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Writing in Space with a Cheap Ballpoint Pen

Posted by michael on from the flic-my-bic dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Some days bring big surprises. Like many people, I always believed that it was impossible to write in space with ordinary pens because ink would not flow. So imagine my astonishment when I read Pedro Duque's diary from space this morning. Pedro Duque is an astronaut since 1992. Now, he's on board of the International Space Station (ISS) since October 18, 2003. And he's writing -- from space -- with a cheap ballpoint pen, like Russians apparently always did: 'So I also took one of our ballpoint pens, courtesy of the European Space Agency (just in case Russian ballpoint pens are special), and here I am, it doesn't stop working and it doesn't "spit" or anything.' Isn't it amazing? This summary contains more details and a photograph of Pedro Duque on board ISS." Note that NASA didn't go crazy developing a pen for space. Surface tension is the important factor for all pens, not gravity.

4 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. Be fair by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    He's writing in a space station that's pressurized and kept at around 20C. The 'space pen' was designed to work in a vacuum in a temperature range of something like -100C to +200C, as experienced on the lunar surface: try doing that with a $0.50 plastic ballpoint.

    1. Re:Be fair by Dun+Malg · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Oh well then you write with a pen inside the shuttle and when you have landed on the moon write with a pencil. Its not as if a broken pencil lead...

      Pencils in spacecraft are a safety hazard for the very reason you state above. Not the lunar goats, but the broken lead. Graphite is conductive. Little bits of conductive material floating about in zero-G in a spacecraft full of electronic doodads is a catastrophic short circuit waiting to happen. Yeah, they shield the critical circuits, and yeah, it'd be better if every square centimeter of a spacecraft was checked for "graphite vulnerability", but the best solution is still to have a "no pencils" rule. Solves the problem nicely.

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
  2. No gravity to work *against* surface tension... by aquarian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Surface tension is indeed the important factor, but what you're missing is this: although gravity is not needed for the pen to write, in space it's not working against you when you try to write upside down.

  3. One word: by chiph · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Microgravity.

    What happens to all the pencil shavings and eraser crumbs?

    Chip H.