This from a friend down here

When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in 0 gravity. To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion developing a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures
ranging from below freezing to over 300C...........

****

....a simple pencil wouldn't have sufficed? LOL!!!

The mind boggles...

That sure is more than the $600 tiolet seats and $400 wrenches they buy!

Yeah... really, was the pencil TOO cheap??? LOL!!!!

Well crap. For a measly million, I woulda' given 'em a crayon.



Shhh,
Whisper

Yeah, and one wonders, in even those days of technological marvels, just WHY they needed a pen in the first place, seeing they had computers that were powerful enough to get them into space in the first place, and transmit back images to earth from so far away. What were they using the pens for anyway? To write "HELP!" on a board when sound failed? To play noughts and crosses???