Top 10 Dark NASA Urban Legends

Space is terrifying and we know very little about it which of course means that rumors are abound from nasa inventions to alien cover-ups and all the moon landing conspiracies in between here are the top 10 dark nasa urban legends that turned out to be true starting off in our number 10 spot we have inventions there are many rumors swirling around about the things that we use here on the ground that were created by nasa these include things like velcro or tang the powdered orange drink well these are things that astronauts use this one is only half true basically those things weren't invented by nasa but when congress first created the space program in 1958 lawmakers insisted that the agency must also develop things that could benefit people on the ground apparently a lot of people feel like we shouldn't be spending money on space while we have problems right here on the planet so to combat these sort of space exploration skeptics the brilliant minds of nasa have throughout the years developed quite a few interesting things that surely have benefited us here on the ground some examples refer to firefighters the fireproof suits and the lightweight composite air tanks that many of them use are inventions made by people at nasa this space agency was even able to create a portable device that has the ability to detect a human heartbeat under 20 feet of rubble even in a noisy rescue environment during the pandemic when hospitals were most strained for resources nasa developed a new high pressure ventilator that used fewer than 100 parts none of which were already needed in the supply chain for the already existing ventilator models the device was patented and then nasa released licenses to the world for free this is all to say that maybe it wasn't velcro they invented but the legends are true nasa has helped us on the ground while they invent things that will help them up in space as one nasa person said quote the gap doesn't make astronaut helmets we've got to make all of this stuff ourselves in our number nine spot today we have the space pen for years there has been rumors swirling that nasa spent somewhere between 100 000 to 12 billion dollars trying to invent a ballpoint pen that could be used in the zero gravity environment of space while the russian space program just used a pencil to be fair any rumor that has a monetary range that big has to be just that a rumor but there is a little bit of truth to this one there is no 12 billion dollar space pen and to be honest nasa didn't even really spend a lot of money creating a space pen but it was in fact a problem that did need to be solved the first astronauts did use pencils in space but here's the issue with that lead breaks usually on earth this doesn't really matter because those tiny little pieces will just gravitate to the ground and we're hardly any the wiser in space however those little lead pieces will float around maybe into sensitive equipment maybe into your eyeball and also it's highly flammable and the least amount of flammable material on a space flight the better in the end while nasa did need a better writing alternative the space pen ended up coming from paul fisher of the fisher pen company paul used 1 million dollars of his own money to fund the invention he later sold 400 of them to nasa in 1967 at 2.95 each which today would be about 25.82 cents an expensive pen for sure but a pretty miniscule amount compared to regular space program spending as well as the money that the rumor stated was spent in our number eight spot today we have the extraterrestrial exposure law i don't want to speak for all of us but i personally am into the idea that there are other intelligent life forms that exist somewhere out there i know that's not everyone's cup of tea and i get it but some people are even more enthusiastic than i am and they believe that not only do these life forms exist but that they've visited earth and that the government knows all about it but just keeps it from us regular folk there's one thing or rule i guess that people love to use in their argument to prove this extraterrestrial contact and that is the extraterrestrial exposure law basically this was a rule that existed from 1969 to 1977 and it was meant to formalize nasa's quote policy responsibility and authority to guard the earth against any harmful contamination resulting from personnel spacecraft or other property returning to the earth after landing on or coming within the atmospheric envelope of a celestial body israel was created ahead of the apollo 11 mission because while we assumed the moon was lifeless it was impossible at the time to know what microorganisms might possibly be there that could end up returning with the crew other people took this and ran with the idea and have now used this pretty fair and reasonable rule to mean it's proof that there must be alien contact but it's just being kept from us in our number 7 spot today we have the moon landing we have all heard of the many people out there who believe that the moon landing was fake it's a tale that's been around since it happened and until space travel becomes more of a normal thing there will likely always be people who want to deny that it happened for some odd reason there is however another legend surrounding the moon that isn't talked about quite as often so the famous nil armstrong line the one he said in the monumental moment well of course it was planned in advance of the landing but it turns out he flubbed his line a little bit because who can focus on the lines when you're the first person on the freaking moon the line was originally supposed to read one small step for a man one giant leap for mankind but neil forgot the a before man so the line was recorded as one small step for man not a big deal basically the same thing but then nasa tried to lie about it instead of being like yeah the guy's in space he missed one syllable who cares they instead tried to blame it on static so that they could preserve the prosperity of the line when they realized that one a does not ruin anything and that the public was perfectly happy with the line as recited they decided to drop the static story and just let history be well that in our number six spot today we have the moon circle okay one thing the internet loves to do is take something that is true and then spin it into something even more crazy that goes viral and instills fear in people everywhere and that is exactly what this legend is all about so in 2010 there was a large volcanic eruption in iceland following the eruption there was a viral post going around that claimed that nasa had sent out a warning of possible acid rain as a result of particles that were flung into the air and the result of this could range from baldness to skin cancer because of course the internet loves to make us all absolutely terrified the post claimed that the indicator of the dangers was a dark ring that would appear around the moon so of course there was no threat of acid rain or going bald or getting cancer from this volcanic eruption but there was a ring around the moon here's the thing about the ring though it's not exactly a rare phenomenon it's really just a result of clear skies and ice crystals in the upper atmosphere it was just the perfect internet creation that had a small bit of truth mixed in with a ton of lies and boom you got a viral post in our number five spot today we have the knock okay i'll be honest this isn't a nasa urban legend and instead it's one that comes from the china national space administration so space is a vacuum so it should be silent right we've heard about space roar the alleged unsettling noise of space but for the most part it should be relatively silent that is exactly why this story makes for a great creepypasta if it didn't turn out to be a real experience someone had back in 2003 yang lui became the first astronaut sent into space by the chinese space program that's an amazing accomplishment and likely a very exciting adventure so imagine his surprise when as he's sitting in the space shuttle he hears a knock he described it as quote someone knocking the body of the spaceship just as knocking an iron bucket with a wooden hammer okay perhaps we could just chalk this up to some extremely reasonable explanation but he's not the only one who's heard it there were other chinese astronauts between 2005 and 2008 who reported hearing similar sounds and it's not like you can just open the door to check as of right now the best guess as to what that knocking sound could have been other than et is a result of the change of pressure in our number four spot today we have a close call if you're well-versed in space things and nasa missions when you think of atlantis you might think of the shuttle that had a long career with nasa and who journeyed around the earth more than 4848 times but did you know that there was a point quite early on where the atlantis almost was wiped from existence along with the crew that was on board during the launch of sts-27 which took place in 1988 debris from the right solid rocket booster struck the underside of the craft which ended up severely damaging over 700 tiles on the outside of the craft as well as taking one tile completely off it might not seem like a lot but every little thing matters a lot when you're doing something like going to space so it's important to note that this mission was classified because of the fact that there was a surveillance satellite being launched along with it because of this things had to be done a little differently than normal so when the crew on board sent photos of the damage back to the ground the photos were encrypted and they were extremely low quality mission control deemed the damage to be just light and shadows and told the crew to continue much to their dismay once landed it became clear that atlantis was the single most damaged shuttle that was thankfully able to successfully land the survival of the crew came down to basically happenstance which truly is terrifying this was only the second mission after the disaster of the challenger so should this one have gone fatal we likely wouldn't have seen the continuation of the program in our number three spot today we have oceans for a long time we have been searching for life on other planets because if life was able to develop here why would it not be able to develop in other parts of the universe or even in our own galaxy one of the things we look for on this search for life is the existence of water on other planets for a long time people believed that we might be the only planet within our solar system that has the presence of water and that truly is just because it is really hard to confirm the presence of water from far away as technology has improved however we have come to find out that we certainly are not the only planet with water throughout space exploration not only have we found evidence on other planets that at the very least there once was the existence of water like on mars for example here the curiosity rover found big slabs of rock that were the result of gravel being smushed together this may not seem all that important but because of the size and shape of the rock slabs it is likely that they were formed by an ancient river stream that once ran on the surface of the planet long before we were able to get there the water doesn't end here though while earth is the only known planet at the moment to have stable bodies of liquid water on its surface scientists believe that there are several moons in our solar system that have great subsurface liquid deposits but right now they're just under a ton of ice saturn's moon and sladius and jupiter's moon europa are two of the biggest keys in this one as there have been water plumes observed on both moons which could signify liquid oceans covered in thick layers of ice if that water exists on these moons where else could it be hiding in our number two spot today we have the warning on tuesday january 28 1986 the space shuttle challenger launched on live tv but just 73 seconds into its flight it disastrously disintegrated taking the lives of all seven people on board which included high school teacher christa mcauliffe who was going to be the first non-military civilian in space due to the teacher in space program of course investigations were immediately launched to figure out how this could have happened and what exactly went wrong in fact the president at the time ronald reagan appointed a special commission to investigate the causes and as it turned out the investigation report revealed that the disaster was quote an accident rooted in history this basically confirmed the rumor that was swirling around that suggested nasa had previously known about the problems that led to the destruction of the challenger and the subsequent fatalities the least surprised of all was perhaps engineer robert boisjoly who apparently sent an inter-office memo months prior to the tragedy warning of the exact fate the challenger would meet should they continue to choose to launch the shuttle in such cold weather quote the result would be catastrophic of the highest order he wrote quote loss of human life in our number one spot today we have the teacher speaking of the challenger disaster like i mentioned before one of the people on board was the teacher krista after the challenger there was the devastating incident in 2003 when the colombia also exploded taking the lives of all of those on board according to legend there was another teacher barbara morgan who was supposed to be on both of those flights before getting bumped at the last minute is this legend true and does she just have the most incredible luck well kind of as it turns out she maybe wasn't bumped at the last minute but she certainly was there for both events in terms of the challenger barbara was only supposed to be on the flight if something happened to krista and she was unable to go she trained with krista and the rest of the crew for the flight but of course prior to takeoff krysta was fine and boarded as expected in the case of the columbia well the teacher in space program was discontinued after the challenger explosion but barbara continued to work with nasa as an educator afterwards in january of 1998 the program was restarted and she was scheduled to be on a shuttle mission to the iss but that was to take place after colombia which ended up breaking apart on re-entry during the columbia disaster barbara witnessed the entire thing from a chaser plane all right guys that has been our list for today thanks so much for checking it out i've been your host today olivia koslowski