this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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There's a rather famous story about the first space race - the US spent millions on developing a biro that would work in zero gravity - and failed to do so. The Soviets used cheap pencils.
That urban legend is only sort-of true. NASA also used mechanical pencils at first, but they're flammable. The money invested in the space pens wasn't paid by NASA. And once the space pen was released, the Russians used it, too.
Interesting. Never knew the money wasn't paid by NASA.