Historical Perspective Higher learning Skylab expanded our knowledge about Earth—and how we could live and work in space By Henry T. Brownlee Jr. Cspace laboratory, Skylab, was a little like roughing itompared with the massive and spacious InternationalSpace Station that circles Earth today, America’s first in a tent on a camping trip. But Skylab, which was launched into orbit nearly four decades ago, was a leap forward in spaciousness and amenities compared with previous spacecraft, and it demonstrated that people could live and work in the harsh environment of space. “Skylab … has taught us that man is worth far more than his weight in machinery and computers in overcoming unfore- seen difficulties in space,” said Sanford “Sandy” N. McDonnell, former president and chief executive of McDonnell Douglas Corp., which built Skylab. “This should put an end to the debate about man’s ability to perform useful work in space.” The Skylab mission, however, almost ended before it began. During launch by a Saturn V rocket from Cape Kennedy on May 14, 1973, a meteoroid shield protecting Skylab tore off, ripping away one of the spacecraft’s two solar panels that were to provide electrical power. The loss of the meteoroid shield caused the temperatures in Skylab to rise to 126 degrees Fahrenheit (52 degrees Celsius), making it uninhabitable. Engineers at NASA and McDonnell Douglas, along with other industry experts, worked for 10 days to devise a plan to train astronauts how to repair the damaged station. An Apollo spacecraft carrying astronauts Charles Conrad Jr., Paul Weitz and Joseph Kerwin was launched and rendezvoused with Skylab on May 25. They successfully made repairs, freeing the remaining but jammed solar panel and placing a protective heat shield that dropped the inside temperature to 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 degrees Celsius). By June 4 the orbiting workshop was fully operational. Skylab’s mission was not just to determine whether humans could live and work in space for long periods of time. It was designed as a laboratory to gather information about Earth’s resources and the environment and to use its solar telescope to better understand the sun and how it affects Earth. The largest section of Skylab was a converted third stage of the mighty Saturn V rocket developed to send U.S. astronauts 10 BOEING FRONTIERS / AUGUST 2012
Frontiers August 2012 Issue
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