Subject: think simple

When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion to develop a pen, incorporating a small gas filled cylinder which propelled the ink out of the pen, that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300 Celsius.

Many years later, when co-operation with the Russians was esablished, it occurred to someone at NASA to ask how the Russians had solved the problem.There was no problem, they said, we used a pencil.