Eau de you think you are?

A bunch of olfactory obsessives have blasted through their Kickstarter campaign target to start making bottles of fragrance purported to smell like space.

Just as Robin Williams once lorded it over Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting because he knew what it smelled like inside the Sistine Chapel, we’d bet astronauts describe the scent of space to friends and family with a sense of pride in what they’ve achieved with their lives. Imagine Damon’s smart-arse character had replied, “I know, I’ve got the aftershave”. That’s the level of apathy astronauts are going to be dealing with once Eau de Space hits the shelves.

A fragrance replicating space’s apparently unique smell was developed by NASA decades ago, with the sole purpose of preparing its astronauts for their journeys, and it’s taken multiple Freedom of Information Act requests to drag it into the public domain. But what makes us think we deserve a whiff of something it should take years of training to experience? Can’t we let the astronauts have this one thing?

And if you must know what space smells like, we can guarantee you it will basically just be the same as when you were made to stick random metallic elements over a Bunsen burner at school. It’s obvious. And you don’t go on about that, do you?