NASA's $12 Billion Zero-Gravity Space Pen
Netlore Archive: Did NASA spend $12 billion to develop a ballpoint 'space pen' for astronauts working in zero gravity?
Description: Urban legend
Circulating since: 1997 (as Netlore)
Status: False
Email example contributed by R. Daugherty, Sep. 7, 2001:
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Subject: NASA's Zero Gravity Pen When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered the ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 Billion to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300C. The Russians used a pencil. |
Comments: This story marvelously illustrates the perils of government waste; pity it's not true. NASA didn't have $12 billion to spend on anything when it first started sending astronauts into space in the early 1960s. The agency's entire budget for the 1960 was $500 million; by 1965, it was up to $5.2 billion, still not enough to throw billions away reinventing the ballpoint pen.
Be that as it may, astronauts in the Apollo program did begin using a specially-designed zero-gravity pen in 1968 called the Fisher AG-7 Space Pen. Nitrogen-pressurized, the pen worked in "freezing cold, desert heat, underwater and upside down," as well as the weightlessness of outer space. It was developed not by NASA but by an enterprising individual, Paul C. Fisher, owner of the Fisher Space Pen Company. By his own account, Fisher spent "thousands of hours and millions of dollars" of his own in research and development; not billions.
The Fisher Space Pen is still used by both American and Russian astronauts on every space flight, and you can buy one yourself direct from the company for a measly 50 bucks.
Sources and further reading:
History of the Ballpoint Pen
Cosmopolis, October 2002Pressurized Pen Pioneer Says Luck is Key to Success
Associated Press, 9 March 1997America's Space Program
U.S. National Park ServiceTop 10 Astronomy/Space Urban Legends
About Space/Astronomy
Last updated: 03/03/04
