Did you know astronauts have to use a special pen to write in the outer space?
Many of you have dreamt of being an astronaut and travelling all the way to the outer space, the Moon or more recently the red planet Mars. In fact, the very idea of spending days and months on the International Space Station (ISS) is thrilling, to say the least. But just like everything else, there are pros and cons of living in space. One among them is the fact that astronauts cannot use normal pens on space because of zero gravity. This is because the ink doesn’t flow in the right direction in a state of apparent weightlessness and thus does not serve the purpose of writing. While Russians solved this problem with a customised pencil (where the lead is unbreakable and hence won’t harm anyone or anything in space), Americans came up with their own solution. They developed a zero-gravity pen called the Space Pen. Today, let us take a sneak peek into the world of Space Pen.
Space Pen at a glance
The Space Pen was designed and marketed by Fisher Space Pen Company in 1965. It was the brainchild of Austrian-origin American inventor Friedrich Schachter and made into a reality by Erwin Rath, the owner of the company. Space Pen was originally called anti-gravity ballpoint pen and was manufactured in Boulder City, Nevada. The pen was initially created to write not only in zero gravity but also other unusual situations such as underwater, over wet and greasy paper, at any abrupt angle and most importantly in a plethora of temperatures.
Decoding the technology of Space Pen
The exterior of the Space Pen was made from tungsten carbide, a very hard, grey compound, often used as an abrasive. It was perfectly made to avoid leaks. It used a pressurised ink cartridge that contained a special thixotropic visco-elastic ink (turning into a fluid when shaken, but solid or semi-solid when allowed to stand) that was invented and patented by American inventor Paul C. Fisher. The cartridge was such that the ink remained separated from the compressed nitrogen gas and only came in contact when pressure was applied for writing. Not only that, the ink was sealed to sustain three times longer than a standard ballpoint pen. Simply put, while a standard ink cartridge can write 3700 metres, this pen can write a whopping 49.4 kilometres. Moreover, it can also function within a temperature range of minus 34 to 121 degrees Celsius. All these together made it possible for the Space Pen to write perfectly in zero gravity, that too at any angle. How cool is that!
Models of the Space Pen
The Space Pen comes in quite a few models, out of which AG7 Astronaut Pen or the original Space Pen is the most prominent one. It is a long and thin retractable pen resembling a regular Parker ballpoint pen. Then there’s another version called the Bullet Pen which is non-retractable, and shorter in size that standard ballpoint pens. However, the most marketed one called the Millennium Pen is sold to the general public and is said to have a shelf life of a 100 years. Wondering if these pens can be refilled? Of course!
Space Pen in action
Unlike popular belief, the invention of Space Pen was an independent and private project and NASA was in no way involved. However, when it realised the usability of the pen, in 1967, it bought 400 pens from the Fish Space Pen Company for 2.95 dollars apiece. Since then, NASA has sent the Space Pen during all the crewed Apollo missions starting with Apollo-7 in 1968. In fact, in 2008, astronaut Gene Cernan’s Space Pen that was part of the Apollo-17 mission was sold at an auction for a whopping 23900 US dollars. It is said that Cernan used it to write letters to both his mother and fiancé from the Moon. Fascinating, right?
Interestingly, the Space Pen has been featured in the American sitcom Seinfield and is also displayed at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art for tourists and at Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre for space enthusiasts. Space Pens have also been part of Russian and Chinese space missions.