When NASA was getting ready to send the first astronauts to the moon, they thought, ‘How are the crew going to take notes in zero gee if there isn’t any gravity to pull the ink out of the pen (you know how, if you write upside-down for a few seconds, the pen stops working)?’ So the Fisher Pen Company designed a pen that was pressurized to about 50 PSI that would write in zero gee (at a design and development cost of $50k, mind you).
Well, that particular expenditure was during the ‘Space Race’ days when big spending was the norm. But, then once the U. S. was co-operating and collaborating with the Soviets, someone asked them how they solved the problem. Tom said, “The Soviet cosmonauts said they used one of these.” I glanced over and Tom was pulling a short pencil out of his shoulder pocket. (LMAO) He said he’s carried a pencil on every flight since he heard that. And, I found out yesterday that Brandon carries one, too.
After doing a little digging I found out that the Fisher Pen Co. developed the pen on its own dime and then approached NASA. But, the result is the same: it makes for a cute story. The point is: sometimes the old ways are the best. Who would ever have imagined we would be using a steam-powered generator on our way to Mars.
Unbelievable, everyone might say. The technology is very old, but that’s exactly the kind of (out-of-the-box) thinking that the Mars Direct Plan was built on: make some of the fuel on Mars, instead of taking it all with you. Have it waiting for you when you get there. That’s why we need people on the mission. Rovers can’t think and problem-solve the same way we can. Of course, on a robotic mission, it could just be flown without life support, so no big shakes.