The story of NASA's million-dollar space
pen and the Soviet pencil has become one
of the more enduring tales from the
space race and still floats around the
internet today and goes a bit like this.
During the 1960's as NASA was sending
the first men into space and they realize
that pens don't work in zero gravity, so
they spent years and millions of
taxpayer dollars to develop one that did
meanwhile in the Soviet Union the
cosmonauts simply used pencils. The moral
of the story to many is that NASA was a
wasteful government organization that
would be giving your hard-earned tax
dollars to some greedy contractors
charging sky-high prices for seemingly
trivial objects whereas the enemy, the
Soviets were common sense and practical.
But the story is a myth, however like all
good myths it's based on facts, facts which
over time like Chinese whispers end up
as grossly exaggerated stories which are
then taken at face value and purport to
be the real facts. the true story of the
space pen is a bit more down-to-earth
start from the sandwich from the Gemini
3 mission on march 23rd 1965. The crew of
the flight was Gus Grissom and John
Young. After the mission it came to light
the John Young had smuggled a sandwich on
board in his space suit pocket. Although it
had been allowed by the director of
flight operations it was frowned upon by
the flight surgeon because when they
took bites out of two day old sandwich
in orbit the crumbs floated around in
the cabins microgravity and these could
get into the electronics room cause a
problem. At the time the astronaut had an
exclusive deal with life magazine and
some thought they had planned little
stunts like this so as to reveal them in
upcoming articles. In the earlier mercury
missions it had been commonplace for non
flight items to have found their way on
board missions when it was discovered
that the two mechanical pencils that the
crew were using coughed $128 84 cents
each
$986 in today's money and that
NASA had bought 34 of them for a total
price of $4382.50 the
equivalent of $33,700 in today's money
the press had a field day and there was
a public outcry. It turned out that the
actual pencils only cost $1.75
each but they had custom-made housings
so that the crew could hold and write
with them whilst wearing their thick space
suit gloves and that's where most of the
R&D and manufacturing costs of these
housings has gone. The issue here was
that people might not know what a flight
computer or a rocket engine costs but
when they see a pencil for a $128
they might well end
up thinking what else are unscrupulous
contractors have been overcharging for. After
an investigation as to what was being
carried on to mission it also turned out
that they had on board for Japanese
Pentel pencils which cost $0.49 each,
something that NASA definitely didn't
want to be known about when they had
flown alongside the $128 dollar American
versions. During the mid-1960s, Paul
Fisher inventor and owner of the Fisher
Pen company patented what he called
the "Space Pen". Fisher knew about the issues
with the NASA pencils and had the idea
of making a pen that would work in
space. The space pen had a cartridge
pressurized with nitrogen and used a
special gel ink that became liquid
when the ballpoint rotated against the
gel. It could write any angle on almost
any surface in a vacuum even underwater
and it worked in temperatures from minus
46C to plus 71C. However he
didn't have any official backing nor was
he contracted by NASA, it was just his
idea to make the perfect pen and he
funded it privately with his own
company's money to the tune of
reportedly $1 million dollars, how true
that figure was might be up to question
but it's where the $1 million dollar
price tag comes from. Fisher knew what
space was the hot topic at the time so
with a bit of creative writing copy
he advertised he as "Space Pen by
Fisher and it writes in space" this was
something which NASA objected to when he
tried to get a copy of the history of
the Pens development reviewed by NASA,
something was he managed to get into the congressional record of March 1966.
He also submitted a version of the pen
known as the AG-7 or Antigravity 7
for consideration to be used in upcoming
Apollo missions. After the Gemini pencils
debacle of a few years earlier and the
need to make sure that everything in the
small cabin and high oxygen content
recirculated air system was safe, NASA
had clamped down on what could be taken
on to missions. So wood shavings and
graphite from normal pencils, inks from
pens and other things that could be
floating around in microgravity were now
considered to be a hazard to both the
open switches in the electrics and also
the crew as well as a fire hazard in the
oxygen-rich atmosphere after the Apollo
1 fire disaster. NASA eventually opted to
use the sealed AG-7 Fisher pens in the
Apollo mission alongside felt-tip pens
and they ordered 400 of them. As for the
Soviets they moved away from pencils
because the tips will break off and
float around in the cabin. So for a while
they used grease or wax pencils on
plastic slates but these was not as
durable as ink and they still had to
dispose of a pencils paper wrapping
safely, so in 1969 the Soviets also bought
100 Fischer Space Pens and 1,000 ink
cartridges and the Space Pen went on to
be a staple of not only the space
missions but also many other industries
too. So was the American Space pen
better than the Soviet pencil, yes it was.
Did it cost NASA a million dollars
no it did not. Both NASA and the Soviets got a
bulk buy discounted price of $6 dollars
each. So as always thanks for watching
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