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this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
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AI: The "pen that can write in zero gravity" when pencils exist.
Well I get the analogy, but also I think they didn't use pencils because of the graphite and complications with filtering air or something.
Graphite is conductive. A short circuit and fire are Very Bad.
Couldn't you just use a charcoal pencil or crayon instead?
Yes, but neither of those write as cleanly. And both are still prone to fragmenting, even if the fragments aren't conductive.
You may be right. It's just easier to get the sentiment across that way than expound about how it's ridiculously complex and overbuilt to achieve menial results.
Also, all pens work in zero gravity. They don't rely on gravity to feed ink to the point, try writing on a piece of paper that's held against the ceiling and it works just fine.
Just tried it, and the ink stopped. There's no wick in it and apparently any capillary action is stopped by gravity. It wrote for a little bit for as long as there was enough ink sticking to the ball, but that didn't last more than a few sentences.
In zero gravity, since there's no gravity pulling the ink in either direction, a typical ballpoint pen would likely write inconsistently as the ink shifts in the tube from inertial forces, like a pen that's drying out.
Pedro Duque wrote a diary entry in orbit in a Soyuz capsule using an ordinary ballpoint pen specifically to disprove this. Don't know what went wrong with your pen, cheap ballpoint pens fail sometimes regardless of what orientation they're in.
Just for fun, I tried three more pens and writing in an inverted position (i.e. towards the ceiling):
All of them failed. Interestingly, the Crystal lasted the longest, but when it failed, it was almost immediate.
I'm not saying this is an especially scientific test, but I've now tried four different ballpoint pens, all from different manufacturers, and none could write upside down. Gravity is an important part of how they work on Earth.
It may be that you can still write in space, but I would hazard a guess that it has to do with whether you can keep ink on the ball. Since there's no "down," how you write or how you hold the pen when you take breaks might make things better or worse.
It's cool, though, that he put it to the test. When I just put my pens to the side, they get refreshed and are able to write again, which is why my hypothesis is that it's down to whether you can keep the ball continuously wet or not.
This pen / pencil thing has been corrected so many times for so many decades that it's ludicrous people are still bringing it up.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-nasa-spen/
Random bits of pencil lead floating around in a high tech environment is such a poor idea that even the Soviet's quit using pencils once Fisher's Space Pen was available. A pen which Fisher itself paid to develop and then sold to both NASA and the Soviet Space Program.
Yeah, I know it's not precisely correct, but it's a fable that's commonly understood as an example of over-engineering. I'm open to better and more factual examples, if you have any!
Pen, pencil. Both are dangerous in the wrong hands.
