Surely you've heard the old "NASA spent millions developing a special pen that would write in zero gravity, but the Russians just used a pencil!" saw. It's one of the modern Aesop's fables about government waste and bureaucratic inefficiency that gets repeated so often that it's just accepted at face value as gospel truth.
Wouldn't you like to know how it really went down?
Yay, capitalism!
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Huh. I was in Staples day before yesterday (after the mention somewhere of fountain pens). And noticed the Fisher Space Pen right there on the rack. I remember when the Space pen was first introduced, and it was not by NASA.
ReplyDeleteAs I recall, NASA wasn't the company behind Tang breakfast drink, either.