Sunday, March 22, 2009

Just because it's funny

I don't know if this is true or not (about the Russians, I mean) but it does illustrate how we like to complicate things:

When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300 degrees Celsius. The Russians used a pencil.

Found here.

2 comments:

  1. Funny story, invented ca. 1997, with no basis in fact.
    See http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_zero_gravity_pen.htm

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, okay. Thanks for the info, Tom. Not surprising that it's an urban legend type story. Still funny, though! :-)

    ReplyDelete

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