On the lighter side..... - An interesting aspect of the spac

[KickMcCann]

This is a true story about how the Soviets and NASA both went at space exploration:

When NASA first started sending men to space, they soon realised that ball point pens would not work in zero gravity. To combat this problem, NASA spent over a decade and 12 million dollars to develop a pen that could write upside down, in zero gravity, underwater, on any surface including glass, and temperatures ranging from freezing to 300 degrees.

The Russians just used a pencil.

[trebboR]

Yeah, that's really stupid, I read that in a school book of mine too. The russians must have laughed their asses of.

[IHP]

ha ha ha ha, the russians had good cause to laugh their arses off!

--IHP

[suffianr]

'Should've just used crayons...

[trebboR]

Or they should have used (I don't know if this is the correct english word for it) finger paint.

[Natalenko]

Yah, we Russians have a thing with being more intelligent than Americans..... MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA*cough*

[mcleodstickle]

lol, yea we had a conversation about this when we were in a shop and my sister asked what a space pen was. We explained then she asked why they didnt just use a blue pencil, because "it makes the same colour doesnt it??

My sister was 6 at the time, what does that say??

(Edited by mcleodstickle at 11:10 am on Sep. 29, 2002)

[ArgueEverything]

I think it was Truman who said that Russia is a nation of chess players whilst the US is a nation of poker players.

[LeninCCCP]

Its America's tax dollars hard at work! LOL :)

[Gavin]

It wasn't about the pen, it was about proving that America could make the pen while the Russians were really too poor to spend millions developing a space pen

[suffianr]

Yeah, like America was going to launch a strategic missile attack with nuclear-tipped space pens to blott out Mother Russia in the '60's... :biggrin: