Finance stories for CTOs
The Russian space pencil myth
After sending astronauts to space, the US realized their ballpoint pens were useless. This was the 1960s—the height of the space race—so NASA spent an absurd amount of money to develop a pen that works in zero gravity. Rumored to cost at least $1 million (about $9 million in today’s dollars), the “space pen” can write upside down, at extreme temperatures, and even underwater. This feat of American inventiveness allowed astronauts to write in space. Faced with a similar problem, the Russians used a pencil.