The Million Dollar Space Pen Myth is just that, a myth. The pens never cost a lot of money and were not developed by wasteful bureaucrats or overactive NASA engineers. The real story of the Space Pen is less interesting than the myth, but in many ways more inspiring. It is not a story of NASA bureaucrats versus simplistic Russians, but a story of a clever capitalist who built a superior product and conducted some innovative marketing. That story, however, is a little harder to sell to a public that believes what it wants to believe.

That’s the gist. For detail, see here. Another urban legend bites the dust. Sigh.

One of my boys had a Space Pen for school work. Once he wrote a poem about it for an English assignment. It went like this:

This is the pen
That I did my homework with.
This is the pen
That earned me merits.
This is the pen
That got me through tests
And classwork,
Took me through my education,
Always at the bottom of my pencil case,
Waiting…
This is the pen.