Whoa, sweet

I mentioned a few days ago how NASA spent time and money developing a “space pen” while the Russians simply used pencils. Apparently, there’s actually a good reason for that.

In the comments, John pointed me to the Snopes article:

NASA never asked Paul C. Fisher to produce a pen. When the astronauts began to fly, like the Russians, they used pencils, but the leads sometimes broke and became a hazard by floating in the [capsule’s] atmosphere where there was no gravity. They could float into an eye or nose or cause a short in an electrical device. In addition, both the lead and the wood of the pencil could burn rapidly in the pure oxygen atmosphere.