Smelly socks in space? Phew!
Yes, when the space shuttle Columbia blasts off in January, it will carry more than the usual scientific payload. On board will be a pair of tan silk socks, with delicate piping down the sides, worn by Cornell University founder Ezra Cornell on his wedding day in 1831.
Carrying the heirloom hosiery into space will be mission specialist G. David Low, 33, who received his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the school in 1980.
Low, an astronaut since June 1985 and one of five aboard the shuttle, is also charged with deploying the SYNCOM IV-5 Navy communications satellite and conducting all medical experiments and investigations aboard.
But NASA officials said Low will not be available for comment on his sock mission until after he touches down.
While orbiting mementoes aboard the shuttle is not terribly unusual, they tend to run toward more prosaic items like medals and banners, said NASA spokesman Jeff Carr.
'Socks doesn't sound unusual to us,' added Carr, saying the last shuttle took up a thousand-year-old communications tablet once carried by an ancient foot messenger. Then there was astronaut Alan Shepard, who took a golf club to the moon.
Indeed, astronauts commonly carry items into space from their alma maters.
'It seems there is a policy somewhere that the astronaut gets to take things up from the college he attended,' said Cornell Archivist Colman Gould.
'For some reason that I can't explain the socks were preserved in our archives along with Ezra Cornell's papers,' Gould said.
'Ezra Cornell would have enjoyed the prospect of his wedding socks traveling in space,' Gould added. 'He was known for his frugality. So we think he would have been pleased that his socks had found another use over 150 years after the wedding.'
The socks in space idea was actually the brainchild of Archives secretary Julia Parker, who said the socks were probably white in color when they were new.
Parker said they are normally stored in an acid-free container in Cornell's Olin Library.
She said the biggest thing they had going for them was their weight.
'Anybody who sends anything up there, NASA makes a big deal about because they are concerned with how much fuel per ounce,' Parker said. 'Well, these don't weigh much more than an ounce.'
'I think (Parker) may have been a bit irreverent when she thought up the idea,' Gould said. 'And now it looks like those socks are going to space.'
Finally, there are are those who believe that one of the two socks is bound to get lost somewhere in space. 'No two pair of socks ever stay together,' Gould said.
