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October 26, 2003
Ballpoints Work in Outer Space
Another urban legend debunked.
Pedro Duque, a European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut on board the Soyuz on a mission to the International Space Station, has been keeping a diary written using a cheap, ordinary ballpint pen.
Duque writes, "Why is that important? As it happens, I've been working in space programmes for seventeen years, eleven of these as an astronaut, and I've always believed, because that is what I've always been told, that normal ballpoint pens don't work in space."
"The ink doesn't fall," they said. "Just try for a moment writing face down with a ballpoint pen and you will see I'm right," they said.
In 1998, on a mission on the U.S. space shuttle Discovery, Duque took one of those expensive space pens with a pressurized ink cartridge, as did all the other shuttle astronauts. However, during Soyuz simulator training for this 2003 mission, he noticed that his instructor was preparing flightbooks by attaching to them regular ballpoint pens. The instructor, seeing Duque's shock, told him the Russians have always used ballpoint pens in space.
Duque writes: "So I also took one of our ballpoint pens... And here I am, it doesn't stop working and it doesn't 'spit' or anything. Sometimes being too cautious keeps you from trying, and therefore things are built more complex than necessary."
Comments
Lots of neat follow-up discussion on this topic (with a nod to GearBits, thanks!) on
Posted by: Sam at November 26, 2003 10:34 AM