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.
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025
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That is something I found weird, too. Inflammable and flammable mean the same thing!
Technically, I think they're different. Flammable means that it can be lit on fire, like wood or something. Whereas inflammable means it can catch fire on its own, like gas, for example.
Edit: after some googling, it appears that my source was shit and should be disregarded. They do indeed appear to be synonyms. And also, I was thinking of gasoline. I think I was thinking of the "gas pedal" and that threw me off.
Synonyms, true synonyms. No real difference between them (except don't use inflammable in safety situations, for above reasons)
Credit to you for the self-correction though
saying that "gas" is able to catch fire on its own is stretching it :) A gas mix typically still needs a spark, unlike: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergolic_propellant <- that stuff can "catch fire" on its own. But even there - it needs to be mixed, so technically, one component requires the other to ignite.
Yeah, my bad, shit example.
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Probably not great for eyes or noses or filtration systems either
Also a broken bit of lead could easily float into someone's eye or get aspirated.
Genuine question. why did you choose to use "inflammable" instead of "flammable"?
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This is the most upvotes I think I have ever seen on a comment here.
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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
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Plus, inhaling graphite dust since it doesn't fall doesn't sound fun.
Plus, graphite dust and electronics are also not a great combination.
It’s carbon dust, which your body is pretty good at dealing with, and in quantities so trivial you probably already inhale more currently than you would using a pencil in an otherwise mostly sterile spaceship (at least sterile compared to earth)
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NASA used crayons before those space pens, and iirc the pens were available for a while before they tried them
NASA used crayons before those space pens, and iirc the pens were available for a while before they tried them
this is partially correct; the missing pertinent bit - there was a crayon shortage due to the influx of marines recruited for the vietnam war (mmm crayola), forcing NASA to seek alternatives.
Also you DON'T FUCKING WANT GRAPHITE DUST FLOATING AROUND IN ZERO G
Why not? I'm not well versed in the theme. Would it be flammable?
edit: just saw another post mentioning this: lack of gravity, enter floating in the electronic, causing short circuits as main risk.
Also your body doesn't do a good job of breaking it down either. Id imagine that in your lungs would suck.
I have a piece of graphite in my leg from 7th grade still. I'm 33.
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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...
Apollo 1 resulted in a lot of improvements regarding fire safety.
People drag the Soviets for being reckless with the lives of their crews, but forget that the USA melted three men in a training exercise.
at least those three were known, acknowledged and not covered in secrecy.
we really have no idea how many the sov's lost in their rush to stay ahead / catch up to the moon landings. truly, there's no way to fucking know, even the cosmonauts themselves never knew the total extent.
maybe they both deserve to be dragged a bit eh? pfft
This is inaccurate. Graphite is not flammable. It forms small particles that, mixed with air, could combust in a dust explosion, just like flour.
I'm probably just being dense but what's the difference between being flammable and being susceptible to combustion?
In technical safety terms, combustibles are harder to ignite than flammables. So diesel and olive oil are combustibles, for example, because neither of them give off enough ignitable vapour at room temperature. Ethanol does, so it gets classified as flammable, and you need to store and handle it more carefully than diesel. Then there's really horrible stuff like triethylborane which will catch fire upon meeting oxygen even at temperatures well below the freezing point of water
Of course in casual usage they mean the same thing
They’re referring to the relationship between surface area and combustion. Talc, for example, melts but does not burn. Talc powder can ignite if blown over an open flame.
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You're not dense for asking a question. Without asking questions, it's Impossible to learn.
The flash point is different. The flash point is the temperature that is necessary to create enough vapor for the substance to ignite.
Flammable material has a low flash point, which means it catches on fire easily. Think gasoline. Combustibles need a higher initial temperature, but eventually they will burn and sustain the burning until running out. Think wood.
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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.
They're small, but when you open them up, they're full-sized. It fits in my knockoff Ridge wallet. I buy blue cartridges because I hate signing stuff in black.
10/10 for me, but it's all about utility for me.
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Think of how revolutionary crayola twistables would have been for NASA?
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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.
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