<VV> Space pen - was $60 Rotisserie!

[Bryan Blackwell]

Wrong.  In fact, Paul Fisher developed his now famous Space Pen with his own money, and both space programs switched to them from pencils because of the issues with using a pencil in a spacecraft (graphite floating around electrical systems is bad).  It is, much like the Corvair, a brilliant engineering solution which now gets a bum rap.

Source:  http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

--Bryan

On Jan 11, 2011, at 1:55 AM, Rodney Spooner wrote:

> Speaking of Yankee ingenuity, NASA spent millions engineering a zero gravity
> pen so the astronauts could write in space...The Russians used a 5 cent
> pencil. Sometimes, necessity is the motherland of invention...eh,
> comrades???