Interestingly enough, pencils use a carbon silicate nowadays, which happens to be nonconductive. Before it was graphite, which is also a nonconductive carbon, and before that, it was actual lead. But that isn't the point ;>nickpy said:Then you'd need an inordinate quantity of pencils, and cost was measured in millions of dollars per kilo. Plus, even if you never sharpen them, the leads can and do break off accidentally, which brings us back to the conductive material floating + electrical control panel scenario.Zipa said:Cool, the more you know I guess. I just assumed that they would use a new pencil instead of sharpening them because of the floating issue.nickpy said:That's not actually true - BOTH space programs used pencils initially, and then switched to special space-pens (in the case of NASA) and ordinary ball-points (in the case of whatever russia's space agency was called). They switched from pencils because trying to sharpen them with the little bits of wood floating off and getting stuck in things, plus the carbon in the pencil lead is conductive so you certainly don't want it anywhere near a control panel....Zipa said:My favorite one is that NASA spent millions trying to get a pen that would write while in space for their astronauts. Russia's answer? Send their cosmonauts up with pencils.Zachary Amaranth said:It's funny, because I remember my electronics instructor talking about several other instances in which Russia's solution to high tech issues was to go low tech.Neronium said:It's actually because of all of these leaks that Russia actually started using typewriters again when recording down stuff. Sure the paperwork can be messy and cluttered, but you can't exactly leak it onto the internet and get away with it as easily.
I mean, everyone sort of snickered but....It's not necessarily a bad idea.
Yes, basically, pencils are actually a terrible idea in space. The real stupidity of NASA is that they developed special space-pens that were pressurised and so on in order to work correctly in space, entirely unnecessarily... normal ball-points actually work better in space than on earth in that they work any way up in space.
Not to mention those nifty mechanical pencils that folks have been using since the mid 1980s.
OT.
Yup, that's why I have automatic updating turned off, yet I get yelled at by my Windows 7 constantly to download and install them constantly.
If Mr. Ballmer was not leaving, then I might take those words at face value, of course those are words given to the board of shareholders, not the public.
Microsoft has done much in the past 13 years, under Mr. Ballmer's time as CEO, I will not bother holding my breath waiting for people to tell me what good has been done.
