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.
