Mankind has always looked to the cosmos and wondered what was out there. Yet most of us will never know what it’s like to travel to outer space. That doesn’t mean we can’t al know what it smells like up there, though. Eau de Space, a secret scent created by NASA as part of its space program, is now available for anyone to buy.
After a successful Kickstarter campaign four years ago, even non-backers can now make themself smell like outer space. Eau de Space is based on a decades old fragrance NASA developed to train astronauts. The space agency wanted to make sure it prepared its astronauts for everything and anything they’d encounter once they left Earth. That included the smell they’d encounter.
So what does space smell like? Those who actually experienced the real thing described space as a lingering “pungent aroma” made up of “gun powder, rum, fruit, seared steak, or a BBQ.” Some also compared its scent to “burnt cookies.”
….Great. Those are definitely things we want to smell like. Everyone loves burnt cookies, the literal manifestation of disappointment and failure.
If curiosity is still going to get the better of you, though, and you want to smell like an astronaut that just came back in from a space walk, you can for $49.99. That’s what it costs to order a 100 ml bottle of Eau de Space. Fortunately its packaging is a lot more pleasant. The sleek custom bottle also comes with an “atomizer.” But why stop there? For the same price you can also opt for a 100ml bottle that will let you smell like the Moon. Eau de Luna is based on the smell Apollo astronauts described after visiting our lunar neighbor. They said it had “a unique smell, that’s hard to describe…like spent gunpowder.”
….Even better. No, really. These smells are fun to experience once, but knowing that’s what space smells like softens the blow of knowing we’ll probably never get to travel there ourselves.