The NASA space pen story as you call it is a nice quip. It's also a complete lie. The Soviets using pencils wasn't a clever scrappy solution, it was an absolute nightmare for the Soviets. Pencil cores are made of graphite, when you write with it, small bits of graphite break off. On land it just falls down, but in space it floats around and attaches to things. Graphite conducts electricity and it caused countless shorts in electronics, as well as fires, all while in space. If the Soviets had space pens, they would've switched to those in a heartbeat.