The first version I heard went through a long diatribe on how “the US” (implying NASA) spent a long time and a million dollars creating a pen that would work in

The first version I heard went through a long diatribe on how “the US” (implying NASA) spent a long time and a million dollars creating a pen that would work in space and the punchline was “Well, the Soviets just used a pencil”. Glad to see that this version has been losing ground to better retellings. If you check the Wiki article[1], the urban legend is mentioned 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pen