ESA Portal - Pedro Duque's diary from space

Here's me, thinking all the while that I needed the excuse of a flight with NASA before I could use one of those spiffy "spacepens", and because of their cost I couldn't even afford to 'pretend' either. *sighs*
But on the other hand, if an ordinary ball-point pen works just fine in a space vehicle, it does make it easier to pretend! Mind you, that is what SF is all about - technology becomes so ubiquitous that you don't notice it while the story is driven by the people involved and what is happening to them.

But it does leave one puzzling thought:
If, on earth, there is a tendency for old ball-poiiint pens to migrate towards the back of filing cabinets and give birth to wire coat-hangers ... what do they do on a space station?