That anecdote happens to be false though. The Astronaut Pen was made independently of NASA and was sold to them (and Russia) like it's sold to the public. Wood pencils pose trouble in zero-g (graphite dust, broken tips, flammable wood, etc).
I knew that the anecdote was false and forgot to add that. The point wasn't to show up NASA or research. The point was to show outcome-oriented thought.
It was still very poor outcome-oriented thought. There are dangers associated with pencils that are solved by a pen. Space flight's outcome should be safety, so regardless the answer won't end up being a pencil.
I think it still works fine as a basic metaphor to help illustrate the idea. The metaphor doesn't need to be 100% inline to do that and expecting it to seems a bit pedantic.
Speaking of pedantic, a flight's outcome is not really safety, nor was space flight what the folklore mentions. It was addressing the requirement to write/record in space.
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp