COVENTRY MESSAGE BOARD

When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in zero gravity.

To combat the problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to 300°C.

Im really sorry but im going to have to be a big spoil sport on this one ! It would be brilliant if common sense won over money but its simply not true (i know its only a joke).
If a pencil tip broke off in space it could get in to the ship's circuits it could cause all sorts of issues.
Plus think of the mess from sharpening the broken tip in zero gravity (I make a big enough mess anyway). The truth is Biros do work in zero-G, if you use a biro upside down on earth gravity pulls the ink down away from the ball point, whereas in space there is no gravity to pull the ink away and the pen works fine

It is, of course false, but still amusing; but thank you for taking the time to read it.

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

My favourite story of Russian ingenuity is this one. During the early stages of WW2 the Russians faced a chronic shortage of infantry weapons. The hardest and most time-consuming part of making a gun is manufacturing the barrel. The rest can be done by failry unskilled labour in any back street workshop. A number of Russian engineers independently noticed that if you simply cut a 20" rifle barrel in half with a hacksaw you end up with two 10" sub-machine gun barrels. This only worked because Russian rifles and pistols at that time used exactly the same calibre ammunition. The solution wasn't ideal, Russian pistol ammunition was too small to be very effective, but it worked.