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1.  

   Don't Blame Nasa

   

   Director Mitch, Oct 24th, 2003 @ 8:51am

   
   

   Good post until you bring NASA into it since it seems you are bringing in an Urban Legend.
   
   See http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp for a description of the "space pen", which NASA did not develop, ask to have developed, or pay for. Basically a marketing gimmick by a private enterprise.
   

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2.  

   Re: Don't Blame Nasa

   

   Mike (profile), Oct 24th, 2003 @ 9:33am

   
   

   My point wasn't blaming NASA for the commercialization of the pen, but for not realizing that a standard everyday pen would work. If you read the snopes page, the legend is that NASA spent millions on developing the pen. That's not true, but they DID still use the pen, when (it appears) a regular ballpoint would have worked.

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3.  

   wrong

   

   eeyore, Oct 24th, 2003 @ 10:10am

   
   

   Russia didn't always use pens. They used to use pencils until they started buying pens from Fisher like NASA does. The problem with pencils is that they produce graphite dust, which can cause electircal short-circuits. The Fisher "space" pen was developed with a pressurized ink cartridge so it would write at any angle and were developed in the 1940s. Regular ball-point pens use gravity to feed ink to the ball. Try writing upside down with your regular pen and see what happens. NASA tried the "everyday" ink pens on early spaceflights and discovered that the "everyday" ink pens of the era would not work in space.

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4.  

   Not exactly - vaccuum vs gravity

   

   Ellie, Oct 1st, 2006 @ 8:36pm

   
   

   It may not be exactly correct to say that the ink in ballpoint pens are fed by gravity. From what I understand, the rotating ball creates a small vacuum that sucks the ink down the barrel. However, if you try to write at an angle or upside down, there may be enough gravity pulling the ink the other way to cancel out the vacuum created by the ball. That's why regular pens work in space - no gravity so no negative force to interfere with the vacuum created by the rotating ball.

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5.  

   

   Anonymous Coward, Apr 23rd, 2008 @ 7:44am

   
   

   I just tried an expriement and it turns out that a regular ball point pen wont even write UPSIDE DOWN! How can we expect it to work in space?

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