There’s an old urban legend of how NASA spent millions on creating a pen that could write in space with zero gravity during the great space race with the Russians. As the story goes, NASA spent the equivalent of $9.29 million in today’s dollars on the development of a pen that could write in space, where there’s no gravity to feed ink into the pen’s ballpoint. It turns out this story is a bit of a wives tale, as it was actually a private company named Fisher that developed the pen with their own money, but it sure is a good story. Want to know what the Russians did while the U.S. was investing millions to develop a space pen? They just used pencils.
Why am I bothering to tell you this story? Well, it turns out 58 years later Fisher has come out with a new space pen to fly with Blue Origin crews as ‘official ballpoint’ pen on Blue Origin missions.
Fisher Space Pens to fly with Blue Origin crews as ‘official ballpoint’