I’ve often heard the story of how NASA blew millions of dollars developing a ballpoint pen that would work in space, while the Russians just used a pencil. The tale even popped up on The West Wing and in the 2004 movie Primer, but it never quite felt right. I suppose the point was to mock NASA’s large budgets and seeming inefficiency, but of all the problems with the story and the “smell test,” if you will, consider this: the moral seems to be that the Soviet space program, part of the great communist experiment of the 20th century, was somehow more efficient than the private industry-dependent American program. Ponder that for a bit.

A friend posted this picture on Facebook (h/t Paul), which led me on a brief investigation to confirm that yes, the pencil story is incomplete, if not complete bullshit:

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