What do you know today that you didn't know yesterday?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I might have known this without realising I knew it.

That because there is no gravity in space, pens will not work.

I once saw that that NASA spent $millions to solve this problem. The Russians just used pencils.

NASA started to develop a pen that will work in space, but gave up before spending anywhere close to a  million dollars on it.     It had also occurred to NASA that pencil works in space without any further development.      During Mercury, Gemini, and early Apollo programs, NASA astronauts mechanical pencil,

The Soviets did not use pencils, at least not the variety with lead or graphite.   They used grease pencils that wrote on plastic slates. 

Pens that used pressurized ink cartridge that functions in space was actually invented in Austria.   But it did cost $1 million, in private, not government funds, to develop the concept to the point of mass production by Fisher Space Pen company as the Zero-G pen.    It was meant for mass market and not NASA.    But it actually does work in space and NASA, after extensive testing, begins to use it in 1967.

Well, the Soviets knew a good thing when they saw it too.   They also purchased the save zero-G pen from the same Fisher Space Pen company for all their future space flight use starting in 1969.

So NASA astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts used the exact same zero-G space pen invented by an Austrian and produced by an American company starting in 1969.

Even though US Soviet relations went up and down in subsequent years, no attempt was made to place an embargo on the pen.

(bold mine)

They eschewed traditional clay/graphite pencils because writing with these inevitably produces tiny particles which, in zero gravity, play merry hob with electronic systems.

Boru