Can the space pen developed by the United States with a million dollars be replaced by a pencil?

It is rumored that NASA spent millions of dollars to finally develop a ballpoint pen that can be used in space, but the Soviet Union solved the problem with a pencil! This stalk has been widely circulated, but what everyone doesn't know is that you really can't use a pencil in space!

Why can't space use pencils and ordinary ballpoint pens?

Pencils can actually be used in space. Its refill is made of graphite. When writing, the graphite in the refill will adhere to the paper due to friction. Friction still exists in space and can be used normally! But if it is only attached to paper, it is a very good writing pen. What is more troublesome is that some will fall off. Due to the microgravity environment in space, these falling fragments will float around!

They will have two problems, one is that they will enter the human respiratory system and affect human health, the other is that they may enter the circuit through airflow and may attach to the pins of IC integrated blocks to form short circuit faults. Therefore, the emergency problem of pencil in that short-term task is not big, but there are obviously great hidden dangers in long-term use!

Why can't the ballpoint pen be used?

You must understand that the pen can't be used, because the ink flows down by gravity and then writes on the paper through the nib. In the microgravity environment in space, gravity drops, and the pen will not write for a while!

Ballpoint pens and pens have different structures. Its head is a carbide sphere. In the process of writing, the ball will roll out the ink, so it will stick to the ink before writing! In this process, there are two functions that allow the ballpoint pen to write words:

Gravity ink flows downward.

Ink printing is carried out under negative pressure.

Of the two functions, gravity is dominant, and negative pressure is partly auxiliary (pen tip will leak), so you can write with ordinary ballpoint pen in space, but you may write blank strokes, because gravity disappears and negative pressure is not enough to absorb ink, which will break words! Another problem is that ordinary ballpoint pens in space are easy to run out of ink and get everywhere!

What is the principle of space pen? How did it come from?

NASA is now using Fisher Company in Nevada, USA. Different from the familiar jokes, it was not developed during the space hegemony of the United States and the Soviet Union, but during the Apollo program, Fisher's ballpoint pen production company was commissioned by NASA, but at first Fisher directly rejected this abnormal ballpoint pen because NASA required it to be used in zero gravity!

But then Mr. Fisher thought of a good way to squeeze the ink out of the refill with nitrogen pressure, which is really a good way, but Fisher encountered a problem, that is, the ink would be used up involuntarily, even if he didn't write! For this reason, FISHER and his engineers came up with the idea of modulating ink into a state similar to non-Newtonian liquid, and only when writing can the ink be brought out by rolling beads!

One thing that must be clarified is that Fisher didn't get a million dollars of research and development expenses from NASA, but developed this pen that can be used in space with his own money! Fisher's Good Things 1967? Space pen? It has passed the rigorous test of NASA and can be used in zero gravity or 30 meters deep water. At that time, NASA purchased 400 space pens at a price of $2.95 each, which was used in the manned space mission of Apollo 7 in 1968!

1July 20, 969 Armstrong took it? Space pen? Landing on the moon, it is said that the space pen also saved Apollo 1 1 moon landing mission! This stalk is like this:

When Armstrong and Aldrin finished their mission to the moon and returned to the lunar module, they suddenly found that the start switch of the moon landing engine was caught in the backpack of the spacesuit, and the toggle switch was broken! This time, the living almost suffocated by urine. Armstrong carefully studied the switch structure and found that just stick a small object on the metal bar and then stir it!

But the terrible thing is that in order to reduce the weight, they threw everything that could be thrown on the lunar module on the surface of the moon. At this time, Aldrin took out Fisher Company? Space pen? Stuck the metal bar, flip the switch and save the mission to the moon! The eagle carried the astronauts back to orbit around the moon. Too bad this one? Eagle? Instead of returning to earth with the astronauts, only the spacecraft in the command module and even the service module remained in earth orbit.

There are too many stories about space pens. Of course, the story is far from over. Although the sale of military and space technology is strictly prohibited, space pens are not among them, so they are used by the space departments of many countries, such as the Soviet Union and China. It costs a lot of money to develop it, so this auxiliary product can be purchased directly!

However, the space pen can be used not only in space, but also on the ground, and can cope with extremely harsh environments, such as writing casually in waterproof notebooks during underwater archaeology, or writing on any surface that is difficult to write, such as doctors like to mark X-rays, and outdoor workers like to use this pen, so what surprised Mr. FISHER at that time was that the space pen, which was originally used only in space, has now been sold to all corners of the world, which is really unintentional!