Well you have to understand, Soviet Russia beat the US in the Space Race by sending cosmonauts with pencils. The Americans spent tens of millions of dollars developing a pen that works in space. They are wasteful. It’s not like pencils create any graphite dust that could potentially clog the air filters on MIR.
Normal pens need gravity to work. IIRC NASA did actually buy the pens at MSRP, and the guy that invented the pens wasnt at all involved in the space program. He was solving a different issue, whos solution happened to work for NASA
“the guy” who invented the space pens is a whole entire company that makes many things and is staffed by many people.
The “space pens” are just their normal pens but with pressurized ink cartridges and special ink (and the development was paid in full by Fisher) but they were bought at MSRP by NASA. And because everything NASA does is public domain, you can actually see the original PO for the pens! They spent $2.25/pen in November 1967 which would be worth about $28 today.
Well you have to understand, Soviet Russia beat the US in the Space Race by sending cosmonauts with pencils. The Americans spent tens of millions of dollars developing a pen that works in space. They are wasteful. It’s not like pencils create any graphite dust that could potentially clog the air filters on MIR.
It would also be crazy if instead of spending millions on R&D, they just bought the pens from a company at MSRP…
Normal pens need gravity to work. IIRC NASA did actually buy the pens at MSRP, and the guy that invented the pens wasnt at all involved in the space program. He was solving a different issue, whos solution happened to work for NASA
“the guy” who invented the space pens is a whole entire company that makes many things and is staffed by many people.
The “space pens” are just their normal pens but with pressurized ink cartridges and special ink (and the development was paid in full by Fisher) but they were bought at MSRP by NASA. And because everything NASA does is public domain, you can actually see the original PO for the pens! They spent $2.25/pen in November 1967 which would be worth about $28 today.