![]() ![]() While Americans used Skylab’s looming demise as an excuse to party in June 1979, people in other countries didn’t take things quite so lightly. In Europe and Asia, fear of Skylab’s re-entry prompted unusual safety measures. Another enterprising individual took a different tack and sold cans of “Skylab repellent.” 3. Mocking NASA’s inability to say precisely where Skylab would land, entrepreneurs across the country sold T-shirts emblazoned with large bullseyes. The Charlotte, North Carolina, News-Observer reported that a local hotel designated itself an “official Skylab crash zone (complete with painted target)” and was holding a poolside disco party. Louis, Missouri, the “Skylab Watchers and Gourmet Diners Society” announced plans to view Skylab’s last orbit during a garden gathering at which “hard hats or similar protective headgear” were required. The Associated Press reported several instances of “Skylab parties” occurring across the United States. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that many people took an irreverent view of the demise of Skylab, a government project. The stagnant economy and a second oil crisis dropped Congress’ approval rating to just 19 percent that year. The imminent crash of Skylab midway through 1979 coincided with Americans’ declining confidence in their government. In June 1979, as the crash approached, Skylab-inspired parties and products were all the rage in the United States. While large chunks did go into the ocean, parts of the space station also littered populated areas of western Australia. On July 11, 1979, with Skylab rapidly descending from orbit, engineers fired the station’s booster rockets, sending it into a tumble they hoped would bring it down in the Indian Ocean. After that, the station would simply continue to orbit as a shell, like the millions of tons of floating detritus now known as space junk.įunding and other snafus delayed the shuttle project, however, so NASA had to come up with a new plan. The agency would use a new tool in development-the space shuttle-to boost Skylab into a higher orbit, thereby extending the lab’s operational life by about five years. NASA responded with a plan to rehabilitate the laboratory-in-the-sky. As word spread of the impending uncontrolled crash of the space station, Congress and the public demanded to know how NASA intended to avoid human casualties from the potential disaster. This lack of preparation presented a problem in late 1978 when NASA engineers discovered the station’s orbit was decaying rapidly. Doing so would have “cost too much,” administrator Robert Frosch said at the time. Even though Skylab was devised for just a nine-year lifespan, NASA failed to build in any control or navigation mechanisms to return the orbiter to terra firma. Unfortunately, the agency spent far less time and energy planning how to gracefully bring the space station back to Earth at the end of its mission. ![]() ![]() Because the project represented the next step toward wider space exploration, NASA threw itself into successfully putting Skylab in orbit. The space station known as Skylab was designed as an orbiting workshop for research on scientific matters, such as the effects of prolonged weightlessness on the human body. Skylab was made to go up but not to come back down. ![]()
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