For decades these pens have been brought up to criticize wasteful spending, inaccurately. Fisher Price didn't even develop the pens for NASA, they were just a sales gimmick, and NASA didn't spend thousands of dollars each on them, they just bought them. Space flight was getting a lot of publicity back then, so products that related themselves to space were popular, like Space Food Sticks - tootsie-rollish snacks supposedly full of protein and nourishment. To me they tasted too much like raw flour. "Energy" of course was a euphemism for sugar.

“Do me a personal favour. Take the pen!”

Also you DON'T FUCKING WANT GRAPHITE DUST FLOATING AROUND IN ZERO G

The reason not to use pencils in Space wasn't that Pencil are inflamable, the main reason was the graphit dust produced by Pencils, which because of the lack of gravity, enter floating in the electronic, causing short circuits as main risk.

also, fucking pencil shavings?

pencil shavings contain graphite (great for getting into shit and shorting shit out) and thin paper (think, kindling)

did the russians gnaw the fucking things sharp? no? idiots...

Think of how revolutionary crayola twistables would have been for NASA?

I’ve owned a fair few Fisher Space Pens throughout the years. It’s an interesting bit of space memorabilia that’s functional and affordable. It’s an impressive bit of engineering.

As a space nerd, I love the pen. As a pen guy…. There’s better options. The cartridge just doesn’t write as smooth as I like, nor is it a really bold, saturated line. For daily actual writing use, I use a Lamy Safari rollerball or a Pilot B2P.

Besides that, NASA wasn't the one that funded the research behind the pen, they bought the completed pens. The expenses for the research were funded by Fisher

It's a cool pen. "Btw, this pen was the same type of pen used by Astronauts"; I mean, how's that for a conversation starter 😁

NASA used crayons before those space pens, and iirc the pens were available for a while before they tried them

Plus, inhaling graphite dust since it doesn't fall doesn't sound fun.