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Vintage Authentic Space Pen ~ Buzz Aldrin Apollo 11 ~ Very Rare

$ 211.19

Availability: 100 in stock
  • Item must be returned within: 30 Days
  • Condition: New
  • All returns accepted: Returns Accepted
  • Refund will be given as: Money Back
  • Return shipping will be paid by: Seller
  • Restocking Fee: No

    Description

    Although not as famous as the Fisher space pen, this lightweight aluminum felt-tip marker pen was really the pen the saved the Apollo mission.
    See the pen that was donated to the Smithsonian Museum that helped  Buzz Aldrin fix the broken breaker switch that saved the Apollo 11 mission.  Smithsonian Museum
    This pen is the real deal, made by the Duro Pen Company that was used on Apollo Missions.  This pen is extremely rare, do not come across these on ebay to often because most people don't know the truth of which pen was actually used to save the Apollo 11 mission.  History & the Smithsonian Museum don't lie.
    Smithsonian Museum:
    In 1969, Larry Sitten was working as the customer service manager at Duro Pen Co., a small, but well-known pen supplier in Brooklyn, when he received a call from NASA’s Christopher Kraft. One of the astronauts had purchased Duro’s felt-tip marker from a department store on the way to work, and NASA discovered that the marker wrote without gravity. “It was because in the marker they had a wadding of cotton material, and the ink is absorbed in that capillary action, taking the ink away,” Sitten says.
    Duro’s marker would allow the astronauts to write in space. And so NASA purchased several hundred black felt-tip markers from Duro Pen Co., which then had to be individually numbered for the Apollo 11 mission, according to Sitten.
    But what looked like smooth sailing to those watching back home on Earth was actually one pen away from tragedy. When the shuttle landed on the moon’s surface, the circuit breaker’s switch accidentally broke off. “They knocked off the circuit breaker while they were headed out to walk around the moon,” Sitten says. “A broken circuit breaker meant there was no way to start their ascent engine to get them off the moon.”
    Quick on his feet, astronaut Buzz Aldrin reached into the pocket of his spacesuit and pulled out the Duro felt-tip marker. “They couldn’t stick anything metal in the circuit breaker, or they would have shorted the entire ship,” Sitten says. “But the plastic tip of the Duro felt-tip marker was nonconductive.” And so Aldrin was able to stick the marker in the circuit breaker and start the switch. Had it not been for that 69-cent marker, the astronauts might still be on the moon.
    Today, that lifesaving marker is sitting in a display case in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
    On the Marker itself is reads: "The Rocket Astronaut, The market that went to the moon, Used on Apollo Missions"  Own a piece of American History today!