A Brief History of Skylab

Summary

Highlights

• A converted rocket stage became America’s first space station 🛰️
• NASA reused Apollo-era hardware to make Skylab look cost-conscious and practical ♻️
• The first crew installed a parasol sunshade and revived the station after major launch damage ☀️
• Skylab’s astronauts studied the Sun, human health, food, motion sickness, and even spiders 🕷️
• The station reentered over Western Australia, scattering debris and making headline history 🌠

Key Takeaways

• Skylab was born from Apollo leftovers, but NASA turned budget pressure into real innovation 🚀
• The launch accident nearly killed the mission, yet astronauts saved Skylab with improvised repairs 🔧
• Habitability mattered: windows, showers, food, and layout all got attention because humans have to live there too 🪟
• Skylab’s crews set endurance records and performed huge amounts of science in orbit 🔬
• Its fiery reentry became a global media moment and a reminder that space hardware eventually comes home 🌍

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 15:00: Origins of Skylab and the Apollo Applications Program The chapter opens with the story of Sam Thornton collecting Skylab debris in Australia and using it to claim a newspaper prize, then uses that event as a lead-in to explain that Skylab was NASA’s first space station and that the real story begins earlier with the end of Apollo and the need to find a new direction for NASA.
• 15:00 - 30:00: Designing the Workshop: From Wet Lab to Dry Lab This section explains how NASA designed Skylab to appear cost-conscious while still being practical, including the reuse of older hardware like the Gemini hatch. It also introduces early decisions about crew comfort, entertainment, hygiene, and the shower system, showing how the station aimed to support long-duration living in space.
• 30:00 - 40:00: Preparing for Launch and the Skylab 1 Disaster In late 1970 and through 1972, Skylab crews underwent an unusually demanding training program focused on Apollo Telescope Mount operations and solar physics applications. Training totaled about 2,200 hours over 18 months, with extensive EVA preparation in Huntsville’s neutral buoyancy trainer, but simulator issues and last-minute crew changes caused repeated delays and schedule slips.
• 40:00 - 55:00: Skylab 2: Rescue, Repairs, and First Science Skylab’s damaged solar panel and overheated workshop forced NASA to rapidly redesign a rescue and repair strategy, settling on an improvised sunshade and tools for freeing the jammed array while preparing Skylab 2 for launch.
• 55:00 - 70:00: Skylab 3: Long-Duration Living and Working in Orbit Skylab 3 spent its opening days recovering from space adaptation syndrome and troubleshooting the workshop’s dehumidifier, urine separator, and other systems, which delayed the crew but left them feeling better by early August. The crew then completed a major 6.5-hour EVA to install the twin-pole sunshade, fully stabilizing workshop temperatures, and began an intensive program of solar observations, capturing flares and a large prominence while also running experiments such as the S150 X-ray package and spider-web studies. Despite ongoing mechanical issues and a much-worked-over station, the mission proved highly productive; the crew kept a strict routine, accepted additional work, and returned safely on September 25, 1973 after setting new endurance records.
• 70:00 - 80:00: Skylab 4, Mission Tensions, and the End of the Program Gerald Carr pushed back against Skylab 4’s rigid schedule, arguing that careful, high-quality work mattered more than simply staying on time. After Carr’s plea for a frank discussion, Mission Control reassured the crew that they were not dissatisfied and supported a more flexible pace. The chapter then turns to the end of the mission, as Skylab 4 undocks after setting another duration record and the crew leaves the station in remarkably iconic photographs, unknowingly becoming the last people to see Skylab intact.

A Brief History of Skylab Transcription

• Segment 1: 00:00 - 02:30 in July of 1979 a 17-year-old boy by the name of Sam Thornton boarded a plane from Western Australia leaving his home country for the first time in his life in his luggage was a small sandwich bag filled with 24 pieces of metal that he had found scattered around his home his destination San Francisco his goal cash in on a $10,000 prize being offered by the San Francisco Examiner the prize had been made by The Examiner to counter their rival paper the San Francisco Chronicle who had offered $200,000 if a subscriber of theirs had suffered personal or property damage you see what Sam Thorton had and what had fallen on and around the garden shed of his mother's home was Skylab or rather pieces of Skylab America's first space station which had burned up during atmospheric re-entry and rained down on the state of Western Australia in an international media event and quite the embarrassment to NASA thoron collected his prize at some sugrin to the exam publisher stating that he knew the pieces were from Skylab because he had quote just raak the yard the other day and everyone in Australia had saw the station come down in a spectacular series of fireballs raining from the sky of course it had not been NASA's plan to shower an inhabited area with pieces of molten metal but to explain that we need to rewind even further in time today let's explore the history of NASA's first attempt at an orbiting laboratory its problems its achievements its quirks and its epic history let's take a walk down on memory lane and tell the story of [Music] [Music] Skylab the success of the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States had been finalized almost exactly 10 years before Stan Thorton collected his prize money on July 20th 1969 Apollo 11 touched down in the Sea of Tranquility on the moon making Neil
• Segment 2: 00:00 - 02:30 Armstrong and Buzz Aldren the first human beings to set foot on the surface of the Moon the space race was effectively over only one month after the landing Nikolai kamanin head of the Soviet Cosmonaut office wrote in his journal that quote we have lost our leadership in space however before any of this had even happened NASA was already planning the next steps to follow the Apollo program NASA had built up a lot of infrastructure to support project Apollo
• Segment 3: 02:30 - 05:00 when the agency was established in 1958 they had a mere 8,000 employees and an annual budget of $100 million they had three major research centers Langley aeronautical laboratory ases aeronautical laboratory and Lewis flight propulsion laboratory as well as two small Test Facilities however throughout the course of projects mercury in geminy and finally project Apollo NASA boomed quickly creating a massive industry that employed nearly half a million people entire towns such as Huntsville Alabama were completely transformed by the new space industry factories testing facilities cropped up expanded and flourished however well before project Apollo was finished or even planned to be finished much of that work would already be completed verer Fon brown head of the Marshall space flight center had serious concerns about giving his employees and those linked to Apollo a reason to continue working NASA had put a massive train on the tracks and now fun Brown and others had to quickly continue to build those tracks while the monster they created barreled toward its incomplete end thus the the Apollo applications program was born F Brown had previously proposed a large orbiting space station as a refueling and staging platform for spacecraft that would be headed to Mars his goal to follow landing on the moon he envisioned a large three- deck wheel-shaped station 30 m in diameter which would rotate at a speed of 3 RPM providing artificial gravity at 1/3 that of the earth it would have a crew of 80 people however the station was never attempted due to the sheer difficulty of constructing it especially given the limited lifting C capabilities of the United States and other nations at the time instead to compensate for losing his lofty plan station F Brown advocated for a smaller station that could be lofted into orbit with a single launch of his beloved Saturn 5 with crew
• Segment 4: 02:30 - 05:00 visiting it via the smaller Saturn 1B keeping his employees and the engineers working for the foreseeable future the Apollo applications program functioned in several phases the first known as the Apollo phase would come to fruition beginning with the first lunar Landing of Apollo 11 in 1969 and would continue until until NASA felt the program had sufficient experience to proceed with the next phase I.E Apollo 14 Phase 2 the lunar exploration phase would then consist of four flights of the extended lunar module which was modified to allow for longer duration stays on the lunar surface and perform more extensive scientific investigations while there following this the final two phases would first survey the moon for what they called Ground truth sites which would be the most ideal for a small temporary lunar base executed in the last phase it would utilize several pieces of hardware derived from the
• Segment 5: 05:00 - 07:30 original Apollo Lim as well as employ Logistics Vehicles such as advanced Rovers and flyers to assist in assembly and work in these bases later the AAP would also employ Apollo hardware for a man flyby of the planet Venus a joint us Soviet mission that would eventually become the Apollo soyu test project and advanced space stations to facilitate later exploration of the other planets the AAP hoped to secure and retain a$1 billion budget for its operations in the 1968 fiscal year keeping the factories the workers the engineers the software devs and everyone else who had come to rely on NASA for their livelihoods gainfully employed however the chopping block would come all too soon for both project Apollo and the AAP in the form of the Johnson Administration partly in order to implement his Great Society set of domestic programs while remaining within the proposed $100 billion budget fiscal year 1967 allocated am measly $42 million to the Apollo applications program this was in contrast to what NASA estimated was required for a fullscale AAP program $450 million increasing to the previously mentioned $1 billion the next year with this severely slashed budget practically the only thing to survive the death of the Apollo applications program would be the idea for a small space station [Music] Skylab in 19 64 verer F Brown had different ideas for what he wanted Skylab to be he proposed what was called a wet Workshop to be built out of the S2 the second stage of the Saturn 5 rocket the stage will be modified to be used as a living space with much of the work to make it so already having been done before the launch the Saturn 5's first stage or s1c was far from capable of placing the lab into orbit on its own so during launch the S2 laboratory would function as a normal rocket stage being filled with fuel and firing its engines
• Segment 6: 05:00 - 07:30 to complete orbital insertion the floor of the laboratory would be made of an open grid allowing the fuel to pass through to the piping at the bottom of the tanks once safely in lower orbit work begins first the S2 would be vented of any and all remaining propellant and a large hatch at the top of the hydrogen tank would be opened in place of an s4b or third stage was a cylindrical cargo module which would then be hydraulically moved into the S2 tank the tank would be resealed pressurized with oxygen to form a living space and accessed via that same hatch now accessible by an Apollo command and service module that sat at top the entire ire rocket the end result
• Segment 7: 07:30 - 10:00 was quite the large laboratory 33x 45 ft or 10x 14 M with power coming from solar cells lining the outside of the tank the major problem with the wet Workshop idea was the availability of the Saturn 5 the concept required a dedicated rocket that could have its own second stage converted into a lab and at the time NASA simply didn't know if there would be any Saturn fives left after the Apollo moon landings by the time the Apollo applications program began to receive its first round of funding it was decided that there would not be enough the Saturn 5 production lines would build just enough of the rockets for the moon missions alone however the pre-landing tests had actually gone far better than anticipated use of the Saturn 1B for low earth orbit missions had been reduced significantly and so what NASA did have a surplus of was that rocket now the wet Workshop plan was passed to the third stage of the Saturn 5 and the second stage of the Saturn 1B the s4b NASA and Sky laab had a competitor allow the department of defense that became a major hurdle throughout much of its design phase the Mand orbiting laboratory in December of 1963 NASA and the do agreed to cooperate in the construction of a space station but the dod got a little selfish they wanted their own dedicated space station primarily for orbital reconnaissance they proposed the man orbiting laboratory or Mo a small station with the same diameter as a Titan 2 upper stage is proposed launch vehicle it would be launched into a polar orbit with the crew riding on top and a modified geminy spacecraft with a hatch cut into its heat shield to allow for Access into the station the crew could work for up to 30 days before detaching the giny spacecraft and returning to Earth for the next 5 years the M would serve as skylab's direct competitor for funding while the M
• Segment 8: 07:30 - 10:00 itself competed for funding with that of the ongoing Vietnam War when Richard Nixon was elected president in 1969 the Bureau of the budget and the Secretary of Defense were instructed to find ways to cut defense spending obviously the mol was at the top of many lists it was regarded by many as Superfluous taking up half a billion dollars a year in an era where spy satellites were becoming increasingly reliable in high resolution making a man reconnaissance station completely unnecessary while there is a lot more that could be said on this subject I didn't even mention the boiler plate test flight M officially received the axe in June of 1969 leaving Skylab is the only space station left in development let's rewind a little on that development studies of s4b Workshop designs took up much of the Year 1965 at the Marshall space flight center the plan was to install the bare minimum amount of component inside the tank
• Segment 9: 10:00 - 12:30 prior to launch allowing the maximum amount of fuel to be spared for putting the craft into orbit many elements of fwn Brown's Z2 wet lab proposal remained such as the grad floor to allow fuel to flow through it the airlock would be held in the area normally reserved for the Apollo lunar module attached to the hydrogen tank in the next year the Marshall space flight center sent out contracts to Douglas Grumman and mcdonell for converting an s4b into a wet Workshop under the name Saturn s4b Spence stage experiment support module in the same year NASA astronauts began voicing concerns about a living space that had previously held hydrogen fuel but their warnings fell upon largely deaf ears as the wet Workshop plan continued until 1968 by then it had been announced that there would be only two aspects of the AAP to survive this era of continuously shrinking budgets the orbital workshop and the Apollo telescope Mount solar Observatory both of which would be incorporated into skylab's design meanwhile project Apollo was proceeding far more smoothly than had been expected the success of Apollo 8 had resulted in the cancellation of the type Mission which would have involved flying the entire Apollo spacecraft configuration into a higher orbit as a test run for flying around the moon this as well as the eventual cancellations of Apollo 18 through 20 would free up more Saturn 5 boosters for use by the AAP while this would have been ideal for f Brown's S2 based wet lab design by now a large amount of funding in R&D had been put into the s4b design and so this latter design was given the most focus at the same time the wet lab idea was based on a launch using the Saturn 1B and with the extra power of the Saturn 5 for launch this was no longer necessary the station could now be launched as a dry workshop with its interior already fully prepared directly into orbit by the s1c
• Segment 10: 10:00 - 12:30 and S2 stages of the rocket with the basis for the orbiting laboratory now finalized work began on the more minute details of what Skylab would end up looking like now being a dry Workshop a lot more attention could be given to the plans for the interior of the station designers Raymond Loy and William snath wanted to emphasize making it a pleasant place to live as astronauts could be spending a up to 3 months at a time confined to this Workshop early spacecraft from Mercury to gemin to Apollo were designed to be operated not lived in even though Apollo crew did spend nearly a full week confined to the Command Module Skylab needed to be quote better than a boiler room said George Mueller associate administrator at Nasa Frank Borman and Jim Lovel had described their 14-day aboard giny 7 as a test of endurance making it through on sheer motivation after accomplishing the mission's primary goal of orbital rendevu Skylab would change this by having a dedicated crew quarters a place to take meals sleep and relax originally
• Segment 11: 12:30 - 15:00 planning to use fabric curtains to subdivide the workshop this idea was eventually dropped in favor of metal partitions instead fabricated out of aluminum and installed before launch a ventilation system was also installed with the crew installing circulation fans upon arrival upon seeing a mockup of the proposed design Mueller was appalled by the barren mechanical nature of the Interior nobody could have lived in that thing for more than 2 months he said of it later they'd have gone stir crazy he made recommendations to bring in industrial design experts to give Skylab quote some reasonable degree of creature Comfort these experts pointed out various flaws in the 1968 formal report stating that the overall cylindrical structure clashed with rectangular elements and triangular grid work the lighting was scattered in random the colors were too dark and much more they recommended a neutral background of pale yellow and reorganized the lighting to give the workshop a more welcoming presence as well as assist with identifying equipment all of these suggestions were received by the Marshall Space Light Center with a degree of conf Fusion noting that Douglas was an experienced designer of commercial aircraft and felt that they should have tended to these concerns much of the difficulties in aesthetic design arose from the limitations of the wet Workshop concept and after this was changed to a dry Workshop it seemed much could be done to improve a month after the change Marshall described the layout as looking like a canvas tent city stating that the floor plan made no sense the food management compartment was too small the sleeping compartment's too large it had none of the restrictions of Apollo and yet quote an auster design persists the astronauts on the other hand seemed largely unconcerned even disdainful of the attention given to amenities such as
• Segment 12: 12:30 - 15:00 color schemes wanting the station to be efficient first and foremost Mueller however persisted that the recommendations of the experts were important not only to the astronauts but to the public image of the space program that would be formed when watching Skylab operations on TV Transmissions he also saw Skylab as something of a test run for future long- duration spacecraft believing habitability to be a key and wholly underlooked element the ward room essentially a crew quarters initially had no window and the industrial design experts described this decision as Unthinkable stating that it had enormous recreational value that would be more than worth its cost on a long duration Mission upon hearing this Mueller turned to an associate and said simply put in a window overall Skylab would have four port hole style windows in addition to the small window provided on the Eva hatch about that Eva hatch take a look at this thing installed on the Skylab airlock module it looks a little out of place doesn't it it in fact it almost
• Segment 13: 15:00 - 17:30 looks like it belongs on a completely different spacecraft because it does that is the hatch of a geminy spacecraft used for external access to Skylab during spacewalks why is it there well this is a clever little bit of slight of hand that NASA performed to keep those who funded the project happy remember that Skylab was designed in an era of severely diminishing budgets and cutting costs was the order of the day what's one way to cut costs or at least appear that you're cutting costs reuse of old Hardware this is something NASA continues to do to this day the space launch system used for the emis program makes use of the same rs25 engines designed for the 1970s era space shuttle the same solid rocket boosters from the shuttle though with an added segment for a longer burn time and the same hypergolic aj10 engine that the shuttle used for its orbital maneuvering systems engines which is also the same engine the Apollo service propulsion system was derived from tracing its roots all the way back to Vanguard one of the first US space Rockets ever exist when it came to Skylab NASA wanted to present to the public and to Congress that they were doing their best to cut costs on this fancy new space station one way they did this was by installing the geminy hatch onto the airlock module see we're even using an old hatch they said publicly however internally use of the hatch was not a cost-saving measure first off the Skylab airlock module is a cylinder and the geminy hatch was designed to fit onto a conical spacecraft significant work was needed to make it fit on the airlock as well as to find an appropriate place to put it in the first place just by looking at it you can sort of tell that it was shoehorned into the design however it kept the pencil pushers in Washington happy which was the only thing it was designed to do in the first place back on the subject of crew
• Segment 14: 15:00 - 17:30 Comfort Marshall was content to allow the astronauts to have their choice for personal entertainment and Recreation designer Caldwell Johnson proposed an entertainment center for the ward room to show movies or play music but the astronauts weren't particularly enthused nor were they by suggestions of card or board games the crews preferred to Simply read books or play recorded music on private tape players as music tastes between crew members varied wildly aside from that another primary source of astronaut entertainment had already been incorporated into the design looking out the window what about hygiene you may be wondering how astronauts kept themselves clean in the Mercury gemin and Apollo eras the answer is they didn't missions generally weren't long enough for a lack of showering to cause any serious health concerns so the best they could do even on Apollo missions was to take a quick sponge bath initially Houston's medical experts believed that this was all that would be required on Skylab as well but Mueller disagreed wanting to provide
• Segment 15: 17:30 - 20:00 some way for the crew to take a proper shower a concept lightweight lowcost fullbody shower was designed as much as a proof of concept as it was for actual use costing around $3 million in 1969 the shower ended up being used on all three crude flights of Skylab but it received mixed reviews from the astronauts we'll come back to that many aspects of skylab's habitability were simply unknowns the entire project was unprecedented at the time being planned to be the the longest duration missions in history the only analog Marshall could think of for comparison were submarines but astronaut Paul whites received little to no useful information from the Navy apart from a few figures for Optimum light and maximum noise limits Swiss scientist and engineer jacqu beard spent 31 days aboard a six-man sub called the Ben Franklin taking note of every complaint logged by the crew regarding the living conditions he came to a few conclusions that hadn't already been drawn next we come to the subject of space food from an extremely informative Nas a document titled living and working in space quote nothing gave the workshop developers more trouble than the human digestive tract Mercury to Apollo pioneered the processed compressed freeze-dried world of space food and while not particularly tasty was designed to fulfill the basic nutrition requirements of short duration missions before liftoff the astronauts could enjoy some hearty steak and eggs in the spirit of alen Shepard's first flight and after returning home could recuperate any nutritional losses with a few home-cooked meals while the crews didn't complain very often about their food options in those programs there were occasional grievances I got the again I got again Char I hav eat this citrus fruit in 20 years I'll tell you one thing in another 12 days I ain't never eat anymore
• Segment 16: 17:30 - 20:00 Houston yes sir okay where you have my hot mic we had that after Don Arabian agreed to subsist on Apollo food for 4 days and found the experience extremely disagreeable the AAP made a point of re-evaluating space food for Skylab and its long duration stays medical experts on gmany and Apollo noted weightlessness caused loss of calcium from Bones and nitrogen from muscle not enough to matter on those short flights but Skylab missions would be much longer in addition the question of comfort again had to be considered Arabian noted that by his third day on the Apollo diet he felt no excitement or anticipation for preparing food mostly due to the lack of sense to stimulate the appetite and textures with which to enjoy eating it was decided that the Skylab diet in
• Segment 17: 20:00 - 22:30 addition to the benefits of long- lasting and easy to store traditional space food would provide some of the amenities of normal dining frozen dinners freeze-dried camping foods and possibly fresh fruits and vegetables weight requirements be damned this wasn't entirely unheard of at the time the crew of Apollo 8 had enjoyed a Christmas dinner of hot turkey and gravy eaten with a spoon which had helped immensely with the morale of the mission throughout 1969 and 1970 Skylab continued to have small changes and adjustments made to its design refining what was likely to be the only crude space program for quite some time as development of the Space Shuttle was already known to be a very lengthy process we'll come back to that experiments were outlined ranging from food to the much more important medical experiments as a primary goal of Skylab had always been to evaluate long-term Health in microgravity at the time many at Nasa were still hopeful that the 1980s or 1990s would see crude missions to Mars so spending 3 months in Skylab could be seen as a practice run for spending 3 months in deep space aboard a Marge transfer vehicle as as a result Skylab missions wanted to evaluate everything that might matter for such a situation crew Health morale the ability to perform science over long durations and much more such as one last thing we'll mention before we finally move on to the actual construction the space toilet fair warning if you're eating right now or simply a little squeamish here's a Time code to skip past this messy section of the video there was a lot to be considered on this subject previous missions were concerned only with collecting and disposing of body waste in a sanitary manner this was why Apollo Astronauts pooped in bags and wore diapers after Alan Shepard was forced to urinate in his suit on the first crude American
• Segment 18: 20:00 - 22:30 space flight it was simple but effective Skylab however was very concerned with body waste for the purposes of their medical experiments body waste can tell a lot about the dietary conditions of those who excrete it so the design of skylab's toilet had to take into account a way to measure and return both urine and feces for analysis Nessa had two options available to them one system developed by the Fairchild Hiller corporation which had originally been designed for for use on the mo the other designed by General Electric was designed for the bio satellite program in which the test subject was a 15lb monkey ge's system was able to measure the waist more accurately but in the end Marshall went with the advice of McDonald Douglas and adopted the Fairchild Hiller system for the primary reason that it would work better for the crew again Creature Comforts on Skylab were considered very important [Music]
• Segment 19: 22:30 - 25:00 one unique aspect of Skylab is that unlike most programs it was never test flown it couldn't be Skylab was one of a kind and there could be no preliminary flights to discover incorrect design efficiencies it had to be one of those situations where you do your absolute best to account for the unaccountable then hope the unaccountable doesn't happen it would happen by the way but we're not quite there yet it helped immensely that many aspects were already flight proven in particular the s4b itself but many other aspects were not such as the Apollo telescope Mount much of these went through testing in thermal vacuum Chambers and with vibration tests again such as the telescope Mount but this kind of testing can only tell the engineers so much Skylab would very much be a wait and see type of operation and boy would they ever see on August 8th 1969 McDonald Douglas officially received the contract to convert two Surplus s4b stages into Sky laab work shops one of these Sky laab B would remain in storage and existed for Concepts to expand the Apollo soyu test project by connecting it with a Soviet Salu space station but these plans would end up being discarded after the primary sky laab was launched its various modules are currently on display in several different museums with the workshop in the National Air and Space Museum the airlock module in Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum and the docking adapter at the Kennedy Space Center visitors complex both Skylab modules were constructed throughout 1969 and 1970 in pieces being moved from McDonald Douglas astronautics eastern and western divisions then being slowly compiled and moved to the Marshall Space Light Center for testing and final assembly the airlock and multiple docking adapter were essentially two components of a single module but these two components were built by separate contractors as a result before being
• Segment 20: 22:30 - 25:00 shipped to KSC the two were joined and tested as a single unit by Martin Marietta and McDonald Douglas's Eastern Division at St Louis in 1971 in 1972 these pieces were finally in Houston for vibration testing and then thermal vacuum testing the Skylab Workshop was constructed at the McDonald Douglas Huntington Beach facility in California beginning in April of 1969 when s4b number 212 was taken out of storage and started to be modified for his new role this work took a significant amount of time due to skylab's design being continuously altered after review and by mid 1971 McDonald Douglas fell under intense scrutiny from NASA uneasy about the contractor's slow progress The Marshall Project office cited inefficient management questionable engineering practices a poor ability to forecast schedules and a bad arrangement of its upper
• Segment 21: 25:00 - 27:30 management after conferring Marshall appointed a 24 person orbital Workshop task team intending to provide a more effective interface between NASA and McDonald Douglas and put the project back on track the team included Skylab project managers astronauts McDonald Douglas employees and others meeting weekly to discuss the progress and block out future work they found the primary problems to be a slow trickle down of information when the thousands of individual Parts arrived were tested and failed or needed redesign as well as a lack of integrated scheduling for the flow of these components by mid- October the situation seemed to have been improved but the workshop was still very behind schedule compared to other components while the airlock and docking adapter had passed 70% and 85% of their qualification tests respectively the workshops record at skylab's midterm review was only 25% completion however in the early months of 1972 the checkout program was getting underway and Marshall was looking forward to crewmen going through the workshop top to bottom to Iron Out final Problems by July 17th after 5 110 hours of testing the workshop was completed with only a few anomalies discovered and dealt with on the 8th of September the workshop departed on a 13-day trip via the Panama Canal to Florida for a few final odds and ends which were completed at the cape the Apollo telescope Mount was the one major component of which construction was most closely managed directly by the Marshall space flight center the various components were constructed by subcontractors such as the Harvard College Observatory the naval research laboratory and others but they were all then shipped to Marsh and assembled and tested there I've talked about this briefly in a different video but the plan for exactly how the telescope always intended to be a solar Observatory would function changed over
• Segment 22: 25:00 - 27:30 the years conceptualized under the name Advanced orbiting solar Observatory it even began Construction in 1964 was canceled the next year then given New Life under the Apollo applications program one original design worked by modifying an apollar lunar module Ascent stage into an observatory while the crew who operated it would live in a do Apollo CSM another idea involved having a Lim telescope as a free flying unit capable of operating with or without crew detaching from Skylab whatever that station would end up being and Performing observations with higher pointing accuracy and increased stabilization periods would not dock to the station once the dry Workshop s4b layout of Skylab had been finalized what remained of the observatory Concepts was the Apollo telescope Mount no longer needing to be launched as a separate unit it would now be constructed and attached to the workshop via the multiple docking adapter and despite no longer being built out of an Apollo LM it would be the only part of the entire
• Segment 23: 27:30 - 30:00 AAP to retain the Apollo name in January of 1971 NASA's crew selection process changed dramatically the original Seven astronauts of project Mercury were all military test pilots and one of those astronauts de Slayton who had been medically grounded and never flew a Mercury flight was in charge of crew selection as director of flight crew operations Slayton favored the test pilots putting a premium on experience that allowed many gmany astronauts to graduate to the Apollo program however around the time of the first lunar Landings slayton's decision- making fell under scrutiny from the second category of astronauts scientists as most of those entered the program in 1965 and 1967 many didn't have the experience Slayton gave prominence to putting them last in line for geminy and Apollo especially because many needed to spend a year gaining required Air Force Flight Training the scientist astronauts became especially aggravated after the landing of Apollo 11 there was speculation that subsequent missions would feature more scientists but Slayton chose all Pilots for the next three Landings they brought their complaints to NASA headquarters while Slayton rebutted that the hazards of lunar missions required experience and level-headedness of test pilots and in his words no one would benefit from a dead geologist on the Moon by January of 1970 NASA had canceled one Apollo flight and in September another opportunities for the scientist astronauts were declining further by the end of Apollo only one scientist would ever walk on the Moon being geologist Jack Schmidt on Apollo 17 the astronauts again brought their grievances to the table recommending headquarters establish new criteria for crew selection and that each Sky laab Mission should include two scientists one noted that in the case of this new space station quote flight operations take only a small fraction of
• Segment 24: 27:30 - 30:00 the time required for Science and other objectives Robert GTH and Slayton again pushed back against the recommendation of two scientists arguing that Hardware failures needed redundancy to combat which would mean two pilots they also pointed out that those being trained for Skylab were undergoing the maximum amount of cross training making each roughly the same level of proficient on major experiments regardless of academic background in my complete completely unqualified opinion I don't really like that GTH effectively said here that your multi-year doctoral degree is exactly as good as 10 weeks of Sky laab training but I am neither a pilot or a scientist so take that as seriously as you'd like to crew selections were finalized and formally announced in January of 1972 heading up the first two Crews were Apollo veterans Charles Pete Conrad and Alan Bean both of Apollo 12 each crew would also include one scientist astronaut a compromise the astronaut Corps was forced to come to terms with all three Crews and their backups trained in a 1G simulator starting in
• Segment 25: 30:00 - 32:30 October of 1970 special Focus was put on learning to use the Apollo telescope Mount and education into applications of solar physics one of the workshop's primary experiments a 2200h hour training program was outlined stretching over the course of 18 months and a 28-hour training week this was a demanding schedule compared to Apollo training having an extra thousand hours attached to it Eva training was done in huntsville's neutral buoyancy trainer a precursor to the underwater ISS mockup we know today all of this training would be disrupted by simulator breakdowns reviews and last minute changes suggested by the crews by January of 1973 the first crew was behind schedule causing their work weake to be stretched to 60 hours delays and preparations at the cape helped pushing the launch of Sky laab an extra 2 weeks which was entirely consumed by training for the cruise however by April 1973 everything was almost ready and the Kennedy Space Center Was preparing to roll the sky laab Saturn 5 out to launch complex 39a [Music] the summer of 1972 created a buzz at the Kennedy Space Center that hadn't been felt since prep preparations for Apollo 11 were underway in one high Bay of the Vehicle Assembly Bay stood the final Apollo Saturn 5 the launch vehicle for Apollo 17 in the second Bay the Skylab Saturn 5 stood in the third a new 39m pedestal or milk stool that would facilitate the Saturn 1B Skylab launches was being completed slightly altered from the Apollo AA milk stool workers had spent the last 2 years preparing and Performing modifications on launch complex 39 then changing them again after Skylab officially became a dry Workshop some some of this work included modifying the Apollo white room at the end of the crew access arm replacing it with an airlock to protect the workshop's interior another aspect was
• Segment 26: 30:00 - 32:30 ensuring access to the workshop and the rest of the stack for pad workers during preparation most of which was done via that same airlock by January of 1973 the newly modified launch complex was reviewed and certified and it was time to officially get ready for launch in May of 1973 the final moments of groundbase suspense for Skylab was brought by the weather heavy rains on May 4th revealed leak in the payload shroud that surrounded the top of Skylab
• Segment 27: 32:30 - 35:00 and attempts to seal it were delayed by high winds and even more rain on May 9th the mobile launcher was struck by lightning forcing a retest of all of the vehicle systems on launch day shortly before liftoff time Martin Marietta Engineers saw one final oversight and corrected it attaching a metal United States flag to the docking adapter then finally at 1:30 p.m. on May 14th Skylab and the final Saturn 5 roared off of the pad continues to go smoothly gu idance release tus 13 12 11 10 9 8 we have ignition sequence has started 6 5 4 3 2 1 Zer and we have a lift off the sky laab lifting off the pad now moving up Skylab has cleared the tower is now controlling Mark 18 seconds pitch and roll program started sat are now maneuvering to his proper flight pass attitude Mark 25 seconds Mark 30 seconds 35 seconds one nautical mile in altitude looking good it range safety give Saturn a green we cleared the beach [Music] disaster struck very quickly for what was going to be the only sustained crude space mission for American space flight for a decade 1 minute into the ascent skylab's microm meteoroid Shield ripped off of the station debris jamming one of the primary solar arrays and preventing it from deploying this Shield also served as the station's primary means of thermal control meaning it was now exposed to the Searing heat of the unfiltered Sun at the same time the falling debris of The Shield also damaged the pyrot Technics for the S2 interstage a hollow ring designed to house the S2 engines this ring was meant to fall away when these engines ignited but remained in place raising temperatures around the engine bay to dangerous levels when the second stage finally shut down mere seconds away from a launch abort and
• Segment 28: 32:30 - 35:00 Skylab separated from it retro rockets on the S2 fired to push it away from the lab and in doing so tore one of the partially open solar panels completely off of it Skylab was in a near-perfect circular orbit of 433 km or 234 Mi by 431 k or 233 Mi however in its current
• Segment 29: 35:00 - 37:30 state it was severely diminished in its power capabilities and it was a lot warmer than it was supposed to be as a result of this disastrous launch Skylab 2 the first crude mission to the station had very suddenly changed its goals rather than the basics of getting the station back up and running and beginning to do scientific work the primary mission was now to fix what had been broken Skylab 2 was now a rescue mission program managers quickly delayed the first crew intending for it to take place only 24 hours after Sky laab reached orbit first by 5 days then by five more as the damage was analyzed and troubleshooting was performed the crew Pete Conrad Paul whites and Joseph Kerwin flew back to Houston to begin training for their new Mission at the same time an investigation board formed by administrator James Fletcher began looking into the failure of The mmod Shield it was determined that the shields designers did not coordinate sufficiently with aerodynamics experts an insufficient testing of The Shield at simulated supersonic speeds contributed to The Shield's failure once it was in orbit Skylab was sent a series of commands over a half hour period first it jettisoned a radiator cover that allowed its refrigerators to be switched on next the four-section payload shroud was deployed peeling away and allowing for the telescope Mount to move into its flight position this was a crucial step as it both allowed an Apollo spacecraft to dock with it and allowed the telescope mounts four solar Wings to open at this point Mission Control mostly relaxed for a little while as the only indication of The mmod Shield problem was a reading that suggested it had already been deployed assuming it was an instrumentation problem Mission Control simply waited for the workshop solar array to deploy scheduled for 41 minutes after
• Segment 30: 35:00 - 37:30 launch it was only about a half hour after Skylab had cleared the pad that everyone began to worry Telemetry suggested that both solar Wings had released for deployment but were not fully extended Sky laab control Houston at 59 minutes ground elapse time uh we have no confirmation yet uh on the deployment of the uh airlock solar eras system uh we'll stand by and continue to monitor at 59 minutes ground elapse time this is Skylab control Houston at the same time temperature signals indicated that both wings were actually gone completely and this was backed up by the lack of power being generated if true though it wasn't this would mean that the workshop had lost nearly half of its electrical power the ATM provided about as much power as one of the workshop Wings around 5 KW and while the system had been designed with power to spare this would mean most power would have to come from the fuel cells of visiting Apollo spacecraft most experiments would
• Segment 31: 37:30 - 40:00 have to be curtailed especially in the last week of each Mission things were not looking good for Skylab and they were barely even looking at the loss of The mmod Shield it had failed to deploy at the correct time and when a manual command was sent to deploy it nothing happened they weren't yet aware that the entire thing had been ripped off the station until flight Engineers discovered flight data confirming an anomalous lateral acceleration that suggested a structural failure shortly afterwards the workshop temperatures began to rise dramatically and it became clear that they had two major problems on their hands in terms of the overheating problem Mission Control was focused on two things reducing that heat and analyzing how bad the overheating actually was it took some time to figure out the best orientation for Skylab the best position for power generation put the atmr directly facing the Sun but this also put the workshop directly facing the Sun for a Time the station was pointed with its forward end toward the sun which did reduce overheating but produced Next to no power the ideal position in ended up being tilted up about 45° toward the Sun the least loss of power and the most loss of heat moving the station into that ideal position involved the use of nitrogen gas thrusters and there was only so much of that in Supply by the 17th of May 23% of that Supply was gone twice the expected amount over time the controllers became more Adept at maneuvering the workshop around but fuel consumption remained a concern worse the measurement of this movement was done by nine gyroscopes several of which overheated and failed in the first day thankfully at least one gyroscope in each axis of movement remained operational allowing for relative accuracy in determining exactly where Skylab was at all times in terms of how bad it was the primary concern was
• Segment 32: 37:30 - 40:00 consumables on board the station with the workshop heating up so were the food lockers inside of it and teams were worried that a lot of it would end up spoiled however on the 22nd of May Houston officials concluded that the food should actually be fine but to be safe also trained the crews with a course on food inspection in addition to food it was initially also believed that half of the 62 medications on board would also be ruined during the following week they became similarly optimistic pairing down the resupply list based on the results of heat tests on the ground another Supply at risk was film the film for the solar telescopes was stored in the docking adapter which was experiencing the opposite problem of excessive cooling keeping the film safe however the film for other experiments was in the workshop which continued to rapidly heat up the problem also included dryness film needs some level of humidity to keep emo off of it and the heat inside of Skylab was a very dry
• Segment 33: 40:00 - 42:30 heat it was believed the crews could restore the film by rehumidify the vaults they were in but this was a 20-day process so there were also plans made to carry additional film on the crude flights the Maneuvers that Skylab was making post launch were a temporary solution of course what they needed to do was devise some form of improvised sun shade for the workshop this was less of an impossible task than it seemed while the MMO D Shield wrapped around the whole cylinder of the workshop a sun shade didn't actually need to do that as the only needed to cover the area that was directly facing the sun additionally without any atmosphere to disturb it it didn't exactly need to be bolted down to stay in place officials examined a wide range of ideas from spray paint to wallpaper to balloons eventually emerging with three promising Solutions one extend a shade from a pole attached to the telescope Mount two deploy it from a maneuvering Apollo CSM or three extend it through the scientific air lock on the workshop sun-facing side they first settled on the second option as it seemed to have the chance of meeting a May 20th launch date however concerns arose about such an early spacewalk in the mission as well as possible contamination from the nitrogen thrusters of the Apollo spacecraft the ideal option was a twin pole sun shade deploy through the scientific airlock work proceeded to design a shade built out of myar nylon and aluminum at the same time they also went to work devising tools for use to free the jam solar panel as Telemetry data now suggested one was still available but not deployed at the time they weren't even certain that they would be able to free it on this first flight merely better assess the situation before getting it fixed on the second flight regardless the plans to rescue Sky laab were now in place and Sky laab 2 was ready for a May 25th
• Segment 34: 40:00 - 42:30 launch one more thing before we proceed to the crude flights there was a miscommunication regarding the number of these flights and their mission patches Sky laab 2 is the first crude flight sky laab 3 is the second Sky laab four the third however the mission patches each display numbers that while making more sense are technically inaccurate think of the patches as being one number too low [Music] one zero we have launch commit and we have liftoff the clock is running and Skylab has cleared the tower Tower in Houston Sky lab two we fix any things we got a pitch in a roll
• Segment 35: 42:30 - 45:00 program the thrust is going all engin boy despite a lightning strike that knocked a gyroscope offline Sky laab 2 lifted off the pad early in the morning with a near Flawless Ascent of the first Saturn 1B to launch in almost 5 years by midafternoon the crew had reached Skylab performing a fly around to assess the station's condition solar Wing 2 is gone completely off the bird P Conrad reported solar Wing one is partially deployed there's a bulge of micrometeoroid Shield beneath it in the middle and it looks to be holding it down the crew also reported that the gold foil on the workshop's exterior had been blackened by the sun's rays and the scientific airlock thankfully was virtually free of debris Conrad was optimistic that a standup evva could easily free the remaining solar Wing after eating dinner before even docking to the station the first attempt to extend the array was made Paul White stood in the open hatch of the Command Module while Joseph Kerwin held his legs and Conrad operated theace spacecraft the attempt didn't go well a metal strip had wrapped across the array beam riveted in place by several bolts that had fastened themselves to the array when the shield tore away frustrated with their slow progress the astronauts had to be reminded by Houston that they had resumed communication as they used some colorful language to vent their feelings on the situation deciding they were going to need some better tools the crew gave up and decided to end the work day by docking the crew had significant difficulties connecting their spacecraft to Skylab the capture latches failed to operate eight consecutive times at which point the crew dawned their pressure suits and partially disassembled the docking probe before putting it back together the ninth attempt worked and the crew came aboard in mid-afternoon of
• Segment 36: 42:30 - 45:00 May 26th whites reported that the workshop felt like a desert the heat intense and dry causing the astronauts to spend a lot of their time in the much cooler airlock preparing a temporary sunshade parasol for deployment they spent approximately 2 hours connecting the parasol canister to the scientific airlock and opening the port threading the extension rods and gradually extending the parasol once they had the fabric spread out the crew was disappointed that it wasn't quote laid out the way it was supposed to be according to Conrad covering only around 2/3 of the intended area Mission Control however remained optimistic expecting the material to stretch in the sunlight over the next 3 days the workshop got considerably cooler the external temperature dropping 55° C or 131° F the astronauts could even feel where the parasol was located by running their hands along the workshop wall and feeling for hot spots incidentally one of these was very close to where one of the astronauts
• Segment 37: 45:00 - 47:30 slept by May 29th the workshop was only 5° warmer than it was supposed to be and fullscale operations could begin with medical tests solar observations and preparations for the Earth Resources observations when operating the Apollo telescope mount power consumption reached close to skylab's limit of 4.5 KW furthermore the Earth Resources maneuver required taking the solar panels out of direct sunlight and relying on the batteries four of which dropped off line on the dark side of the Earth with the workshop returned to its solar facing attitude Mission Control was only able to bring three of them back online the loss quickly prompted a discussion of freeing the Trap solar wing with the 4th of June set as the date for a decision Mission Control devised a difficult but feasible Eva plan relaying this to the crew Conrad and Kerwin exited the airlock hatch on the morning of June 7th in the dark the operation was difficult differing in many ways from the plan Huntsville devised the astronauts had to hold on to an antenna boom as a handhold while using an 8 m cable cutter on the debris with one hand in the training simulation astronauts were able to place their feet at the base of the antenna but on the flight model cable connectors were in the way and their feet had to float free according to Kerwin quote one hand was essentially useless wrapped up around the antenna and with the other hand I couldn't control the pole every time you would move it your body would react and move the other way every time he got the cable cutter close to the debris the pole would move as he brought his hand off the antenna to open the jaws of the cutter they struggled again to get both hooks of an erection test other secured to the array and when they finally did get the array deployed both astronauts were heaving with all of their might as it suddenly let go and flung them both away from the workshop for a brief
• Segment 38: 45:00 - 47:30 moment the strength of their tethers as well as the strength of their hearts were put to the test by the next day the solar Wing was fully extended and producing nearly 7 Kow of additional power the crew spent almost another month making further repairs to the workshop as well as conducting a grand total of 392 hours of onboard experiments they tracked 2 minutes of a large solar flare with the ATM returned some 29,000 frames of film of the Sun and doubled the previous record for time spent in space on June 22nd 1973 Skylab 2 finally splashed down in the Pacific Ocean the mission having lasted 28 days 49 minutes and 49 seconds
• Segment 39: 47:30 - 50:00 NASA faced some pretty intense scrutiny following the landing of Skylab 2 one of the issues was that of private communication since its Inception NASA had prided itself on being open about the Space Program which was in sharp contrast to the secrecy of the Soviet Union Space Program however in the late 1960s a private conversation from the Apollo 9 mission was seen by the press as a move away from the open policy with the Houston Post even arguing that that the public had a right to know about the medical information of the astronauts with Skylab this went even further the unique medical requirements of the program establishing a proposal for private medical conversations on a daily basis which will be summarized briefly for the Press there were also Provisions for the astronauts to make unmonitored calls to their families at the same time there was concern within NASA that privacy would strain public relations and therefore threaten the remaining Skylab missions further tensions came in the form of the medical experiments essentially NASA wanted control of all exercise before and during a mission for the purposes of obtaining carefully calculated results astronauts objected to this because of the extreme personal inconvenience as well as a belief that they could judge their need for exercise on their own better than a doctor on the ground could a compromise was eventually reached the regulations were relaxed but astronauts were required to keep careful records of their exercise to ensure accurate data for analysis later the first crew was allowed by the flight plan 30 minutes a day for exercise on either the ergometer basically as zg exercise bike or an isometric device such as lifting dumbbells on Whit's first run of the exercise bike Kerwin had recommended he shorten the exercise due to the heat in the workshop Houston
• Segment 40: 47:30 - 50:00 told them that he should attempt the full exercise but halfway through whites called it quits due to both the Heat and the restrictions of the waist and shoulder harness he stated that he was doing too much work with his hands rather than with his legs as the exercise intended overall many of the medical results from this first mission seemed largely inconclusive the astronauts were also also not a fan of the flight planning schedule they found it too demanding as many tasks ended up taking longer in a real weightless environment than they had on ground simulators they quickly fell behind schedule and after the second day Conrad concluded that the schedule was unrealistic quote we were trying to do it all and were getting inefficient by rushing he informed mission control that the crew was quote running all over the spacecraft and that there were quote enough guys down there to think out the flight plan a little better than you're doing the astronauts gave the food on Sky lab a barely passing grade the station itself was livable and made an adequate home but
• Segment 41: 50:00 - 52:30 they all stated they could not recommend it as a restaurant food seemed to lose its flavor tasting worse than the same Foods had back on the ground white stated quote the foods I liked I continued to like the foods I didn't like my dislike for them increased a taste for spicy food was dulled by head congestion a result of blood pooling in the upper regions of the body while in microgravity and Frozen Foods were rated higher than reconstituted ones Conrad stated quote I found that if I Recon uted the peas the beans and the asparagus early and then reheated them I still didn't like them but they were a lot easier to choke down than when I added the hot water shook up the bag and then tried to get them down despite everything the crew stated they enjoyed the flight commenting on the remarkable View and the incredible acrobatics they were able to perform in the large weightless environment Conrad even pointed out that he enjoyed one particular aspect of the mission's final spacewalk a secondary objective had been to try and reactivate one of the Dead power modules by quite literally whacking its housing with a hammer the planet worked within minutes electricity was flowing again the overall success of this Mission as well as the failures of the batteries in the gyroscopes prompted NASA to push the launch of Skylab 3 the second crew by 3 weeks set for July 28th 1973 its crew was Alan Bean Owen garet and Jack lzma and would be the final Skylab crew to be commanded by a veteran of the Apollo program it lifted off entirely on schedule and was placed into a parking orbit without any difficulties 7 6 5 4 3 2 we have ignition sequence start all ignition all ignitions are running all engines running we have a liftoff and the second man crew has cleared the tower rolling pitch program Houston Roger rolling pitch scyb and thrust
• Segment 42: 50:00 - 52:30 looks good on all engines Skylab 3's Flawless nature did not last for very long while approaching the station for docking a propellant leak developed in one of the Apollo spacecraft's four blocks of reaction control system thrusters despite this the crew was able to safely dock to the station while troubleshooting continued with the leak 6 days later a a second Thruster block developed a leak and now it was deemed to be a potentially
• Segment 43: 52:30 - 55:00 serious problem for the first and only time in the program a Skylab rescue mission was considered even rolling out the Saturn 1B reserve for it to launch complex 39 in preparation the sky laab rescue scenario is somewhat fascinating in and of itself Skylab was capable of having two Apollo spacecraft dock do it at one time so the plan was to launch a second CSM that had been heavily modified by removing the capsule storage lockers two extra seats could be fitted below the main three allowing the spacecraft to launch with two astronauts and return with five it wasn't an entirely new idea in fact it had been originally conceived in 1965 by North American Rockwell as a method to rescue Apollo Astronauts who wound up stranded in lunar orbit the plan wasn't without concerns the primary one was the three upper seats collapsing onto the lower seats and crushing the astronauts in a rough Landing even though the seats had never budged at all on any previous missions despite the plan and the rocket being in place the rest Mission never needed to be launched it was eventually determined that the Apollo spacecraft could safely maneuver itself with the two remaining Thruster blocks and the Skylab 3 mission continued as planned while the rescue launch vehicle was rolled back indoors Skylab 3 experienced a different almost unprecedented problem space adaptation syndrome basically the microgravity equivalent of motion sickness space adaptation syndrome is caused by the human body struggling to overcome the unusual feeling of being weightless at this point the malady was somewhat poorly understod as the first 19 Americans to go to space had not been affected by it almost half of the Soviet cosmonauts of the VTO and VOD programs had been affected but this was the era of the Cold War and the Reds weren't sharing their information about it however once Apollo began American
• Segment 44: 52:30 - 55:00 immunity ended affecting nine of the 29 astronauts who flew in it with nausea and vomiting persisting for several days in some cases with Sky laab 3 the first signs of illness appeared less than half an hour after launch and by their first evening aboard the workshop all three men were suffering greatly from motion sickness with LMA getting at The Worst by the next morning there was no improvement the crew was only able to eat half of their breakfast and bean reported quote although we're moving around getting things done we're not doing them as rapidly as we'd like despite request to take the day off for Recovery Houston agreed only to a mid-afternoon rest before attempting to resolve an electrical problem in the workshop by that evening the crew was a full day behind schedule and NASA officials postponed the first land Eva for at least one day by the third day aboard the worst of
• Segment 45: 55:00 - 57:30 it was over but trouble getting the workshop fully activated kept them behind schedule we seem to end up with about as many new chores as old Bean said we're having difficulty progressing because we're doing other work 6 hours have been lost troubleshooting the workshop's dehumidifier and its urine separator the hectic schedule was further compounding their recovery from space sickness but they did all feel much better by the 1st of August Houston however remained worried this was the the first time they had an entire crew affected by space adaptation syndrome and were greatly concerned about the impact it might have on future missions moving forward prevention and treatment of motion sickness became a top priority Skylab 3 performed three spacewalks the twin pole sun shade and more permanent solution to the slowly degrading parasol that already covered the workshop had already been brought aboard by the previous crew however Mission Control hadn't wanted to subject that already strained crew to a third Eva and it was left for the second crew the plan was established on the ground and practiced in huntsville's water tank the two 17.5 M poles were in 11 different sections and Garett assembled them from just outside the airlock hatch meanwhile lzma secured foot restraints and the shades base plate to the ATM trust segment after pole assembly LMA attached them to the base plate in a v-shape then fastened the sail to rope that ran along the length of the poles finally he hoisted the shade while Bean monitored the operation from the docking adapter this work was not without its hitches it took longer than expected to assemble the poles until iot repositioned himself and went at it from another angle hoisting the sail found folds that prevented the material from straightening out at once but the sun rays eventually softened it up and the sail
• Segment 46: 55:00 - 57:30 opened despite the operation taking nearly 4 hours the crew seemed happy enjoying the exercise before going to replace film for the Apollo telescope Mountain retrieve experiment samples the entire spacewalk took 6 and 1/2 hours the longest ever performed at that time with the workshop temperatures now fully under control and the space adaptation syndrome having faded away the crew quickly got to work on solar viewing on August 7th garot used the ATM to observe the sun's outer atmosphere for 3 hours on the 9th they photographed a medium-sized solar flare and the next day an even larger flare was detected from the ground the crew was informed and refusing to take a full day of rest while they were behind schedule cut their half day short and quickly man the telescopes The observed solar event was described as one that only comes along two or three times a year and the crew was lucky to capture it with this new Advanced Equipment solar viewing continued and increased during the next 10 days reaching a peak of 14 manh hours
• Segment 47: 57:30 - 60:00 on August 20th the hydrogen Alpha telescopes were used as a means to study and recognize the early stages of solar flares the two weeks of work culminated the next day with a ground discovery of a huge solar prominence on the sun's Eastern Edge while Alan Bean was observing it he described it like a bubble on the edge of a disc they washed the prominence nearly 3/4 the size of the sun itself Arch outwards through the Corona in a massive Loop the success of this part of the mission prompted a lot of media to compare the results with that of the first mission which I think is a little unfair given how much time the first crew had to spend as simply get the workshop operational in addition to a full week of Earth resource observations and many more medical experiments Skylab 3 featured a few more interesting experiments one of these was the S150 x-ray experiment a 1,360 kg or nearly 3,000 lb x-ray astronomy satellite sent up at the top of the s4b behind the Apollo spacecraft it flew behind in below sky laab itself and ran for 5 hours until its batteries ran out allowing it to measure half of the visible Sky the data was recorded on tape and then transmitted to the ground another was the spiderweb experiment two female European garden spiders named Arabella and Anita were sent up and placed in transparent boxes to observe their activities both took some time to adjust to their new weightless environment but after one day Arabella had spun a sufficient though incomplete web finishing it the next day the astronauts then gave the spiders water and a house removed arabella's first web and waited for her to spin a new one she did this one more elaborate than the first though both spiders eventually died during the mission possibly from dehydration after examining the webs the most curious feature found was that they were not
• Segment 48: 57:30 - 60:00 only spun from overall thinner silk but also had variations in thickness throughout on earth spider webs are observed to have a very uniform thickness so this was seen as significant for the experiment Skylab 3 throughout its 60-day duration saw a host of mechanical problems it seemed like Skylab was aging very quickly the dehumidifier required daily servicing to keep it from leaking even after alen Bean spent an entire day disassembling and expecting it a mechanism for a stellar astronomy experiment jammed Midway out of the airlock and it wasn't able to be fixed until the following morning leaks in the coolant Loops were a constant and more serious problem as they were responsible for cooling electronic systems that included the controls for both the ATM and the Earth Resources package just 3 days prior to undocking the crew performed a third and final Eva that Houston was reluctant to allow skylab's gyroscope problems had continued into this second mission and
• Segment 49: 60:00 - 62:30 while they were still able to maintain control of at least one gyroscope in all three axes of movement there was worry about what would happen if one were to fail in preparation a six-pack of more gyroscopes were brought with the crew of Skylab 3 intended for installation on an experiment rack in the docking adapter after 2 and 1/2 hours Skylab now had nine good rate gyroscopes employing the standard redundancy procedures originally planned for the mission and for the CDR on Telemetry A6 back is looking good the JY are matching each other good news and now I'm going to power up the uh CMG again overall despite the slow start due to space sickness Skylab 3 was an extremely efficient mission after their recovery the crew settled into a very regular routine and very quickly caught up with all of the time that they had lost they didn't bother with the shower as the first crew did setting up and using it was an hour long procedure so they opted instead for a daily scrubbing with washcloths the crew were seen as something of overachievers we decided that we weren't going home without doing 100% and more if possible lzma recalled later in early September Allen Bean actually asked for a week or more extension of the mission which was turned down by the end mission control was actually having a hard time finding enough work for the crew to do and the crew brought suggestions for new experis to fill the spare time during their postflight briefing Skylab 3 splashed down safely on September 25th 1973 again breaking records for time spent in Space the crew had orbited the earth a total of 858 times only one Mission remained at this point [Music] [Music] while the second crew was setting new records the third crew was training and preparing this final crew all rookies consisted of Gerald Carr Edward Gibson
• Segment 50: 60:00 - 62:30 and William POG a number of last minute changes have been made to this flight plan with the unexpected success of the second mission more experiments and tasks have been devised for the third but the funny thing about planning is it doesn't always go according to plan the crew would later complain that the training for a lot of these additional tasks had been wholly inadequate continuing to go smoothly tus 13 we'll look for an ignition at tus 2.1
• Segment 51: 62:30 - 65:00 seconds 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 we have a liftoff lift off the engine is building up to 1.6 million lb of thrust and Sky lab is moving slowly off the pad it's cleared the tower Sky laab 4 lifted off at 9:01 a.m. on November 16th 1973 ascent and orbital insertion was nominal with no major events this was good given that their Saturn 1B launch vehicle had to have its aerodynamic fins replaced on the launch pad after they were found to be cracked the spacecraft dock was Skylab almost exactly 8 hours into the flight and around this time the all rookie crew made a serious error in judgment knowing the strain that space adaptation syndrome had placed on Skylab 3 they decided not to tell mission control that William Pogue asked to be handed a vomit bag he tried to quote go slow for a few minutes as he put it but ended up vomiting into the bag anyway while they were out of radio range the other two debated about whether or not to say anything decided to not and say that POG was not hungry for their first meal hence the food he didn't consume when Houston returned Gerald Carr asked to postpone their evening status report because they hadn't started eating yet Houston agreed giving them two more hours to decide what to do what they forgot was that an onboard tape recorder had been running the entire time and the data was periodically transmitted back to the ground on the second morning they all felt much better even po though he still decided to take things easy for a little while after eating breakfast and watching the Alps Through the Windows they were ready to enter the workshop and by A4 after 9 they had begun powering up the station for use they had an initial shock once getting aboard discovering that on the dark and dingy station there appeared to already be someone aboard however it took only a Second Glance to realize that these were
• Segment 52: 62:30 - 65:00 dummies left by the previous crew as a practical joke even dressed up in the clothes intended for the third crew toward the end of the day they were contacted by control who handed the microphone to the chief of the astronaut office Alan Shepard the first American in space I just wanted to tell you he said that on the matter of your status reports we think you made a fairly serious error in judgment here in the report of your condition Carr realizing that there was no further squirming around simply said okay Al I agree with you it was a dumb decision the situation ended there the reporters began to speculate about a breakdown in Communications between crew and ground teams Skylab 4 was now being carefully washed for any further signs of insubordination activation became the order of the day moving forward this
• Segment 53: 65:00 - 67:30 took more time than it had with the other Crews due largely to this crew's rookie status mistakes slowed them down significantly such as an hour lost when POG left a valve in the wrong position while flushing the portable water system accidentally dumping disinfectant into the waste tank by the end of the first day the crew was 2 hours behind a deficit they didn't end up reducing the next day was dedicated to recharging the coolant Loops that cooled the space suits and airlock batteries permitting the first space to be conducted on time this job was carried out without any trouble and on time by POG who had now fully recovered from his space adaptation syndrome the coolant recharge was one of several extra chores assigned to the crew in this first week new medical experiments included girth measurements at 50 different points on the astronaut's bodies showing how blood and other body fluids tended to move upwards towards the head in microgravity these measurements took 4 hours to complete as the tapes were hard to handle and the crew had no training with them whatsoever a secondary aspect involved photographs taken on infrared sensitive fil film and the photographer found it difficult to remain still while taking the photos ending up wedging his shoe between two water tanks this ended up accidentally turning a valve the loss of pressure in the tank not discovered until later that night on the 22nd of November Thanksgiving Day the first Space Walk was scheduled tasks included reloading the ATM cameras as well as checking out a non-operating antenna on the microwave sensor Gibson and Pog suited up and exited the airlock just before noon and Pog undertook his first task of photographing the amount of contamination surrounding the workshop he managed only a few photos before the camera failed the shutter knob spinning ineffectively in his glove fingers struggling with restraints while
• Segment 54: 65:00 - 67:30 checking the bad antenna they ended up making it a two-man job Gibson better able to restrain himself held on to pogue's suit and moved him around while po called out directions and kept both hands free to do his work after determining that the antenna's problem line is pitch circuit all they were able to do was install a PIN to lock the pitch gimbal then use a jumper to bypass it it worked afterwards but only side to side which was better than not working at all the crew returned inside the airlock after a 6 and 1/2 hour near Flawless operation now let's discuss the alleged Sky laab 4 Mutiny this is a popular misconception about this final mission that for some reason persists to this day the myth goes as follows during Sky laab 4 the crew upset with how overworked and pushed by Mission Control they were decided on one day to shut off their radio not respond to any requests and simply take the day off however the truth of the matter isn't quite as interesting the crew certainly was overworked worked that much is true and we've already discussed why additional tasks laid on to a rookie
• Segment 55: 67:30 - 70:00 crew believing them to somehow be able to exceed the work of a crew led by an Apollo veteran to make up for their slow progress the crew made a decision to have their daily morning briefing be attended by only one astronaut leaving the others free to continue working while the third would inform them of the briefing later however on one of these mornings the tired Mission Commander Gerald Carr simply forgot to turn on his radio leaving Skylab out of contact with the ground for exactly one orbit roughly 90 minutes by the time the station came back around car had turned the radio back on and communication was reestablished the mistake did however prompt a discussion with mission control that the crew called the first sensitivity training in space regarding their workload and their feelings about it however the Mutiny story simply isn't true a gross exaggeration perpetuated by an old newspaper article that took the truth blew it way out of proportion and was later accepted as truth in itself by the end of his first month Skylab 4 was being subjected to intense scrutiny from news reporters they wanted to know why everything was moving so slowly and why the crew was making so many mistakes the flight directors vehemently denied all of this stating that there was no higher rate of mistakes than on any previous missions and refused to compare the performances of the other Crews if anything given the extra tasks and inexperience of the crew they were right on schedule furthermore the first day's medical omissions worsened media concerns with some reporters calling it a cover up what else were the astronauts keeping from the flight directors they wanted to know the directors responded that the channel B tapes were full of missions of errors and medical conferences since then had been honest and open they reiterated that even on the first day the eventual decision had been made to let Mission Control know
• Segment 56: 67:30 - 70:00 what happened and they even saved the physical evidence Top Flight directors warmly defended the crew and the reporters finally let the subject drop if there was one major takeaway from skylab's final mission it was flight planning on December 12th William POG complained bitterly to Mission Control that the schedule for experiments was far too tight he had lost a couple photographs that day because he had to set up a camera in a hurry stating this is going to happen again and again until word gets through to the flight activities officers that they're going to have to give us some time to get from one point in the spacecraft to another I don't know how we're going to get this across to them unless you the principal investigators put your foot down and stomp it hard 2 Days Later Gerald Carr effectively made the same complaint on the 20th Gibson took his turn with complaints about how his schedule had been ruined that morning by a series of small timeconsuming problems that's no way to do business he stated I personally have found the time since we've been up here to be nothing but a 33-day fire drill I've been engulfed in building blocks rather than being
• Segment 57: 70:00 - 72:30 concerned with the quality of the data he decided that his personal Independence would take precedent over the rigid scheduling stating that work done correctly was more important than work being done on time the end of December was largely taken up by observations of the comic cootch with the Apollo telescope Mount but afterwards Gerald Carr sent a six-minute plea to Mission Control for a Frank discussion regarding the strain status of the mission that sensitivity training we talked about earlier he wanted to know how far behind they were how dissatisfied the ground teams were if at all and how best to move forward with a better understanding of the mission between the two teams the resulting discussion the next day did exactly that mission control was not in fact dissatisfied they found no significant difference between the accomplishments of this crew in the last and acknowledge the crew's request to relax the schedule in favor of more precise and more thorough work after a 55-minute discussion administrator truly expressed Mission Control satisfaction quote Jerry let me say one thing that Dr craft and de have been here and listened and they're very happy with the way you're doing things and they think we've made about a million dollars tonight after setting a third duration record for 844 days in space Skylab 4 undocked from the station they took several photos including this most iconic image of Skylab that will always be the first result for any Google searches little did they know they would be the final people to see the station in one piece it would remain here dormant for 5 years hoping for rescue that would never come Skylab story is almost [Music] over before they left the station Gerald Carr used the Apollo spacecraft's RCS thrusters to push the station 11 km
• Segment 58: 70:00 - 72:30 higher than it had been into a 430 33x 455 km orbit once the crew had splashed down flight controllers vented the atmosphere and shut down most of his systems there wasn't exactly an immediate plan to rescue her Nessa saw a 9-year lifespan for the Aging laboratory to be sufficient and with the problems with her gyroscopes and coolant Loops it seemed best to end the mission here NASA had a new mission on their hands one that would take an entire decade of development the space shuttle NASA crude missions fell stagnant for some time while the shuttle was being developed the Soviet surpassed all of skylab's endurance records with their own salute stations and Soviet officials were speaking of establishing
• Segment 59: 72:30 - 75:00 larger more permanent space stations and by 1986 would begin this with the Mir space station NASA had been hoping at least in some small part that Skylab would remain in orbit until around 1983 and by then the shuttle would be operational while it wasn't a major priority there were discussions held about using the shuttle to boost skylabs orbit and prepare it for a fourth or even fifth crew though they knew it likely wouldn't happen the final crew had even left a bag filled with supplies to welcome any new visitors who might come and even left the hatch unlocked solar activity through the mid1 1970s heated and expanded the Earth's upper atmosphere and began subjecting Skylab to far more aerodynamic drag than had originally been anticipated it was not going to last until 1983 in March of 1977 the Marshall space flight center asked NASA headquarters for permission to Begin work on a mission to raise skylab's orbit to extend its lifespan giving NASA time to consider future uses for the Aging station Johnson Space Center informed NASA headquarters and Marshall that the earliest it could reboost or debost if necessary Skylab would be September 1979 as part of the space shuttle's fifth orbital test flight at the time NASA envisioned six test flights before they could consider it operational the decision of whether or not to revive or destroy Skylab would be determined by its status at that time it was believed that its main solar wing and subsequent batteries would probably still be usable but the batteries for the Apollo telescope Mount wouldn't be having Frozen in the station's dormy the cooling system was rapidly decayed the guidance computer was probably dead after heating up and cooling down through so many orbits the gyroscopes were on the constant verge of failure it was not looking good but nevertheless late in 1977 Marshall gave the go-ahead to make a plan for the reboost while the
• Segment 60: 72:30 - 75:00 shuttle would not be ready enough to dock with the station and reboost it that way a secondary plan was made the teleoperator retrieval system capable of being deployed from the shuttle payload Bay this small boxy device would move in docka Skylab and boost its orbit with four Small Engines while being operated remotely by the crew of the nearby space shuttle following this the shuttle would launch Skylab refurbishment kits extending its power and docking capabilities for further use by the end of the third phase of the Skylab refurbishment program the station would look something like this by December of 1978 dreams of Reviving Skylab came to an end the space shuttle main engine known today as the rs25 was proving extremely difficult to refine the design of that year two tests of the ssmes resulted in explosive failures on the test stand and it became clear that the shuttle was not going to be ready for a 1979 debut flight it would in fact not
• Segment 61: 75:00 - 77:30 make its first flight until 1981 Skylab was doomed and focus was now placed on deorbiting it as safely as possible earlier in 1978 Skylab was put into the public Spotlight again that year a Soviet spacecraft called Cosmos 954 had come down into the atmosphere and Scattered its burnt remains over North Canada including pieces of a nuclear fueled power module the public now became concerned about what would happen to Skylab when it came down as its path went over about 90% of the world's population at one point or another it would be a PR disaster if a piece of Skylab were to fall in a human being or their home NASA focused on very slowly powering up skylab's remaining operational batteries using the spacecraft's attitude to attempt to control how much drag it was experiencing and thereby more precisely control when and where it would come crashing down or so they hoped in 1979 skylab's impending demise became a worldwide media event t-shirts were sold bets were made on where she would come down a neighborhood in Nebraska painted a large Target on the ground to give the station something to aim for and the San Francisco Examiner offered its $10,000 prize for the first piece of the station to be delivered to their offices of course NASA was assuring the public that the station would land in the water making the examiner certain that the prize would never be paid in its final week NASA forecasted that the station would come down between July 10th and July 14th putting the most likely date right in the middle on the 12th mere hours before re-entry began they continued to adjust its orientation aiming for a crash site 810 M southeast of Cape Town South Africa Sky laab re-entered Earth's atmosphere at 1637 UTC on July 11th 1979 it remained intact longer than predicted due to a 4% calculation error it broke apart about 300 mil east of Perth
• Segment 62: 75:00 - 77:30 Western Australia observed in the Sky by Hugh jar a viewer of this Channel and falling in a largely unpopulated area Australian residents and even an airline pilot watch the brightly burning pieces streak through the air and finally 24 pieces of it landed on the home of Stan Thorton who quickly gathered it up and prepared to collect his prize money most of its oxygen tank landed in an empty field was collected by the locals and is now on display at a museum in esperence Australia other fragments were returned to the US with large pieces now displayed at the US Space and Rocket Center the Shire of esrin issued a $400 lettering fine to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration it was never paid with Sky laab gone NASA shifted its focus to space lab a reusable orbital Workshop stowed in the payLo Bay of the Space Shuttle later once the Mir station established a precedent for large modular space stations Focus again shifted to space
• Segment 63: 77:30 - 80:00 station Freedom a concept that would eventually evolve into the International Space [Music] Station despite it flaws Skylab was a valiant first effort at long-term space flight it was rendered Almost Dead on Arrival by his violent ride to orbit repaired in space broke records three times and performed an unprecedented amount of scientific research into what living and working in space could be like there's even a lot I cut out of this story for the sake of pacing and relevancy so if you want more I'll provide my resources in the description since Skylab fell to Earth there hasn't been another us single launch space station with the ISS taking over for microgravity research from the late 1990s and continuing to this very day however much like Skylab the ISS is getting old the end of its life is now within sight as well and while other modular stations are in the works single launch stations are now making something of a comeback Star Lab a joint venture between Voyager space and Airbus is expected to launch no earlier than 2028 and hearkens back to the old Skylab days and its Aesthetics though it plans to use an inflatable habitat module instead of a rigid one Haven 1 however developed by vast is a small rigid craft expected to launch a crew of 4 aboard a SpaceX crew Dragon spacecraft aiming for a 2025 launch date these and other similar commercial projects will be effectively rented by NASA replacing the Aging ISS to continue microgravity research for future deep space missions the timeline of space stations is a curious one and it's interesting to see that the single launch format of Skylab is no longer dead in fact it is very much alive and this new era of low orbit innovation has its roots in this old converted rocket stage that flew over our heads for 6 and 1/2 years we will never forget you Sky lab nor the ground you pave for us to
• Segment 64: 77:30 - 80:00 walk our path through the cosmos farewell [Music]