Not only Kung Pao Chicken but also WIFI, this equipment of the "God Twelve" astronauts is also the only one in the world.

With the successful docking of the Shenzhou 12 spacecraft and the core module of the space station, the initial work of my country’s space station construction is basically completed. The fish-flavored shredded pork and Kung Pao stored in the Tianzhou 2 cargo spacecraft Chicken diced and other astronaut food, as well as WiFi equipment will also be moved into the space station.

However, there are not only unique space foods in China's space, but also unique equipment for astronauts and astronauts: astronauts' portable data recording instruments. China is the only country to develop and manufacture this kind of equipment in-house. A major space country with advanced equipment.

To put it simply, it is a space pen, but the name of the portable data recording instrument is not randomly chosen by us, but is officially written in the equipment manual of NASA. The space pen is a very important piece of equipment in aerospace. , used to record various data and logs.

Traditional fountain pens or ballpoint pens are gravity-fed ink structures. The ink comes to the pen tip under the action of gravity to complete writing. In the microgravity environment of low-Earth orbit, it naturally does not work, and even you don’t. If you need to go to space, you can verify this phenomenon by just lying on the bed, picking up an ordinary ballpoint pen and writing a paragraph with your back.

In order to solve the problem of how to write in space, the United States and the Soviet Union, the two major countries that first began to explore space, naturally also had to solve such a difficulty. There is a joke that says that the Americans invested millions of dollars and finally developed a pen that can write in space, and the Soviets solved the problem by bringing pencils into space.

This is an old joke that both the United States and the Soviet Union love to tell. The Americans tell this joke to laugh at their own NASA for spending money carelessly, while the Soviets tell this joke to laugh at their own space agency. Do not talk about scientific methods and start the horse. In fact, the United States and the Soviet Union were the first to use pencils in manned spaceflight, and the Americans still used real pencils.

The United States first customized a batch of mechanical pencils for astronauts to use. 34 all-metal pencils cost nearly US$4,400, which fully reflected the rich and willful nature of NASA. At that time, US dollars could Under the gold standard, US$35 is an ounce of gold. The unit price of this customized pencil purchased by NASA is close to US$129. If you buy one, you will lose more than 2 taels of gold. This pen does not necessarily weigh more than 2 taels. This pencil They are already more expensive than the B2 bomber.

The problem with using pencils as aerospace pens is actually quite big. The main components of pencils are graphite and clay. Graphite conducts electricity. The principle of graphite bombs is to spread graphite all over the sky to destroy the power grid. However, when placed in a small space like a spacecraft, In space, a pencil is like a graphite bomb that can explode at any time. Once the lead is broken, the graphite will float all over the sky. If it comes into contact with any sensitive equipment circuit, it will accidentally cause a short circuit, causing a serious accident.

Although the Soviets entered space earlier, they had long realized that although pencils could write in the sky, they could easily produce graphite debris, which was quite dangerous to various equipment, so they did not bring pencils in the traditional sense. Instead of using their pencils to go into space, they found another way - to find a non-conductive pencil, and high paraffin wax pencils came into their eyes.

You may not have heard of what a paraffin pencil is. To put it lightly, the colored pencils used by children for drawing are just a kind of paraffin pencil. Soviet astronauts used this kind of pencil. Toy, write like drawing.

Paraffin pencils do solve the dangerous problem caused by graphite debris, but they are not perfect. First of all, this thing is really difficult to write on. Anyone who has used colored pencils knows that The gadget is quite useful for drawing, but when it comes to writing, it really makes people feel hopeless. Secondly, although paraffin is not conductive and is not as dangerous as graphite, it will still break if you are not careful, producing various small fragments. It is not a big threat to the equipment, but it is still easy for astronauts to accidentally inhale it, which is quite frustrating. People are troubled.

An invention of a private American company and his boss finally freed the United States and the Soviet Union from this embarrassing situation, namely Fisher and his Shuttle AG-7.

The principle doesn't sound complicated. The tail of the pen core is pressurized with nitrogen, turning gravity ink supply into pressure ink supply. The aerospace agencies of the United States and the Soviet Union quickly adopted cheap and easy-to-use shuttle ballpoint pens to replace various pencils in the past. Fisher himself was a business wizard. Calculated in U.S. dollars, we then went to the civilian market to sell the same model at more than 10 times the price. The gimmick of astronauts using pens has continued to sell well to this day.

The two major aerospace powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, have to show their differences in every aspect of aerospace, including different pressurization standards, different oxygen supply methods, different interfaces, etc., even when it comes to cooperation between the two countries. On the International Space Station, the power supply standards of the United States and Russia are still different. The electrical equipment and fire extinguishers on both sides cannot be used in common. Only in terms of aerospace comparison, both sides have been using the same model for almost 60 years.

Of course other latecomers have also followed the standards of the two big brothers. European, Canadian and Japanese astronauts on the International Space Station are all using this model, with the only exception It’s China.

Yang Liwei also used the same shuttle model from the United States and Russia during the Shenzhou 5 mission. However, China has had independent and controllable obsessive-compulsive disorder for many years since the new century of aerospace, and there is no such thing in the aerospace pen. Let it go, don’t listen. The principle of pressurizing nitrogen sounds simple, but how much pressure does nitrogen have? How to ensure the sealing of the pen ball in a pressurized environment? How to ensure that the ink can flow normally? Feixuo's pen and ink are specially prepared, and of course China has to start from scratch. The subsequent Shenzhou spacecraft first returned and used Zhonghua brand pencils. It was not until 2013 that our country finally got the first space ballpoint pen for aerospace, solving the problem of pens in space.

This kind of engraved Chinese aerospace pen is the only one in real space. Although it is an inconspicuous little thing, the research and development work behind it is also not easy.