabeled chemical jars.

NASA's odor assessment committee was established after the January 27, 1967 tragedy. In the first test simulated for the mission of the Apollo-Saturn mission, a fire broke out and engulfed the prototype of the spacecraft and killing three astronauts.

This tragedy shook the United States, and to prevent it from happening again, NASA had to redesign the drawings for the ship.

As part of the re-design process, they decided to do some thorough material testing. NASA's first priority is to test flammable materials. Odor test is at the sixth priority level.

Now, odor testing is still used for new materials intended to be introduced into space, including travel suits and EV clothes for astronauts.

It seems that every nose in the world is the same, but Aldrich's nose knows what will happen. Throughout his career, he has performed more than 800 tasks to smell for NASA.

In honor of Aldrich's contributions, NASA awarded him the Silver Snoopy Sniffer award, acknowledging efforts to contribute to flight safety.

Aldrich and his practitioners.

Although Aldrich's sense of smell can impress you, he never started his career because of that. Aldrich said the profession chose him.

"I'm really lucky to be in this position [in NASA]. My father doesn't work there and I never thought I was qualified , " he wrote on Reddit.

At the time of high school graduation, Aldrich joined a group of 5-6 people at the local fire department, also on the mission of "sniffing". Here, he met the fire chief - who told Aldrich a little about the NASA program.

Aldrich recounts on Reddit:

He said to me: "George, you're 18 years old, you're young, join the scent board for astronauts." And so I started that career in 1974.

As a member of the odor assessment committee, you will not have to work in the laboratory. But at the time when NASA's chemical laboratory searched for a technician, I said, " I have two years of high school chemistry and four years of math."

They answered that I was qualified and they would train me. In 1978, I started working at C-tech level, then B-tech then A-tech, now I'm in the highest position, an expert.

When Aldrich started his career at NASA, he only had a high school degree.

However, even as an expert, there is still something flying into space that Aldrich never smells: Astronauts.

" People stink but we can't do much," wrote Aldrich. " They tried to keep themselves clean with antimicrobial agents. Because of the gravityless environment, they could not bathe properly, also to save water. [So] people always smell, haha, we can't do anything to them ".