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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Rommel John Miller
Date: 2014 Dec 14, 20:38 -0800
No offense, but maybe the Soviets had it right, after all how many Math teachers in the 60's and 70's warned us not to use a pen to do math problems? After all, a pencil mork or tabulation can be erased.
Sratchpad, slide rule and a sharp #2 semi-soft was the answer to many a problem.
To me a "Space Pen" is a gimmick to exploit the popular gullibility of the so-called "Space Race."
an aside was that I was a kid when Mercury and Gemini flew. At a local "High's" store, the early and older opponent to 7-Eleven in Maryland, they sold soft and gooey candy in tubes and labled it "Space Food" becasue the astronauts aloft in Gemini's in particular, ate their meals in concentrated foms from plastic tubes, like small 4oz. toothpaste tubes today. Apollo had more solid type versions of food, but for the shorter Mercury and Gemini missions these tubes where the only source of nutrition. Sadly some candy and sugar baron thought up the idea to market crap to kids in tubes like these and call it "Space food" with a picture of a rocket or a comet on the side.
Space Pens and Candy made to imiate real nutrtion for space heros, wer nothing more than hype, smoke and mirrors and gimmicks galore.
Just my take on the so-called "Space Pen" After all, the selling point of a regular ball point pen in the 60's and 70's was that it could write upside down. So what is so special about a "Space" pen. Hype, that's all.