- Today's video is sponsored by Varidesk.
This is from the Apollo 13 mission.
- It's coming out like a snake!
- Yeah, so he spends
a million dollars, and
the Russians are like "oh,
we just use a pencil, right?"
- This is what they call the Space Pen,
or the anti-gravity pen.
And it costs almost a
million dollars to develop.
It is one of the coolest
pens that I have ever seen.
Today we're gonna see
what's inside of this thing.
Let's go find Lincoln.
He's never seen this space
pen, or this anti-gravity pen.
Let's see what he thinks about it.
[Off Screen] Lincoln?
- Uh huh.
- I have something amazing to show you.
- You do?
- Get off your game. You gotta see this.
- Okay.
(atmospheric music)
That looks awesome. It
looks like a bullet.
- These are the pens
they design for space.
- Space pen.
- And you can write under water,
you could write in a vacuum chamber.
- Under water?
- Under water.
- How does that even work?
- Most pens you can't
write upside down with.
This one you can.
Gravity doesn't matter with this pen.
Why in the world do you need to spend
over a million dollars
to use a pen in space
when you could just use a pencil?
I wanted to talk to a NASA scientist,
or a former NASA scientist.
So we reached out to
our friend, Mark Rober,
you know the guy who used to work for NASA
and he made some really
cool videos on YouTube.
'Cause he's a lot smarter than us,
but we're a little bit early.
So, this is a good moment
to talk about our sponsors.
This part of the video
is sponsored by Varidesk.
We have the Varidesk Pro Plus 36.
Varidesk makes office furniture simple.
Like magic. Boom! Standing desk.
You can stand up, play video games,
do your work, edit videos,
and you can be standing up.
Or, if you're like "oh man,
I need to sit down now",
you can easily just go in and lower it.
According to a recent study
in a British medical journal,
this is legitimate stuff.
They found that employees
that use the sit-stand desk
were actually less fatigued at work,
they performed better,
and they had an overall
better quality of life.
That's science.
- That's science. Yeah!
- They went through 22
different iterations
before they even sold
their first Varidesk.
And you can feel that when
we're raising it or lowering it
it clicks into place.
- Look how smooth that is,
look how close you can
get it to your face.
- Varidesk is the leading brand
when it comes to standing desks.
So if you'd like to get one
go to Varidesk.com or click on the link
in the description
and you can get your own.
They are really cool.
When Lincoln's standing, I
realize how tall he's getting,
and pretty soon he's
going to be as tall as me.
It makes me a little sad,
'cause he's just my little guy.
- I'm trying, I want to...
- Just my little guy,
and now he's so tall.
(dramatic music)
[off Screen] Okay, paper. We need paper.
- Paper.
- Right there.
- Hold on, hold on.
(dramatic music)
- [off Screen] Will it write?
- [Lincoln] Yeah. So, it
started out like it could write,
but then once the water got into it,
it stopped working.
- [Off Screen] And we're gonna
do it with the space pen too.
(dramatic music)
Oh my, look at that difference!
It just keeps on going.
- Yep.
- Lincoln, hi there.
What! It keeps working!
- No way.
- It won't stop. You're
good at writing Lincoln.
- Thank you.
- The next test is going
to be the upside down test.
Does this work upside down?
This one? We know the space pen works.
Lincoln, does that one work?
Okay, both pens work, I can confirm.
Lincoln, draw upside down.
It's gotta be upside down.
- Okay, completely
upside down. Right there.
(dramatic music)
- See how long it works.
Has it stopped working yet?
- Yes. Yup.
- Did it stop?
- It's done.
Yeah. It's not gonna stop.
- I think test number two has proven that
you can use a space pen
a lot more effectively
upside down, drawing squiggly lines.
- Yes.
- Than the everyday
pen you might be using.
Now, we're going to do
an anti-gravity test,
and we're going to fly
into space with Ilon Musk
and we're going to see if
the pen writes in space.
Ready, let's go.
(upbeat music)
- Hey!
- Hi! What's up?
- I'm so used to you now
wearing a backwards hat,
and it's weird to see you without it.
- I figured I should mix it up.
- We've got this space pen.
- Oh yeah?
- Looking at it, we tested it out,
just barely under water,
and it totally worked,
and then we tested it out
upside down and it worked,
and we compared it to another pen.
But the real question why
we need a NASA scientist
is why would they go and
spend over a million dollars
to create a pen in space,
when they could have simply used a pencil?
- Yeah, that's a classic Facebook meme,
like your grandma sends you,
like this funny story,
like "NASA spends a million dollars
and the Russians are like 'oh,
we just use a pencil, right?'
The real story is first of all,
both the US and the Russians
originally used pencils.
There was a fire that killed
three astronauts unfortunately,
and after that they really tried,
anything that was flammable,
they just tried not to send to space.
There was a guy, I think
his name was Fisher,
was developing this pen
around that same time.
He invested a million of his own dollars
completely independent of NASA,
- So not NASA.
- Then NASA ended up buying them,
and they bought them for like, $2.20.
So, it's not actually
a million dollar pen.
They gave them like a bulk discount.
The punch line is the Russians
actually use the same pen now.
So the story is exactly
true, except completely not!
It's the exact opposite
of what the story is.
- That's so funny.
Thank you for your insight.
We're going to take
this and break it open,
and see what it looks like
when the nitrogen pushes
the gel ink out of it.
Hopefully it doesn't explode, but..
- I kind of hope it explodes.
- Yeah, it certainly is pressurized,
that's the secret sauce behind it,
so I'd be curious.
We're goggling up for safety.
I want one of these, by the way.
If I see them at Vitcot,
I expect a space pen for my efforts today.
- We have a space pen
we'll send you Mark Rober.
- All right, see you guys.
- See ya, Mark.
Enough talk, enough learning
about the space pen.
It's time to destroy it.
They're pretty cool to take apart.
The space pen. What would happen--oh!
Oh my gosh, look at it!
Look at it!
It's coming out like a snake!
- What?
- Oh my gosh.
- It doesn't look like ink.
Ink, you'd have a liquidy sort of thing.
- Yes. Exactly.
- I don't know.
- So it's like a pressurized
gel that's in there.
There's nitrogen gas on the back side
and it pushes this gel out.
And when you write with
it--don't touch it--
and so that's the gel that will hold up
in 50 degrees below zero,
or up to 250 degrees Fahrenheit,
what does that taste like?
- I'm not tasting it.
- (laughs)
- There's no way.
- Okay. That was so easy to break.
I wonder if I could do it with my hands.
Should I try it with my hands?
- Try it, yeah.
- Did it.
- No way, with your hands.
- Look at that.
Oh yeah, it wasn't coming out.
Oh! Look at it!
- That looks so weird.
(electronic music)
- Oh, there it goes! It's going some more!
It's so slow.
It says that it has, what
was it, a 100 year life span?
- Yeah.
- But, clearly, the old
ones are not super great.
Let's destroy some more.
I want to see more. I
want to see another one.
Oh no! I broke it in the package!
- No way!
- Oh no.
- I bet someone else has done that before.
(piano music)
- Thanks again to Varidesk
for sponsoring this video
and thanks to Mark Rober
for being part of it
and letting us know his knowledge.
This is a space pen.
- Yep.
- Turns out it's very cool.
And NASA did not spend a
million dollars using it
as we learned from Mark.
- Nope.
- The more you know. Adios amigos.
- Adios.
- I don't know why I said Spanish, but..
Have you ever seen those
tests where they do
like, the psychiatry
test or psychology test?
They're like "what do you
see in this black blur?"
What do you see?
Tell me what you see.
- I see a huge black thing.
- Okay, let us know in the
comments what do you see,
because sometimes people
see different things
in those black splotches.
- It's like clouds, like you
see different things in clouds?
- Yeah, but this is different.
This is like a psychiatry test
to tell if you're a little bit off or not.
That's science.
