The pens have been used on every crewed NASA mission since Apollo 7 – dozens are currently on the International Space Station. The quantity of graphite particles actually produced during occasional writing would be too small to constitute an electrical hazard.

However, Fisher seems to enjoy perpetuating the NASA myth a little himself. In a 2004 interview, he claimed that the design came to him in a dream after NASA approached him in 1965 with their problem: The ink, too, differs from that of other pens. Fisher used ink that stays a gellike solid until the movement of the ballpoint turns it into a fluid. The pressurized nitrogen also prevents air from mixing with the ink so it cannot evaporate or oxidize. Write in very low temperatures - obviously useful in very cold weather conditions but also useful in commercial cold-storage. Ordinary pen ink will solidify, but a pressurised refill will keep going at minus 20 degrees celsius.Nope. Paul Fisher at the Fisher Pen Company had already been working on a pressurized pen. That said, it would never have reached the heights it did, in orbit or in popularity, without NASA’s testing. Ballpoint pens have been used by Soviet and then Russian space programs as a substitute for grease pencils as well as NASA and ESA. [10] The pens are cheap and use paper (which is easily available), and writing done using pen is more permanent than that done with graphite pencils and grease pencils, which makes the ball point pen more suitable for log books and scientific note books. However, the ink is indelible, and depending on composition is subject to outgassing and temperature variations. Alan Bean, the fourth person to walk on the moon, was responsible for leaving the two pins on the lunar surface: one belonging to the late Clifton "CC" Williams, who Bean replaced on the 1969 Apollo 12 crew, and his own. A common misconception states that, faced with the fact that ball-point pens would not write in zero-gravity, the Fisher Space Pen was devised as the result of millions of dollars of unnecessary spending on NASA's part when the Soviet Union took the simpler and cheaper route of just using pencils, making the pen an example of overengineering. [1] Faced with these requirements, pencils or other non-permanent recordkeeping methods are unsatisfactory. The act of taking permanent, high-integrity documentation itself deters kludges, workarounds, and " go fever". The Apollo 1 investigation uncovered procedural and workmanship deficiencies in multiple areas, up to procedures on the pad.

While they are popular gift items, Cary said, they are especially in-demand among members of the military and law enforcement, as well as outdoor enthusiasts, plane manufacturers, and oil workers, all of whom, like astronauts, appreciate their ability to write in any conditions.

PASSIONATE ABOUT PENS

The wood pencil has been used for writing by NASA and Soviet space programs from the start. It is simple with no moving parts, except for the sharpener. The mechanical pencil has been used by NASA starting in the 1960s Gemini program. It can be made to be as wide as the width of astronauts' gloves, yet maintain its light weight. There are no wooden components which might catch fire and create dust. However, the pencil lead still creates graphite dust that conducts electricity. Even before the Apollo 1 fire, the CM crew cabin was reviewed for hazardous materials such as paper, velcro, and even low-temperature plastics. A directive was issued but poorly enforced. When combined with high oxygen content, the Apollo 1 cabin burned within seconds, killing all three crew members.

Several instruments have been used to write in outer space, including different types of pencils and pens. Some of them have been unmodified versions of conventional writing instruments; others have been invented specifically to counter the problems with writing in space conditions. During the height of the space race in the 1960s, legend has it, NASA scientists realized that pens could not function in space. They needed to figure out another way for the astronauts to write things down. So they spent years and millions of taxpayer dollars to develop a pen that could put ink to paper without gravity. But their crafty Soviet counterparts, so the story goes, simply handed their cosmonauts pencils. Slayton later earned his own (normal) gold astronaut pin as a crew member on the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, but continued wearing the diamond-studded pin. The Apollo 14 crew was the first to add the symbol to their moon landing mission insignia in 1971. That was followed by more than two dozen patches representing space shuttle missions, including the first and last flights with a seven-person crew (STS-41G in 1984 and STS-131 in 2010), the first Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission (STS-61 in 1993) and the ill-fated final flight of shuttle Columbia (STS-107 in 2003). Several International Space Station crews have also used the symbol on their embroidered emblems.a b Curtin, Ciara (20 December 2006). "Fact or Fiction?: NASA Spent Millions to Develop a Pen that Would Write in Space, whereas the Soviet Cosmonauts Used a Pencil". Scientific American . Retrieved 15 May 2021. Fisher Space Pen is used on every NASA crewed space mission, as well as on the International Space Station. Our new Artemis Space Pen series honors the space pioneers of NASA's Apollo program and looks to the future of space exploration on the moon, Mars and beyond," Matt Fisher, vice president of Fisher Space Pen, said in a statement. The story of pressurised pens starts with Paul Fisher, who invented a pen refill that was able to write in zero gravity and who then persuaded NASA to buy the Fisher Space Pen for space missions. The urban myth that NASA spent millions developing the space pen, while the Russians simply used a pencil is sadly not true.

And Today: MIR Cosmonauts Use Fisher Space Pens For Their Writing Needs". Archived from the original on October 30, 2014 . Retrieved September 23, 2013.The new astronaut pin, which borrowed its design from the military badge, was chosen by the astronauts themselves at a get together organized by Mercury (and later Gemini and Apollo) pilot Wally Schirra.