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There are a lot of frontiers out there—Canada, Kansas—but space is the final frontier…
that I’m mentioning.
The United States, of course, was the first to the moon in 1969.
The US is no stranger to winning, no country has won more Superbowl’s, but after the
moon landings the country wanted to continue being the best in space.
Mainly, they wanted to prove that humans could live for extended periods in space without
dying in preparation for the imminent mission to mars taking off in 1989… taking off in
1995… taking off whenever Elon Musk stops tweeting about mason jars.
NASA launched Skylab into space on a Saturn V rocket in 1973.
The station was essentially a scientific lab in the sky built to house those who would
break the record for the longest time spent in space and it was pretty plush.
With about 1,600 square feet of living space for three people, Skylab was quite literally
larger than the average New York City apartment.
I guess you can say Manhattan real estate prices really are astronomica…
oh come on writer that’s just pathetic!
Skylab was built to carry out experiments in space, but on another level, the mission
as a whole was an experiment on long-term living in orbit.
There were subtle designs choices made to make Skylab feel more homely—each astronaut
had their own bedroom, they would eat together around a communal table, and in keeping the
American governmental tradition as making things as complicated and confusing as possible,
they named the first mission to the station Skylab 2.
Those astronauts launched on May 25th, 1973 and stayed in orbit for 28 days and then,
soon after, on July 28th, Skylab 3, the second mission, launched which lasted a longer 59
days.
Then came Skylab 4, the third Skylab Mission.
This would be the last and longest of the three missions.
It launched on November 16th, 1973 and before the astronauts even arrived at the station,
their schedules were packed with all the experiments NASA wanted to complete before Skylab was
closed for good.
Each day on the station was worth about $70 million or as an American would call it, the
cost of an average hospital visit so the crew was scheduled not down to the hour or half
hour or even minute.
They were scheduled down to increments of 30 seconds.
Each second of each astronauts day was worth $270.
Each toilet break was worth thousands of dollars.
These were some expensive shifts—work shifts.
Skylab 4 was planned to be in orbit for 84 days and, despite the longer mission length,
their days were as packed as those on the shorter Skylab 2 and 3 missions.
For the first 40 days of the mission, the crew went without a single rest day to keep
up with the busy schedule.
All the different scientists at NASA were pressuring mission control to make sure their
experiments would get completed before Skylab closed and so mission control was pressuring
the crew to work more and more hours.
They were also tasked with completing spacewalks but the astronauts reported that there was
no pressure during these.
Nonetheless, the astronauts had had enough.
They just couldn’t take it anymore.
It wasn’t that they needed space, they had plenty of that, they just needed some time
to rest.
Despite mission control having a busy day planned for the astronauts, on December 28th,
1973, the Skylab crew turned off their radios and relaxed during the first ever strike in
space.
The most fascinating part of it all, though, was that they weren’t even French.
This day on strike actually generated important data for the real experiment going on in Skylab—on
how long humans could live in space.
As it turned out, the strike actually improved productivity.
Despite being days behind schedule at the beginning of the mission, the crew finished
every single scheduled experiment by the end even with the longer rest periods they negotiated
during the strike.
NASA used what they learned to improve crew scheduling for future missions and today enforces
mandatory rest periods on the International Space Station.
Looking back, it’s a bit unclear how purposeful this mutiny was.
The astronauts certainly did get in trouble once they landed back on earth and none of
them flew again, but NASA has been sparse on details of this rather embarrassing moment
in their history.
While the crew definitely did go on strike for a day, some say that the loss of radio
contact was just due to the astronauts failing to properly schedule their radio manning duties.
Others, including much of the press at the time, said this was a purposeful action done
to spite the mission controllers.
Whether this was purposeful or not, it’s probably good it happened because it played
an integral part in developing one of mankind’s greatest triumphs—another Half as Interesting
video.
Now, for all legal purposes space follows maritime law and, according to the United
Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, piracy is defined as, “any illegal acts
of violence or detention,” on a ship which is what these astronauts purportedly did—they
illegally detained the ship which made them the first ever space pirates.
Obviously they’re out of jobs now, and 1/3rd’s dead, but if they do need new careers they
can lay claim to the best band name ever—Space Pirates!
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