A very persistent story about the mid-20th century space race includes the development of the Space Pen.
When man first left the surface of the earth and headed into the weightless environment of space In the 1960s, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens designed for Earth’s gravitational environment weren’t quite as effective in space. Have you ever tried to write on a vertical surface with a cheap ballpoint pen? Doesn’t go so well, does it?
According to legend, NASA spent millions of dollars to develop a ballpoint pen that would work in a microgravity environment. Russian cosmonauts, on the other hand, allegedly circumvented the problem by using graphite pencils.
It’s an amusing anecdote that’s been circulating in people’s email inboxes for decades, before social media came along. There’s just one big problem. The story is largely untrue.
Originally, both astronauts and cosmonauts used pencils in space. NASA spent some money He investigated the feasibility of a ballpoint pen for use in space, but scrapped the project early on when it became clear that costs would skyrocket.
The Fisher Space Pen was independently developed in-house by a private company, Fisher Pens. And when the Fisher Space Pen came out in the late 1960s, astronauts and cosmonauts alike used it for all their zero-gravity writing tasks.
But why such a big uproar?
As it turns out, there are certain things you don’t want floating around in space. Pencil waste is one of them. The line could break off, which is a hazard; But you also don’t want combustible wood shavings that float loose in a spaceship, or the microscopic particles of electrically conductive graphite that detach from a pencil when you write.
Any tiny particle that can lodge in sensitive machinery poses a hazard in space, and the particles that break off pencils are a major concern. Fire, in particular, is a serious safety issue on spacecraft, and NASA is not taking it lightly after a fire killed all three members of the Apollo 1 mission in 1967.
The ballpoint pens of the time were also dangerous. The first commercially successful ballpoint pen was introduced in 1945, and the pens accordingly Fisher Pen Company founder Paul C. Fisher, “Leaked everywhere”. Ink droplets shouldn’t necessarily be floating around in a space capsule, either.
Apollo astronauts used manufacturer’s markers Duro Pen Company; actually one He is known to have saved the Apollo 11 mission after a critical switch broke. Buzz Aldrin jammed the barrel of his pen into the hole he had left, allowing the module to come out of it the moon. (Fisher Space Pens Expectations It was a Fisher Space Pen, but Aldrin indicates that it was a felt tip pen.)
According to Paul C. Fisher, however, they also used ballpoint pens Friedrich Schächter and Erwin Rath, Perfected the space pen and filed first patent in 1965.
As Fisher tells itThe formula for repairing the leaked ink came to him in a dream: “My father had died about two years before, and in that dream he came to me and said, ‘Paul, if you put a small amount of rosin in the ink, it will stop it Leakage.” I told the pharmacist about it and the chemist laughed! He said that wouldn’t work. He tried every type and amount of rosin.
“Three months later he came back to me and said I was right! He said he was trying to figure out a way to make rosin work, but then realized I meant resin! He used two percent resin and it worked well.” Even with 140 pounds of air pressure behind it, it didn’t leak.
These pens use pressurized ink cartridges and can perform under a range of conditions that a normal ballpoint pen would struggle in: wildly fluctuating temperatures, upside down, on greasy surfaces.
Fisher offered to sell these pens to NASA, and after rigorous testing, NASA decided to buy them for future Apollo missions. The Fisher Space Pen made its debut on Apollo 7 in 1968.
Fisher Space Pens are still used today, but today astronauts and cosmonauts have many more options aboard the International Space Station. They come with Sharpie pens of various colors and – yes – pencils. Of mechanicallyand not the type of wood.
As NASA astronaut Clayton Anderson explains“The mechanical pencils are typically used by the crew to enter numeric values required to perform onboard procedures (burn times, engine configurations, etc.). The ability to delete something in your procedures is an excellent skill, especially when situations change, which they often do.
The lines can still break; However, advances in technology mean that the filtration system on board the International Space Station is fairly efficient at removing potentially hazardous debris.
We do indeed live in a wondrous future.
