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A pretty crappy joke, no idea why it keeps showing up. You can't sharpen a pencil in space without having wood/graphite shavings floating around in the air forever thereafter.

https://www.sydney.edu.au/science/news-and-events/2021/01/22...

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Also it's not even true. NASA was using mechanical pencils and grease pencils which both had issues. Fisher spent a million dollars of private money to develop the space pen and then sold them on the public market and to NASA for $2.95. But the story of needless government waste is just too good.

Edit: whoops I should have clicked your link before replying

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