Everyone knows the Fisher Space Pen was a valuable spin-off from the early space program. NASA funded them to invent a pressurized ink source so Astronauts could write while hanging about ‘upside-down’ in microgravity. It has become well known folklore. The trouble is, like much other folklore, it isn’t true. ESA’s Pedro Duque took a normal pen with him on his space station visit and tried it:
Duque has discovered that “ordinary” pens work just fine in space and that the famous American versions that use a pressurized ink source may be a little overkill. In commenting on the ball point pen, he (unintentionally?) makes an interesting observation about the U.S. space program:
“Sometimes being too cautious keeps you from trying, and therefore things are built more complex than necessary,” Duque writes.
You will not find many naysayers to this observation in the space community. NASA is synonymous with gold-plated and overbuilt. They have long had a philosophy to never use a 10 cent screw from the local hardware store when they can let a research project for a million dollars into a key congressional district.
The State is not your friend. NASA will never get you and I off this planet.
You can read some of his daily diary entries here.
The Fisher space pen was a private development, sold to NASA rather than the other way around. And it’s for use outside where bic biros would melt or freeze. Also it’s nonflammable which mattered a lot back when they used pure O2 ship-internal atmosphere.
NASA suck, but there’s plenty enough factually correct reasons to bash them.
I’m sue the Russians took along a high tech pencil…
I’m hoping a lot of Russias excellent space technicians can be redeployed in private firms?
Maybe with Russias economy growing well now a private space program can bloom?
What amazed me was that NASA would only consider approving manual wind watches for space, as opposed to automatics. Hence the choice of the Omega Speedmaster. You would have thought that NASA had a physicist on staff that understood that an automatic winder, actuated by momentum, would not be affected by zero garavity.
I was at the Air & Space museum in D.C. this summer and found the expereince very depressing. The space exhibits don’t seem to have been updated since the shuttle first flew. All the technology on display seemed pretty primitive.
Mike,
The exhibits at NASM haven’t been updated since the shuttle first flew for a very simple reason.
The technology hasn’t been updated.
Yes, folks, we’re working with essentially thirty year old technology because that’s what bureaucracies tend to do — stop development in its tracks. New ideas are messy, you see. Simple minded control freaks hate messes — almost as much as they hate independently minded people.
Julian. I did some checking, and according to Urban Legends you are correct. I will note however, that this anecdote about the Fisher space pen is not at all recent. I watched Walter Cronkite report on every single flight from Al Shepherd to Apollo 11 and I don’t remember hearing the story you’ve mentioned. I can definitely say I’ve been hearing it cited as an Official NASA Spinoff since at least th 1970’s. So it may be a case of a goverment agency quietly taking credit for something invented elsewhere.
Also note that the primary reasons for the pen went obsolete with the Apollo capsules and their pure low pressure O2 atmospheres. All modern spaceships and habitats use a standard pressure mix of normal air.
It isn’t clear to me that a ballpoint pen won’t write outside the ship either. I’ll wait until someone has actually *tried* and succeeded or failed before I agree there is anything special required.
And btw, to another person who mentioned Russian tech: this wasn’t about Russian technology; it was a european pen tested by a european astronaut.
Incidentally, when Chuck (above) speaks, it is from personal experience. He’s a former NASA hack himself.
I have a Space Pen, and the literature that came with it explains that it is a Fisher development that was a pet project of Mr. Fisher.
As for the story of the Russians and their pencil, I told that to a physicist and his answer was that a pencil in zero gravity would be a bad idea in that small particles of graphite would become free flaoting and then potentially cause short circuts.
In relation to the watch issue, it is my understanding that the robustness of the automatic movement was an issue, not the self-winding problem. They are now automatic watches that go to space. These are just things I picked up as a space/watch fan. I currently wear a Breitling Cosmonaute which is what Scott Carpenter wore on his flight and has a 24 hour dial for use in space.
Interesting story in any case.
Bart
Who was talking about pencils? Absolutely the graphite bits could be a problem. However, there is no graphite in normal cheap pens – not even those made in the EU – that I am aware of.
As an engineer and businessman, who has often had to write out of position, while on the shop floor or in the field, I can flatly say that, here at 1g, the Fisher ‘Space Pen’ is a blessing. But, in the back of my mind, my engineer’s intuition told me that, at 0g, the ink’s surface tension would keep it in contact with the ball. So I was ‘write’ all along.
So, in any event, I take it NASA didn’t waste any money developing the pen then, as they simply purchased an existing product (which doesn’t mean they didn’t didn’t waste money by ordering pens identical to the over-the-counter type, excepted manufactured and tested on a special line according to a 250 page specification).
As for the pure O2 atmosphere, I thought that went out after the Apollo 1 disaster?
You want NASA to take risks, you say?
Okay. How many exploded ships and dead astronauts would you find acceptable, on an annual basis? Y’know, just ballpark it for me.
NASA never gets any credit when we do things right. Simple launch, uncomplicated mission, smooth landing, zero press.
When one little thing goes wrong, sometimes it leads to the vehicle being destroyed, or sent in a useless direction, or unable to do its job. Ooh, but then we hear from the Public, don’t we?
We do everything we can to remove as much risk as technically possible from every single vehicle and mission we fly. But there’s still some risk.
Every time the dice roll goes our way, you tell us we’re being overly cautious, and should relax our standards just a bit. But every time the odds turn against us, oh the hue and cry that rises up. “Why didn’t you that one thing that would have stopped it?”
We could launch every week if we were willing to lose a Shuttle and crew every month or so.
Fast or good. Make up your damn minds.
(Not an official representative)
David,
Problem is that right now it really isn’t either fast *or* good.
Risk can be categorized as acceptable or unacceptable, and there are substantial costs associated with both.
The problem with NASA is that it is a government operation (funded, at least), and as a result, it’s pretty much tied to the apron strings of the nanny state.
Along with that comes the idea that *any* risk is bad, and that even the merest possibility of someone dying is so unacceptable that we’d rather stagnate than improve.
If we truly want to accomplish something in space, we have to accept that there will be costs associated with the endeavour, and that some of those costs will be in human lives. Since most of the people actually risking their lives accept that risk, the roadblocks are the weenies in government and society at large who look at any risk as something to hide from (preferably in a blanket in a corner of the closet, sucking their thumb, and begging the state to make them *feel* safe).
That we should ameliorate risk is a given. What we should not do is sacrifice our growth in exchange for a wussified view of life.
David
I also know that’s pretty much what you were saying. But I do think that fast or good isn’t even the standard they’re trying to meet. It’s more like glacial and mediocre.
quote: “and as a result, it’s pretty much tied to the apron strings of the nanny state.”
Then put the blame where it belongs – on NASA’s masters in the Executive Branch and paymasters in the Legislative Branch.
I’m tired of hearing NASA get beaten up for things that are largely beyond its control. Not to whitewash NASA – it makes its mistakes like any organization – but a lot of what NASA gets hammered for is the fault of government echelons above NASA. It’s not fair to NASA’s personnel, who deliver the taxpayer very good value for the money, relative to pretty much the rest of the government. NASA is chronically underfunded and that they do the things they do in spite of that is pretty amazing.
And playing fast and loose with risks has a dimension beyond the cost in human life – spacecraft are insanely expensive, and losing insanely expensive things matters a lot when you’re on a small budget.
From the original article:
“They have long had a philosophy to never use a 10 cent screw from the local hardware store when they can let a research project for a million dollars into a key congressional district.”
It’s not NASA’s philosophy, it’s the law. The law is supposed to offer fair competition for people and companies to bid for contracts supplying the government and when government employees and agencies go out and buy things from the hardware store, they are short-circuiting this “fair” process and showing undue favoritism to their personal choices. So if a NASA guy goes out and decides to save the people some money by buying a 10cent screw, he’s breaking the law. It’s a dumb rule, but again it’s not NASA’s fault.
The standard is zero failures. Every time something goes wrong, a whole new layer of procedure gets laid between drawing board and launch pad. It’s killing us, but we don’t dare streamline, or the next time something blows up, everyone will wonder if that layer of procedure might have caught the mistake. Perfection is slow. Also, impossible.
And something *will* blow up again. On average, one more shuttle sometime in the next 11 years. But you’ll notice, we’ve never lost vehicles to the same problem twice.
If you or anyone you know can reliably launch multi-million-dollar equipment and highly-trained people into space on a regular basis and return what needs returning without destroying or killing anything, dear God, please, do it. I’m begging you.
Heck, if you just know of a way, but don’t have the financing, tell me and I’ll pass it along.
Surely you’ve heard the joke: “Better. Faster. Cheaper. Pick two.”
Apollo was a low pressure system all the way. Think about it. Those moon suits could not have worked at 1atm; they did not pre-breath or pressurize.
The O2 was a problem in Apollo 101 because they ‘simulated’ pressure on the hull by running pure O2 inside the capsule at over 1atm for a ground test.
You are correct in part though; they ran a normal gas mixture at launch.
There is an excellent book out about the engineer at the prime contractor who was used by NASA as a scapegoat to save the Apollo program. I believe the title was “Storming Heaven”.
David: I’m quite consistant on it. I want it done privately in small craft so the media can’t find much to make a headline over when we lose as many people a year going into space as we lost in aeroplanes in 1908.
Many of those folk are likely to be personal friends, but all of us who have been around this game for a few decades know that “a frontier is a place where you can find new, exciting and horrible ways to die.”
Yes, I will express sadness when we lose people. It’s the friggin media that’s on the case over the shuttle loss. If I have any complaints on it, it is that NASA should have stuck with the older insulation using CFC’s and told the envirowhackos to go sit on a UDMH tank and rotate their little bottoms.
The problem NASA has is not that it is killing too many test pilots; it is that the vehicles are such huge capital investments it makes front page news and the investigations make political careers.
Kill 7 people in a helicopter and it might not even make it past local news; kill the same 7 in a Shuttle and it’s a global media frenzy.
The threshold of unacceptable risk would be reached when not enough qualified applicants show-up wanting to get launched into space.
“The threshold of unacceptable risk would be reached when not enough qualified applicants show-up wanting to get launched into space.”
Or when you blow up too many multi-billion dollar spacecraft to afford any more.