Hi, I'm the History Guy. I have a degree in history,
and I love history, and if you love history too, this is the channel for you.
38 years ago today the entire world was looking to the sky. The event was worldwide news at the
time but it seems to have faded quickly from the public memory. And so today,
on the anniversary of the day that it fell to earth,
the contributions of America's first manned space station, Skylab, deserve to be remembered.
The idea for manned space stations actually started with military space stations,
the idea would be to have a manned station that could be used for observation and spying,
and perhaps even to shoot down enemy satellites. The United States proposed the manned orbital
laboratory program in 1963, and the Soviets answered with the Salyut Alamos program. The
Soviets actually put manned military stations into space, but the enthusiasm on both sides waned as
it became obvious that unmanned observation satellites were much more cost-effective.
But both sides leveraged the idea, in order to apply it to manned space
stations for civilian research. In the United States this is part of what was
called the Apollo Applications Program, a program that was designed to leverage
the technology that had been invented for the Apollo Moon landing program,
as well as to guarantee jobs for the people who had been trained for the Apollo program.
The basic idea proposed by scientist Wernher Von Braun, was to use the cylindrical tube,
that was the second stage of a Saturn 5 rocket, as a living space. The Mcdonnell Douglas Corporation
was given a contract to do the appropriate modifications in 1969. And in 1970 NASA held
a public contest to name the new station, and that's how the station got its name, Skylab.
Skylab was the first time that NASA had to consider habitability,
the previous manned space programs had all been short-duration, the Apollo missions lasted less
than two weeks. Astronauts would be expected to stay on Skylab for extended durations,
requiring considerations for such things as living space, and more palatable food. The final station
would be about 282 feet long and hold 12,417 cubic feet of pressurized habitable space.
Skylab launched on May 14th 1973, but almost immediately things started going wrong. At
the maximum point of vibration during the launch, an important heat shield broke off,
and tore with it one of the station's solar panels. When the station got into orbit, it turned
out that damage from that accident prevented another of the solar panels from unfolding,
and the station was dangerously underpowered. Turning the station so that the remaining solar
panels could get more sun, then caused the station to overheat, because it had lost its
heat shield. The mission to send astronauts to the space station which was supposed to
immediately follow the launch, had to be delayed 10 days as NASA came up with a repair plan.
The crew of the first manned mission to Skylab launched May 25th 1973,
using an Apollo program command module, was sent with a repair plan. Mission Commander
Charles Conrad said upon launch, “This is Skylab 2, we fix anything”.
They were able to effect repairs using innovative fix-it solutions,
and two unplanned spacewalks. It was at the time, the largest such repair ever done in
space. That experience produced the first lesson from Skylab, that unique ability of
people to conduct unexpected repairs makes them invaluable to space exploration. Without the
ability to send humans to effect repairs, the entire project would have been a loss.
Skylab orbited the earth from 1973 to 1979, and was occupied for a total of 171 days out
of that time, with three manned missions, each exceeding the previous human record for days in
space. In that time, astronauts performed ten spacewalks, totaling 42 hours and 16 minutes.
Skylab logged about 2,000 hours of scientific and medical experiments, making massive strides in
observation of the Sun, including the first videos of solar flares. As well as earth observation that
was previously impossible, producing a vast study of the earth, it's crops, weather, and changes in
the environment. Crews manufactured alloys, grew perfect crystals, and learned to work in space.
But the greatest contributions may have been in understanding manned space requirements.
Astronauts in Skylab learned how to move, how to bathe in the first zero-gravity shower,
how to cut their hair in space. They learned lessons about exercise,
and remaining fit that would be critical for future missions.
There were ambitious plans to save Skylab for the future. The systems were still operational, and
ready for habitation in 1978, four years after the last manned mission to the station. The hope was
to have the Space Shuttle program ready in time to have a mission to boost Skylabs orbit. But it was
not to be. Greater than expected solar activity had warmed the atmosphere, increasing friction
on the station, and hastening its orbital decline, and the space shuttle program was behind schedule.
On July 11th 1979, Skylab, America's first manned space station, fell to earth. NASA tried to use
station telemetry to position the station to fall into the ocean off of South Africa, but it took
longer to burn up than predicted, so some debris landed in Australia, but it caused no damage.
When Skylab crashed to Earth in 1979, it was a worldwide event, but it was more of
a celebration really than any kind of fear. One company sold an aerosol spray can that promised
to be a Skylab repellent, and they promised a money-back guarantee if it didn't work. A town
in Nebraska painted a huge target on the ground to give NASA something to aim at. A family in
Western Australia won a $10,000 cash reward from a Philadelphia newspaper, for being the first to
recover pieces of Skylab, and a county in Australia fined NASA $400, for littering.
Skylab was not the first manned space station in orbit, that honor actually
went to the Soviet Salyut 1 station, but that was a troubled program. The first
group of cosmonauts that were sent to Salyut 1 weren’t even able to dock with the station,
and had to return to Earth unsuccessful. The second group managed to fix the docking problem,
and spent three weeks on Salyut 1, but then they were tragically killed in an accident on re-entry
to earth. The station was never used again. But still, in the Skylab era, the soviets put
up six different manned space stations, and after Skylab, the Soviets put up the MIR space station,
where cosmonauts broke all of Skylabs' records for the amount of time that a human spends in
space. The Soviet experience was also critical to the lessons that were needed to be learned
in order to provide a permanent human presence in space. A vision that has been realized with
the International Space Station, which has been permanently manned, since November of 2000. Still,
Skylab played a critical part in the role of human space exploration,
and habitation. It was the station that proved that humans could live and work in space for a
long time. It was the program that filled the gap between the Apollo program, and the space shuttle
program. That piece of time when NASA went from “wow events”, to a going business concern. It
was a pioneer in the human habitation of space, and it deserves to be remembered.
I'm the History Guy, and I hope you enjoyed this edition of my series, five minutes of history,
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