Slobodan Blazeski  <slobodan.blazeski@gmail.com> wrote:
+---------------
| There was a joke about NASA(or RFSA) spending a lot of money for pens
| that could write in zero gravity. When they announced their
| masterpiece reporters asked them why they don't use pencils?
+---------------

Closer to libel than a joke, actually:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_in_space

The Fisher Space Pen (and others similar to it) was developed with
private funds:

    There exists a common urban legend claiming that the Americans spent
    $11 million developing the Space Pen, and the Russians used a pencil.
    In fact, NASA programs have used pencils (for example a 1965 order
    of mechanical pencils) but because of the danger that a broken-off
    pencil tip poses in zero gravity and the flammable nature of the wood
    present in pencils a better solution was needed.

    NASA never approached Paul Fisher to develop a pen, nor did Fisher
    receive any government funding for the pen's development. Fisher
    invented it independently, and then asked NASA to try it. After the
    introduction of the AG7 Space Pen, both the American and Soviet
    (later Russian) space agencies adopted it. Previously both the
    Russian and American astronauts used grease pencils and plastic slates.


-Rob

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Rob Warnock			<rpw3@rpw3.org>
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