Somestimes it does take a Rocket Scientist.....

Scientists at NASA have developed a gun built specifically to launch dead chickens at the windscreens of airliners, military jets and the space shuttle, the idea being to simulate incidents of collisions with airbourne fowl to test the strength of the windscreens.

British engineers heard about the gun and were eager to test it on the windscreens of their new high speed trains. Arrangements were made for the loan of the equipment, and a test firing was carried out.

However, when the gun was fired, the engineers stood shocked as the chicken hurtled out of the barrel, crashed into the shatterproof screen, smashing it to smithereens, demolished the control console, snapped the driver's backrest in two and embedded itself in the rear wall of the cabin.

Horrified Britons sent NASA the disastrous test results and the design of the windscreen, and begged the US scientists for suggestions.

NASA's response was just one sentence: "Thaw out the chicken"

Also.....

When NASA first started sending up astronauts, they quickly discovered that ballpoint pens would not work in 0 gravity. To combat this problem, NASA scientists spent a decade and $12 billion developing a pen that writes in 0 gravity, upside down, underwater, on almost any surface including glass and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300 degrees celcius.

The Russians used a pencil.