A State Secret!

A Russian state secret! Can you guess what it is?

1) Costs less than $.50

2) Was a Soviet state secret during the race to the moon.

3) Stumped NASA which had tried to manufacture a competitive product for use in space.

4) Has no moving parts (which is the definition of the perfect machine).

5) When broken into many pieces, still works.

6) When frozen, still works.

7) When upside down, still works.

8 ) In 0 Gravity, still works.

9) In Apollo 13, when their on-board computer was inoperable, was used to manually calculate re-entry angle and the time for the re-entry burn.

10 ) Has the ability to record, erase and re-record information.

11) Works underwater.

12) Can be buried, dug up, and still works.

13) When stored in a dry place has a useful life measured in geological time.

14) Doesn’t go stale.

15) Doesn’t expire.

16) Brings joy to children.

It’s: 

 

A Pencil. 

During the race to the moon between the United States and Russia, NASA spent a couple of million dollars trying to develop a pen that would write in space to no avail. When they asked the Soviets, they simply said that they had something that worked, cost less than a Ruble and was a state secret. The NASA folks couldn’t figure it out. Later, the Americans finally guessed what the state secret was… a pencil. Later, the pencil was used during the infamous  Apollo 13 mission, when they had to power down all systems to preserve battery life and Jim Lovell had to manually calculate re-entry burn time and angle of entry for the crippled spacecraft. The pencil probably saved three lives.