teacher: okay class, listen, get out a piece of lined paper, fold it length wise, put your name, date, and period in the upper right hand corner, title it "____ notes", and number 1 through 25 without skipping lines
student 1: how do we fold it
student 2: do we skip lines
student 3: can i have some paper bro
student 4: do we have to title it
student 5: what's the date
basilton:
In the early years of space flight, both Russians and Americans used pencils in space. Unfortunately, pencil lead is made of graphite, a highly conductive material. Snapped graphite leads and particles in zero gravity are hugely problematic, as they will get sucked into the air ventilation or electronic equipment, easily causing shorts or fires in the pure oxygen environment of a capsule.
After the fire in Apollo 1 which killed all the astronauts on board, NASA required a writing instrument that wasn’t a fire hazard. Fisher spent over a million dollars (of his own money) creating a pressurized ball point pen, which NASA bought at $2.95 each. The Russian space program also switched over from pencils shortly after.
40 years later snide morons on the internet still snigger about it, because snide morons on the internet never know what they are talking about.
