Fisher Space Pen

A space pen might sound like some mail-order novelty you’d buy from the back of Mad Magazine as a kid, perhaps along with sea monkeys and 3-D glasses.

In reality, though, the Fisher Space Pen is anything but a toy. Because the pen is pressurized, it can operate at any angle, even upside down. While we don’t expect you to keep your logbook in a zero-gravity situation, this allows you to easily use vertical surfaces like your window to write against.

The pen is so dependable it’s been on every manned U.S. space flight since 1956.