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It is often rumored that NASA spent millions of dollars developing a pen that would write in the absence of gravity, but that The Russians solved the problem using a simple pencil. However, It's nothing more than an urban legend.
Right now, on the International Space Station (ISS), astronauts use pencils. Still, concerns about its flammability in a pure oxygen atmosphere and the threat of tiny floating pieces of graphite inspired Paul Fisher to develop the Space Pen in 1965, a fairly cheap invention.
Back to pencils
Both American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts initially used pencils on space flights, but those writing instruments were not ideal: pencil tips can chip and break, and have such objects floating around space capsules in near-zero gravity. represents potential harm to astronauts and equipment.
NASA began developing a space pen, but project costs rose, so the project was canceled and the astronauts used pencils like the Russians again. NASA never contacted Paul Fisher to develop a pen, just as he did not receive any funding from the government to develop it.
An AG7 Astronaut Space Pen in its case.
The curious thing about the whole thing is that to write in space you don't need a special pen. Sometimes special pens are used, but also normal ones, as As it explains in Spanish astronaut Pedro Duke:
I'm writing these notes on the Soyuz with a cheap pen. Why is that important? It turns out that I have been working in space programs for seventeen years, eleven as an astronaut, and I have always believed, because it was explained to me, that normal pens do not write in space.
–
The news
Despite all the technology available, normal pens are still used in space
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
The last four decades have shown a relative decline of Marxist thought in universities. Their influence has been replaced by “poststructuralist” (or “postmodernist”) thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Deleuze.
Poststructuralism is mainly indebted to the thinkers of the European 'conservative revolution' led by Nietzsche and Heidegger.
Quotes
Marxism survived in the structuralist moment in France (1950s and 1960s) through Louis Althusser, but not as the post-structuralism of Deleuze, Foucault and Derrida, none of whom can be called Marxist. The starting point for poststructuralists is Nietzsche. For classical Marxism it is clearly Hegel. These, intellectually speaking, are two different languages or thoughts.
Furthermore, we can verify this paradigm shift in the number of citations of the references of Marxism and postmodernism.
In a Quantitative investigation From the JStor academic database, which tracks the frequency of names and key ideas in all academic articles and chapter titles published globally between 1980 and 2019, we discovered that the alleged mastermind of Cultural Marxism, Antonio Gramsci, starred in 480 publications. Friedrich Hayek, possibly the main influence on the neoliberal free market reforms of recent decades, starred in 407.
The “Frankfurt School” appeared in fewer than 200 titles, and the critical theorist Herbert Marcuse (identified as a key transmitter of the cultural Marxist “virus” in the United States) was the subject of just over 220.
However, in the last decade, the most cited thinker was the neo-Nietzschean theorist, Giles Deleuze, which appeared in 770 titles during 2010-19. That is to say, political and economic Marxism seems, judging by the quotes, in clear decline, What has gained strength is cultural Marxism or postmodernism. Which will be good news for liberals or some economists, but it is bad news for epistemologists who love positivism and the expository clarity of science.
–
The news
In the last 40 years, Marxist authors have given way to postmodernists in the university
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.
We've been looking for them.
A trace of the old frontier lingers on.