Re: Homo Sovieticus Thinking

In article <088a4da1-c6bd-4d54-8175-d214ac871942@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
And of course the famous myth - I think - that while American space
engineers spent a ton of bucks developing a ballpoint pen that writes
in the absence of gravity pulling ink through it,

Mythy: Fisher spent the money, not "space engineers", and it wasn't a
NASA design. <http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp>

... both American and Soviet space missions initially used
pencils, NASA did not seek out Fisher and ask them to develop a
"space pen," Fisher did not charge NASA for the cost of developing
the pen, and the Fisher pen was eventually used by both American
and Soviet astronauts.

(Since graphite conducts electricity, pencils are not good to use in
weightlessness near electrical and electronic equipment.)

It's apparently worse than that. Snopes includes

Here's how Fisher themselves described it:

NASA never asked Paul C. Fisher to produce a pen. When the
astronauts began to fly, like the Russians, they used pencils,
but the leads sometimes broke and became a hazard by floating
in the [capsule's] atmosphere where there was no gravity. They
could float into an eye or nose or cause a short in an
electrical device. In addition, both the lead and the wood of
the pencil could burn rapidly in the pure oxygen
atmosphere. ...

Because of the fire in Apollo 1, in which three Astronauts
died, NASA required a writing instrument that would not burn
in a 100% oxygen atmosphere. It also had to work in the
extreme conditions of outer space:
1. In a vacuum.
2. With no gravity.
3. In hot temperatures of +150 C in sunlight and also in the
cold shadows of space where the temperatures drop to -120 C

(NASA tested the pressurized Space Pens at -50 C, but because
of the residential [sic] heat in the pen it also writes for
many minutes in the cold shadows.) ...

Fisher spent over one million dollars in trying to perfect the
ball point pen before he made his first successful pressurized
pens in 1965. ... In December 1967 he sold 400 Fisher Space
Pens to NASA for $2.95 each. ...

--
Tim McDaniel, tmcd@xxxxxxxxx
.

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