For several decades now, the story of narrow-minded American engineers and their savvy Soviet colleagues has been popular. We checked whether such an episode occurred in the space race.

The legend usually goes something like this view: “During the development of the space program, NASA encountered a problem: ordinary ballpoint pens do not write in zero gravity. And then the agency attracted the best scientists in the country and spent several million taxpayer dollars in order to develop a special "space pen." This miracle of technology could write in weightlessness and vacuum, in heat and cold, and in general was the best pen of times and peoples. Meanwhile, the Soviet leadership provided its cosmonauts with simple and cheap pencils."

As it turns out, this information has long been popular on West, where it is mentioned, for example, in a 2002 episode of the series "The West Wing". As for Russia, one of the versions of history has long been among the top quotes on bash.org, another one ended up in the memoirs of Mikhail Khazin "Jewish happiness". The famous satirist Mikhail Zadornov could not ignore such a topic, and he accompanied it with his signature “I always give as an example during my speeches how developed the intelligence of our people is”:

The first question that the reader may have is: why isn’t a regular ballpoint pen suitable? The fact is that its work directly depends on gravity: the ink must flow from the rod onto the ball, and from it onto the paper. However, in zero-gravity conditions, no force pushes the ink towards the ball - it simply dangles freely in the rod. For the same reason, on Earth it is usually quite problematic to write with an upside-down or horizontal ballpoint pen. Therefore, it would be quite logical to use a simple pencil as the simplest solution. So why didn’t the Americans think of it? Or have you figured it out yet?

In fact, at the beginning of the space age, American space explorers used pencils exclusively. As part of the first American space program Mercury (1961–1963) pencils were wax, but for the second program Gemini (1965–1966) NASA ordered 34 mechanical pencils from the Houston company Tycam, paying $4,382.50, or $128.89 per copy. When these figures became public knowledge, an outcry erupted. scandal, and the organization decided to avoid such expenses in the future. Moreover, although the pencils had a heavy-duty body, inside they had the most ordinary mechanism with graphite, bought at your local office supply store for $1.75 each. Added fuel to the fire information that, along with expensive pencils, the astronauts took on board four Japanese (that is, yesterday - enemy) Pentel pencils with a total cost of 49 cents.

They did not disdain pencils in the USSR either. For example, Alexey Leonov, who in the future became the present artist, made his first “space” drawing on March 18, 1965, during a flight on the Voskhod-2 spacecraft. Astronaut used “Tactics” pencils, specially adapted for use in space. Each pencil was attached with a cord to the table on which the astronaut drew.

Shoelaces with laces, however, both flight organizers had serious reasons for refusing to use pencils. Graphite copies wrote with thin lines, but were dangerous when broken. Floating around the cabin of a spacecraft, a piece of graphite could get into a person's eye or even into machinery or electronics, causing a short circuit or other problems. Wax pencils wrote imprecisely and vaguely, like crayons. In addition, when used, a piece of paper would peel off, potentially causing problems similar to those caused by graphite. To top it all off, both graphite and paper ignite perfectly in an oxygen-saturated environment, and NASA found out what a fire is on board after tragedy with Apollo 1.

And here the unlucky one came to the fore presidential candidate, but, as it turned out, quite a successful inventor, Paul Fisher. In 1965, he patented a pen that could write in hot or cold weather, with the ball pointing down or up, and even under water.

Unlike most ballpoint pens, Fischer's Space Pen did not rely on gravity. Instead, the cartridge was pressurized with nitrogen at 35 psi. The nitrogen pushed the ink toward the tungsten carbide ball. The ink was also unusual: it had a thixotropic (very viscous at rest) consistency that protected against evaporation. They began to behave like a liquid only when the ball was spinning, and the rest of the time they remained motionless.

To promote his invention, Fischer even got it mentioned on hearings in Congress in 1966, after which he sent several advertising brochures to NASA. For a long time the agency was afraid to step on the old rake, but finally in 1967 decided purchase one of Fisher's anti-gravity pen models - AG-7 - for $4 apiece. According to a February 1968 Associated Press report, NASA ended up purchasing 400 pens at a 40 percent discount—$2.39 each. Moreover, a year later the USSR followed the example of the Americans, which for its Soyuz space program purchased 100 pens and 1000 ink cartridges at the same price. Since then, the two countries have used Fisher pens on space missions on a regular basis.

An important fact: everything documents they say that NASA did not invest a single cent in the development of Fisher’s “Space Pen” and was not associated with a corresponding contract with Fisher. The inventor himself, according to unverified data, actually spent significant amounts of money in the initial period, almost a million dollars, but his business has since paid off many times over. And these days, Fisher anti-gravity handles in a variety of models can be purchase at a price of about $25–50.

Thus, all the key facts of known history turned out to be false. In fact, both superpowers supplied their cosmonauts with regular pencils for a long time; the Space Pen cost NASA $2.39 per copy, and the Soviet Union eventually took advantage of the American invention. The latter fact may sound more annoying if you learn that in the 1960s, Soviet engineer Mikhail Klevtsov developed a similar fountain pen based on nitrogen pressure and thick ink, but the innovation was then ignored by responsible officials. And the story, judging by all the data, was invented by the Americans themselves back in the 1960s.