I like this debunking. Very cool.

I like this debunking. Very cool.

Originally shared by null

Read this if you’re all for facts, truth, and accuracy. Almost all ‘information’ that you see in the What’s Hot category here on Google+ is FALSE.

Let me debunk another silly myth that has been doing the rounds. It has been doing the rounds for years actually. Or sadly.

Claim:

NASA spent billions of tax money creating a pen that would work in space, whilst the Russians solved the same problem just using a pencil.

Truth:

In the early years of space flight, both Russians and Americans used pencils in space. Unfortunately, pencil lead is made of graphite, a highly conductive material. Snapped graphite leads and particles in zero gravity are hugely problematic, as they will get sucked into the air ventilation or electronic equipment, easily causing shorts or fires in the environment of a capsule.

After the fire in Apollo 1 which killed all the astronauts on board, NASA required a writing instrument that wasn’t a fire hazard. Fisher spent over a million dollars (of his own money) creating a pressurized ball point pen, which NASA bought at $2.95 each. The Russian space program also switched over from pencils shortly after.

More information about this: http://history.nasa.gov/spacepen.html

40 years later snide morons on the internet still snigger about it, because snide morons on the internet never know what they are talking about.

Please share if you want to see facts, truth, and accuracy in Google+’s What’s Hot category. Hopefully this posts make people think more about what they read. For science!