> Did it cost taxpayers millions? > Nope. Paul Fisher at the Fisher Pen Company had already been working on a pressurized pen. That said, it would never have r

> Did it cost taxpayers millions? > Nope. Paul Fisher at the Fisher Pen Company had already been working on a pressurized pen. That said, it would never have reached the heights it did, in orbit or in popularity, without NASA’s testing. [...] > When NASA reached out to him looking for a pen that didn’t require gravity, he knew this pressurized ink cartridge could be just the thing – if he could solve the leaks. With NASA’s interest spurring him on, he finally succeeded when he added resin to the ink to make it “thixotropic” – almost solid until friction with the ball at the point of the pen liquefied it. He called the result the AG7, for anti-gravity, and sent several to NASA. [1] [1]: https://spinoff.nasa.gov/space-pens https://spinoff.nasa.gov/space-pens Postscript regarding the 'cosmonauts just used a pencil' meme -- regular pencils have a tendency to make graphite dust which is problematic in a zero gravity science situation. Thus, the Soviets used grease pencils in the early days, which were problematic for other reasons, experimented with mechanical pencils just like the US, and once 'space pens' were available they switched to them as well, shortly after the US. [2] [2]: https://youtu.be/Hq8w97Z9BP0 https://youtu.be/Hq8w97Z9BP0