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Not sure what to buy, but check out astronaut Chris Hadfield’s YouTube vids. This is one I used to show a lot:

https://youtu.be/IvdohUPWg-0

Whirlpool Corp made freeze dried ice cream for Nasa.

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3d print a wrench

https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/detail/wrench-mis

This was the first 3d print designed for astronaut use, and printed on the ISS.

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No one actually eats that stuff in space, though - too many crumbs! However, its one of their most famous and effective souvenirs and it’s inextricably tied to space by association…

Are you a professional teacher? In the United States? When are you pitching this space stuff to your class? I might have some resources for you.

I always liked the quote about how nasa spent a bunch of money developing a pressurized ink cartridge to have a ball point pen that worked in space. And the Russians just used pencils.

Maybe get one of the fancy space pens. And then some nasa pencils to give the kids?

For that exact purpose I used to have;

a) A tile from Buran (and a propane torch)

b) A Sokol-KV glove

c) A 3kg lump of campo-del-cielo

d) Some JSC-1 lunar regolith simulant

e) some Mars-1 martian regolith simulant

f) A bit of Etna (compare and contrast with the above!)

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JSC ought to be able to help out with d) / e) - worth dropping them a line.

Haha kIdS aRe DuMb AmIrIte?

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Yeah I remember my science teacher brought the class freeze dried ice cream when talking to us about space missions

That's been well and truly debunked a long time ago. The reason NASA didn't use pencils is because graphite particles and electrical gear are not a good mix (#1), and the company that developed the pen did it at their own expense. NASA didn't foot the bill for R&D.

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The freeze dried ice cream was probably the most memorable thing from learning about space as a kid!

I'm from the UK so I've never actually tried it but it's always been iconic.

Ok, that's also not true. Pencils will work just fine in space. Pencil graphite is mixed with clay and a bunch of other shit. Doesn't burn until like 1,000°c. And they aren't just making mass amounts of graphite dust by taking notes on shit.

And fine, nasa didn't spend the money, but millions were spent. And pencils do work just fine. They've literally been used by nasa and soyuz since the beginning of man's time in space.

Got my info about why NASA doesn't use pencils from here. Not sure when/if it actually changed. https://spinoff.nasa.gov/space-pens

Everyone used pencils at the beginning of the space program. NASA ordered some mechanical pencils because there were fears over the flammability of wooden pencils after the Apollo 1 fire. They paid something like $130 per pencil in 1965 money, and there was public outcry. Fisher developed the space pen with their own money and offered it to NASA, who paid approximately $2.40 per pen by buying in bulk. The Russians ordered them too and paid the same price.

Both space programs have used them ever since, and one arguably saved the Apollo 11 mission when the astronauts used one to fix a broken arming switch, without which, they could not have returned to earth.

Fisher supposedly spent 1 million developing and patenting the space pen. When you think about how many pens have sold for $50 at various aerospace museums over the decades, it was a solid investment.

Remember Tang? That nasty orange drink made popular by NASAs food experiments in microgravity. What's scary is how flammable that drink powder is when an aerosol, something easy to achieve in microgravity. We got some truly impressive fireballs throwing it in the air near a campfire.