Day One

So I’m to make pens that “work in zero gravity” – for our purposes, that means pens which can write 'upside down'. Ellen is to produce the inks. I'm dependent again on someone else, because if she fails to produce a suitable ink, then I’m stuffed too. What's more, this challenge is not as easy as it first seems. A capillary action pen will work okay, but a ball-point pen is another matter, and it seems that the programme makers are expecting me to produce both types. I decide to make a large version of each type that I can scale down if I have time. As the capillary pen is going to be the easier of the two to produce, I start on that. It’s surprising how difficult a challenge this is under Rough Science conditions. It takes an age just to gather together the tools and materials that you think might be useful. Then you’re constantly revising your ideas in order to overcome some small design problem that you hadn’t foreseen. Nevertheless, by the end of the day, I’ve managed to produce something that will do the trick – a “pen” that works by capillary action. It looks like, and more or less is, a large felt-tip marker. It’ll do for now. Tomorrow I need to tackle the more-demanding challenge of making a large ball-point pen.