Wow, it would be awesome if they actually made this.
On August 8, 2026, Keychron posted this comment on their official X account.
If this post gets 2000 likes, we’ll make something similar.
The quoted post is a photo of an old device posted by Jason Strachan.
It appears to be the “HP SpaceBall 2003” from around 1991.
While it has a very unusual shape, this isn’t an ordinary trackball—it appears to be a “6-degree-of-freedom controller” designed for manipulating 3D models in CAD and similar applications.
Although it looks like it has a ball, this isn’t something you “roll” like a trackball.
You place your hand on the large sphere and apply slight pressure to simultaneously handle movement in XYZ directions plus rotation on three axes.
- Push forward/back, left/right, up/down → Move through 3D space
- Tilt forward/back/left/right, twist left/right → Rotate 3D model
- Surrounding buttons → Change viewpoint or assign functions
KawamuraI’ve only seen it online and never actually used one, so I can’t say for sure.
After doing some research, it appears this device was originally manufactured by SpaceTec and branded by HP for sale with CAD workstations.
There were also IBM and SGI branded versions, and in terms of current product categories, it’s close to being an ancestor of 3Dconnexion’s “SpaceMouse“.
It’s known for being used in NASA’s Mars Pathfinder mission to operate the Sojourner rover.
This is probably another one of Nick’s jokes, but at the time of writing this content, it already has over 1300 likes, so maybe… expectations are building.
If you could assign the push, pull, and tilt motions of the sphere to mouse cursor movement, scrolling, and layer operations, it could be pretty interesting as a keyboard-integrated input device.
However, whether it could actually match the feel of a trackball or regular mouse remains unknown.
Still, this retro yet futuristic sci-fi spaceship-like design is super cool, right?
What do you think?
- First published: August 9, 2026
- Last updated: August 9, 2026
- Research method: Official social media posts
- Reference/Source: https://x.com/KeychronMK/status/2085896473582215306
- Conflicts of Interest: Product Offering: None Monetization Link in this paper: Yes
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