• Zerush@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2381·
    21 天前

    The reason not to use pencils in Space wasn’t that Pencil are inflamable, the main reason was the graphit dust produced by Pencils, which because of the lack of gravity, enter floating in the electronic, causing short circuits as main risk.

    • copd@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      20 天前

      Genuine question. why did you choose to use “inflammable” instead of “flammable”?

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      51·
      20 天前

      and thin paper shavings = space kindling. the entire argument is fucking dumb.

      perhaps the sovs gnawed their pencils sharp and consumed all the graphite fragments and shavings lol. good lil soviet space beavers

      • jqubed@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        20 天前

        The Soviets were using grease pencils IIRC before also switching to the Fisher Space Pen around 1969. The grease pencil eliminated the risk of graphite floating around but the writing quality isn’t great.

  • mojofrododojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    20 天前

    also, fucking pencil shavings?

    pencil shavings contain graphite (great for getting into shit and shorting shit out) and thin paper (think, kindling)

    did the russians gnaw the fucking things sharp? no? idiots…

      • mojofrododojo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        41·
        20 天前

        nice alternative, and that’d make great sense except… now you have a bunch of long strings of grease covered paper floating about the cabin.

        so no. no thanks.

  • FinishingDutch@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    20 天前

    I’ve owned a fair few Fisher Space Pens throughout the years. It’s an interesting bit of space memorabilia that’s functional and affordable. It’s an impressive bit of engineering.

    As a space nerd, I love the pen. As a pen guy…. There’s better options. The cartridge just doesn’t write as smooth as I like, nor is it a really bold, saturated line. For daily actual writing use, I use a Lamy Safari rollerball or a Pilot B2P.

  • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    19 天前

    For decades these pens have been brought up to criticize wasteful spending, inaccurately. Fisher Price didn’t even develop the pens for NASA, they were just a sales gimmick, and NASA didn’t spend thousands of dollars each on them, they just bought them. Space flight was getting a lot of publicity back then, so products that related themselves to space were popular, like Space Food Sticks - tootsie-rollish snacks supposedly full of protein and nourishment. To me they tasted too much like raw flour. “Energy” of course was a euphemism for sugar.

    • A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.worldEnglish
      111·
      21 天前

      That wasn’t the problem. The problem was graphite fragments floating around until they hit something with a charge to it, and then they shorted important systems.