Fisher Space Pens Promo Codes & Coupons

The Pen That Flew on Apollo 7

Fisher Space Pen makes pressurized ballpoints in Boulder City, Nevada, and is still family owned. The ink sits in a sealed cartridge under nitrogen pressure rather than relying on gravity, which is why the pens write upside down, underwater, on greasy paper and across a temperature range from well below freezing to well above boiling. The AG7 Original Astronaut Pen went up on Apollo 7 in 1968 after about two years of NASA testing and has flown on crewed missions since, in a design that has barely changed. The range runs from the compact Bullet to the AG7, tactical models, mechanical pencils and collector editions, with finishes from chrome to raw brass that develops a patina. Everything carries a lifetime guarantee against manufacturing defects.

The Million-Dollar Myth

The joke goes that NASA spent millions developing a pen that writes in space while the Soviets simply used a pencil. Both halves are wrong. Paul Fisher developed the pressurized cartridge privately, investing around a million dollars of his own company's money, and offered the result to NASA in 1965. The agency tested it for roughly two years before buying about 400 pens, at a few dollars each with a bulk discount. The Soviet space program then bought Fisher pens of its own in 1969, having used grease pencils until that point. There's a further twist: NASA had already been criticized over the price of mechanical pencils bought for Gemini, which is partly why it was cautious about being seen to buy pens at all. The pen earned its way onto the mission rather than being commissioned for it.