50 years ago, the all-rookie, final Skylab crew returned to Earth It is 50 years this week since Skylab's final crew departed the station after a record-setting 84 days of flight. The crew of Jerry Carr, Ed Gibson, and Bill Pogue launched on November 16, 1973, and returned to Earth on February 8, 1974. Although their spaceflight record was soon broken by a Russian crew aboard Salyut 6 in …
I don't think Skylab has EVER gotten proper respect.
All the groundbreaking research it did, plus the fact it's been the ONLY station with decent interior volume where a lot of physics things are visible that aren't at smaller scale, is always completely overlooked in favor of "parts fell off"
Also, it's the ONLY American space station. The Russians had MIR, a bunch of Salyut and Almaz stations, and ISS is international. Even China has had 2 or 3 now.
Of the dozen or so space-related websites I read, only El Reg and space.com have noted this.
A NASA book converted to HTML many moons ago. Including pictures, diagrams, and etc.
https://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/SP-400/contents.htm
Well worth a read, even if you're old enough to remember it while it was happening.
Send a link to any kids in your life. Explain to them that yes, the pictures aren't up to today's quality ... but the first commercial digital camera (the CROMEMCO Cyclops) was still a year or so in the future when the Skylab 4 crew left the key under the mat for the next crew, who sadly never got off the ground.
Actually, the pictures are much better in the physical book. Most of them take up a page. Edit: I think that was scanned when large color scanners were extremely rare, cantankerous, and expensive.
There was no forth manned mission because they added another month or so to the third mission, and there wasn't much left in the tank, life-support-wise, after that. There wasn't any way for a docked spacecraft to recharge any of the resources, either. There were ideas for getting around that, if the Shuttle could have reboosted it.
In 1973 the first record album describing the space environment appeared - The Miraculous Hump Returns from the Moon by Sopwith Camel. It was only slightly popular originally although my girlfriend painted the lyrics all over the house when it was released ... so many songs that described a view of what was happening "The old man himself is mad as a loon, cause all his kids are singing a tune, look out Pa there's monkeys on the moon!"
Originally America and Russia were only competing ... "The archangel's sleeping, the devil is weeping, the heavenly host is white as a ghost."
It's like the Universe is conspiring against me this week:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-68257883
(No IT angle, but this is the same team behind the Clangers documentary. Although, of course, Bagpuss was a dramatized reconstruction involving actors - little bit of artistic license may have crept in)
Searching For Skylab, America's Forgotten Triumph Hat tip to El Reg, which is where I learned of it.
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