Space Pen

My friend, Sunil Sardessai brought me a very special gift from London: a replica of the writing instrument used by Soviet cosmonauts on early manned space flights. He had heard of the writing instrument from me. And I had read about it in some version of Modern Myths. The story went thus:

When NASA first started sending astronauts into outer space, they stumbled upon a major problem: they realized that the ball-point pen would not work at zero gravity. But the determined Americans were made of stern stuff. The search for the alternative began in full earnest.

A million dollar investment and two years of tests and toil by the best of their brains, the Americans developed a very special space pen that could write at zero gravity, work upside down, on almost any surface and at temperatures ranging from freezing to high extremes.

The modern myth further mentioned that when confronted with the same problem, the Russians used a pencil!

So often we waste our time, money and energy on searching for alternatives when the answer may be staring us in our face. Quite often, the way out is exactly the one we are standing on. Advancement is all about being able to notice the solutions that lie in our grasp instead of ignoring the obvious and pursuing stranger substitutes.

To BE BETTER at finding a remedy for any ailment under the sun…
Just look around and you are likely to find an already available one!

- Pravin-da