Pencils, pens, space, and innovation
We’ve all heard about the Space Pen story. It’s a tale as old as time; often mentioned in discourse about innovation, in discussions about Cold War superpowers, and as an anecdote on how processes can stifle solution development.
The story, set sometime at the peak of the Space Age, revolves around NASA realising that the regular pen didn’t work in the zero gravity environment of outer space. Faced with the conundrum of being unable to write outside the Earth’s atmosphere, NASA spent a million dollars to develop a pen that could write in space, on any surface, and at any temperature.
The story concludes that, when faced with the same issue, the Soviets brought a pencil.
Whilst this story has become quite a popular urban legend, we are told that the moral of it is important, and rightfully so; innovative thinking can help reduce costly endeavours, helping resolve problems in simple and cheap ways; much like the elusive pencil which the Soviet cosmonauts took to space.
However, the truth of this story, and its lesson are not as simple, but in my mind, more elegant.
At the dawn of the Space Age, during the Gemini missions (1961 to 1966), NASA astronauts did in fact use pencils. However, as cockpits and control systems became more complicated, there was a very real and serious risk of graphite dust from the pencils floating into circuitry; potentially causing electrical shorts or fires.
Enter Paul C. Fisher and Friedrich Schächter, whose company, Fisher Pens, took to the drawing board for a solution that would meet this market requirement. The solution, for all the complicated nature of space travel, was built around the ink cartridge.
On Earth, we have the benefit of gravity pulling on the ink to the pen tip which enables us to write. However in space the same mechanism would prove useless. Fisher used pressurized nitrogen in their ink cartridges to push the ink to the ballpoint. Additionally, to ensure that the ink didn’t go spurting out when the pen was not in use, they developed a formula that allowed the ink to remain solid; only turning to liquid when the ballpoint moves.
The final pen, released in 1967, could write not only in outer space but also underwater. The ink enabled it to work at a range of temperatures (from -34 C to +95 C), much like the urban legend. The development of this remarkable writing instrument was indeed one million US dollars, but not of NASA’s, it was that of Fisher Pens’.
The clients? NASA, and surprisingly, the Soviet Space Program. For the past 53 years, the Fisher AG-7 space pen and the PR cartridge have been used everywhere from the Apollo missions, to the MIR missions, and the International Space Station as well as among the general public; becoming a unique talking point and writing instrument back here on earth too.
Faced with a unique problem, Fisher pens undertook the risk to develop a solution that could have ended up being a costly failure (as the urban legend would have us believe). But they didn’t reinvent the proverbial wheel. they chose to innovate a component of a common product that could be found in any school, office or stationery store on Earth.
Personally, I consider the story of the Space Pen as an important anecdote in innovation and product design. It highlights the importance of domain knowledge in product innovation. Taking a step back to look at the “big picture” is only one important component in the process. Domain knowledge allows us to see past the problem of, “how do we write in space”, and reframe it as, “how do we get the ink to flow to the pen tip in space?”
We all face problems that require some truly outside the box thinking, and sometimes the solution could be something as simple as the pencil that the Soviets didn’t take to Space. More often than not, understanding the domain, or engaging with experts that do, enables us to see opportunities in a different light to develop truly effective and worthwhile solutions, often those that are out of this world.
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