NASA’s Million Dollar Space Pen vs The Soviet Pencils

The story of the NASA’s million $ space pen and the soviet pencils has become one of the enduring tales from the space race which still floats around the internet today and goes a bit like this. Patreon : : You can now translate this and other curious droid videos, see my video about it here During the 1960’s as NASA was sending the first men in the space, they realise that pens don’t work in zero gravity, so they spent years and millions of tax payer dollars to develop one that did. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, the cosmonauts simply used pencils. The moral of the story to many is that NASA was a wasteful government organisation that would be giving your hard earned TAX dollars to some greedy contractors charging sky high prices for a seemingly trivial object whereas the enemy, the Soviets, where common sense and practical. But the story is a myth