My favourite is the story that there was mass panic over a radio broadcast of War of the Worlds where everyone thought a real alien invasion was happening. I heard this story as a kid and really thought this was a cruel prank played by the radio station.
In reality, they made it clear at the beginning of the broadcast, and twice during, that it was fictional. Not that many people were listening and most of the people who were, were aware it wasn’t real. A few idiots freaked out and it somehow turned into a story of mass panic. It was propaganda by newspapers to discredit radio.
NASA spending millions to develop a zero-gravity pen while the USSR used a pencil. It’s funny, believable, and false.
To clarify, pencils are a terrible idea in space due to graphite and shavings getting into electronics. Grease pencils were okay, but an independent businessman took his own initiative and funds to develop a zero g pen that was superior, which he sold to nasa at reasonable cost.
One thing you definitely don’t want when your floating through microgravity a thousand miles from the ground is fragments of graphite flying into your incredibly sensitive electrical equipment.
The ISS orbits at about 400km, or about 250 miles.
“Thousands of miles” away from earth’s surface would be further than any astronaut, except for the ones on Apollo 8, and 10-17, have ever been.
Oh in that case I’m sure pencils would be fine.
But it would be funny to watch them trying to use a pencil sharpener
So crayons instead?
What they were actually using prior to the space pen, and what the soviets used, were grease pencils, which really basically are crayons
Only if there are no Marine astronauts, otherwise they’ll assume it’s rations.
Nah - they went with the pen