Famous writing instrument back in the space race.

 

Fisher Space Pen, the company behind the pressurised writing instruments used by NASA astronauts to take notes on the moon, has re-joined the space race. 

 

‘Fisher’s new frontier is commercial space travel and the company was at the take-off with Sir Richard Branson and the crew on Virgin Galactic’s history-making flight earlier this month.

 

“We are honoured that they used our commemorative Virgin Galactic Space Pens to sign the flight log,” Joshua Skidmore, Fisher Space Pen’s director of sales and marketing, said in an interview with collectSPACE

 

“Everyone who attended this monumental event took home their own Fisher Bullet Space Pen emblazoned with Virgin Galactic’s DNA of Flight Logo. We feel blessed and honoured to have been part of this day and keeping Fisher Space Pen linked to ground-breaking events and to help launch the new space age,” he said.

 

Fisher, which more than 50 years ago developed an ink cartridge that was capable of working without the need for gravity, signed a deal with Virgin Galactic on the eve of the first fully-crewed flight of the SpaceShipTwo rocket plane. 

 

Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic’s billionaire founder, and his five “Unity 22” crewmates used the specially-adorned versions of Fisher’s Infinium space pen to sign their test flight log after launching to the edge of space on 11 July.

 

The black titanium nitride and chrome Infinium models are designed to write three times longer than an ordinary ballpoint pen, however the Virgin Galactic edition pens are not for sale.

 

Pencil versus pen

 

While NASA spent millions developing a mechanical pen for space use, legend has it that the Russians simply used a pencil.

 

However, both the mechanical pen and pencil (which proved to be unsuitable due to graphite particles floating around in zero gravity) were subsequently replaced by the Fisher Space Pen, which is still used by the Americans and Russians today.