Made by a pen manufacturer Paul Fisher in 1966, the magnificent was accepted by NASA whole-heartedly.
Those who have watched the Aamir Khan starrer 3 Idiots, one of the punch dialogues of the movie is the one when his character raises a question to Boman Irani about the space pen. Even the audiences were in doubt when he asks that why did the scientists spend millions to make a pen that can be used in space when pencil is the most feasible and inexpensive option available. The obvious answer as to why pencils or ball pens cannot be used in space is that release of wood shavings, graphite dust, and broken graphite tips from pencils and ink compounds from gel pens or ball pens were considered a dangerous flight hazard, precisely because lack of gravity makes objects drift, even with air filtration. In this situation, any conductive material is a threat to electronics, including the switches. The ultimate solution to the problem was a space pen also known as a zero-gravity pen. Made by a pen manufacturer Paul Fisher in 1966, the magnificent was accepted by NASA whole-heartedly. Fisher had spent $ 1 million of his own money to make the pen. . Before elaborating about the technical aspects of the same, it would be interesting for many of us to know that it has been 50 years since a space pen was made. A 50th anniversary edition of the pen is now available to people who have a lot of money and love gold stuff. It's $500, a limited edition of 500, and made of "gold titanium nitride plated brass," and it comes with a case and commemorative plaque with a quote from Walt Cunningham who along with Wally Schirra and Donn Eisele took the pen aboard with them for the Apollo 7 mission, which launched on October 11, 1968- “Fifty years ago, I flew with the first flown Space Pen on Apollo 7. I relied on it then, and it's still the only pen I rely on here on Earth.”
