SkyLab - Maybe the Most Important Space Programs So Far.
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- čas přidán 30. 08. 2021
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It was plagued with problems from the start but it turned out to be one of the most important influential space programs we have ever done. Skylab unintentionally showed us that we could fix major unexpected problems working in space and that we could survive in space for a long periods of time and paved the way for the ISS. This is the story of Skylab, the first and so far only US space station.
This video is sponsored by Brilliant : brilliant.org/CuriousDroid
Written, Researched and Presented by Paul Shillito
Images and Footage : NASA, RosCosMos
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My grandfather was an engineer at nasa from 1964-1988, and I have several Skylab momentos. Skylab has always been near and dear to my heart. Thank you for making this!
My grandfather was a 5 star general,salute the general.
In Alaska our challenge Challenger Learning Center invited all the astronauts to Alaska I meant the Skylab crew couldn't wait to tell them how awesome Skylab showed so many interesting scientific experiments and how interesting I felt it was thanks and how amazing😊
@Theover4000 Wow, you are a lucky person. Your grandfather sounds like quite a person. Skylab is very much a part of my heart as well. I was 14 when it launched and a friend and I and my Mother caught a view of it orbiting using binoculars and a published guide showing places to look for it.
Skylab was a great success story, and needs to be appreciated more.
@@brianarbenz1329 absolutely agreed. Thank you for sharing :)
Skylab burnt up over our heads here in Perth Western Australia and I still have a piece of the wreckage.
Get it certified, hand it down for a couple generations, and bam, there's a family fortune :P
Was space junk falling on the heads of the people of Perth ever a joke in Australia?
@@ekscalybur People had a real concern. I remember it well! I was 13 at the time and it was big news on TV! but yeah ppl made jokes about it hitting Perth...
@MichaelKingsfordGray Aw go on -- you don't mean to suggest that some people post things online that aren't bona fide true, do ya?
Picture please as proof.
Heh, my Dad was an engineer on that fiberglass wound oxygen tank. He loved seeing it in a museum.
"We built it tough."
@MichaelKingsfordGray
One of my best friends carpooled to school with von Braun's daughter.
niel armstrong was my aunt's uncle's cousin's roommate.
@@renegadeace1735
Cool, at Purdue?
@@IvorMektin1701 trump university
@@renegadeace1735
Lulz
I did engineering work on the ISS back in the 90s. My manager was Joe Kerwin, one of the astronauts on Skylab 2. He told me about having to do an unplanned EVA to deploy the stuck solar panel. That must have been some exciting times!
Pure space cowboy mode I guess.
I just turned 29 years old at the end of August. Science was always something that captivated me in school but Space has fascinated me like nothing else in my life. However big or small of a role that you had with the ISS I just want to personally thank you for being apart of it.
@@MissingNo_ Can you tell me why nasa has been unable to show the world a chicken egg hatching on the international play station,
Yet they can produce music videos using Canadian musicians ?
Sent yur whatpp number
Or email address
I'm utterly astounded!
Who knew you owned such a plain shirt!
I was looking at him wondering g who this new bloke is 😁
I think it's not a plain shirt; it just needs fresh batteries.
Watch it on 12k and you can see the aggressive pattern lines running all over his shirt
@@danielread8549 It's a clocking device!
Paul must have been lost a bet to wear such a normal shirt lol 😁.
I would love a similar video on Salyut stations. Their heritage is really understated !
I agree . I try to search for Salyut vids but they're all in Russian lol
@@MrGrace Curious Droid made one about Salyut-7 rescue
@@MrGrace czcams.com/video/IIdP9sFvOHE/video.html movie. Salute 7.
@@asd131q7 thanks!
I agree it's past time about these.
8:30 Theory: the real reason Skylab was allowed to burn up was to make sure they got the spiders.
Giant Alien Spiders are No Joke.
And the remanents landed on Australia, just in case, bigger spiders would take care of them.
@@ScientistDog Where do you think the obvious mutant Australian spiders came from. You don't believe the government induced Mandela effect that they have always been there? :)
Yea, I can just imagine them thinking, after the crew cast off, "Hey, what about the spiders?" and the next crew arrives to find they've adapted much better than expected indeed.
If that was the reason, they would've nuked the entire thing, it's the only way to be sure.
A surprisingly tame shirt than we're used to. Still looking good
I think he mistakenly put it on inside out
That was no shirt, it's a cloaking decise, advsnced camouflage. Look how well he blended in with the pitch black background.
I'm glad I could hear the volume over his shirt for once! 😆
Was about to put a comment about this.
@@Indrakusuma_a same. Possibly bright shirts held up somewhere at a port due to the truck driver issues in the UK :-) Keep going Paul, love this content. Can't believe you are not working for a major docu maker.
Diplomatic Footnote: There were two Skylabs. The second one is in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. There were two remaining Saturn Vs, so putting "Skylab-B" in orbit wasn't a major issue, and various proposals were floated as to what to do with it.
The one that was eventually settled on was a detente era project which would have seen the US and USSR take turns operating the station, which was actually seen as beneficial both diplomatically and financially to both countries in that period, but would have been unthinkable just ten years before and ten years after.
The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was the first step in this concept. The idea of having two completely different spacecraft with highly divergent engineering and design and parameters dock and exchange crew in orbit was a surprisingly huge technological accomplishment. Once they proved they could do that, they could modify the Multiple Docking Adaptor to allow the Soviets to dock with Skylab-B.
After B was launched, the idea was to send up a US crew using left over apollo hardware, and have it on the station for 3 or 4 or 6 months (Reports vary), then the Soviets would send up a crew in a Soyuz, we'd hand over the station, and they'd stay there for an equal amount of time. Then we'd send up another Apollo crew, then another soyuz, another apollo, another soyuz, and by then it was anticipated that all the Apollo stuff would be used up, but the Space Shuttle would be in service so it didn't matter.
Unfortunately, while the US and USSR were both on board for this to happen, it became apparent that the Shuttle was going to be delayed and budgets shrank, and the program got postponed several times, Then in 1978, President Carter (Who was generally opposed to space stuff as a waste of money) cut the funding for maintaining the two remaining Saturn Vs, which effectively killed the project. And the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan ended the era of detente, and the concept of cooperation got kicked back for a good 15 years.
I actually remember seeing ads for Skylab helmets... my birthday was 2 weeks after it crashed and my mom was very worried that we would all get killed by the debris... it didn't happen, and I got to have my cookie monster birthday cake..
Cookie monster👍 i love it
I love how open it was, that kind of space is definitely something the ISS is lacking
Due, of course, to the large diameter of the Saturn V. That again becomes possible when the SpaceX Starship starts flying and perhaps the SLS. Inflatables could also achieve this, such as Bigelow builds, using smaller rockets.
@@ChessMasterNate I was thinking the same thing about the inflatables absolutely
@@ChessMasterNate inflatable is a bit dangerous in LEO due to a manmade problem... Space debris.
@@AaronShenghao Bullshit x2. There is debris without man, actually by far the majority of the dangerous (small) debris is natural, at least in any orbit where there are people.
Inflatables are no less save than non inflatables in case of debris strike. Both have protective layers around, and if they are not enough, both will loose atmosphere. Its not like in movies tho, you are not getting pulled along by the air when there is a small hole. It might even take hours to deplete all the air. More than enough to repair or seal that compartment. Inflatables are not a ballon, they don't explode when you poke a hole in them. They also don't deflate completely as the supporting structure is made up of many pockets, most of which would not loose pressure and thus keep the structure in place.
It was so open they actually tested the MMU *inside* the station, which is awesome. They also did a ton of work with architects and interior design people to make it more beautiful and homelike on the inside, as a test of what sort of interior styles and layouts were best for long duration missions. Much more focus on the 'soft' aspects of design than in the ISS. It was a beautiful ship
I remember watching the entire Apollo program through Skylab and thinking it was the most amazing thing. When the Skylab 4team left and they said they would be the last, it was depressing. Like after Apollo 17 when they announced that there would be no more moon landings. I still wonder where we would be if we had simply kept moving forward from there instead of spending 50 years starting and stopping new programs every few years. Maybe the most amazing part about the ISS is that it actually survived this long.
Thats the hole idea to confuse you and to give you the public excuses.
We never went to the moon and this iss floating around is joke.52 million a day is N.A.S.A buget thats a lot of money.People and their taxes are been wasted and turned against them.When NASA invent something wiith your money through your taxes NASA get a patent them manufacturer it and then put a cost on it for you to pay.it should be FREE.Its all a scam money money money if you think for one moment that NASA and its staff is working for the American peoples good FAITH your living in a dream.
The next scheduled manned moon landing is September 2024 so not too much longer
I bet you it will be cancelled.I would even hazard a guess that the weather will have something to do with it the launch pad will be destroyed or some sort of malfunction long story short it wont happwn again just like all the past moom missions
@@tomsunshine6209 It may be delayed, but all the program contracts have been awarded, which is a first since Apollo. It would cost more to cancel it
@@markcornelius5291 don't feed the trolls
I was eight years old when I watched the news reports of Skylab's demise. Watching Walter Cronkite on CBS was mesmerizing. It is what awakened my interest in space travel.
So how’s life on Titan?
Cool eh…, I was like 10… I remember Cronkite.., his voice and clarity Dx, even us kids felt engaged…. Cheers!!!
I turned 9 that year and remember it well. Everyone having fits, thinking they'd be hit and killed by huge chunks of space station :)
@@TheDoctor1225
The helmets were 👍
@@TheDoctor1225 "Everyone having fits, thinking they'd be hit and killed by huge chunks of space station" :) Impending ice age, population bomb, global starvation, Y2K, covid, existential global warming etc etc. Just one damn nothing burger crisis after another.
fond memories of this mission, including that just before its expected burn up re-entry a local rock station's call-in giveaway was a pair of SkyLab baseball catcher's shin guards, ha.
As an 80's kid, MIR was always the first "endurance" space lab
That's true.
Second that.
But, it wasn't.
Saljut 6 FTW
MIR was the first station built as a station from the start. Skylab was made from rocket parts.
I attended the Skylab Workshop launch, the last Saturn V ever flown. Though I had also viewed the Apollo 14 and 17 launches from nearby vantage points, we were as close as anyone could get to Skylab - right up to the crawler road, with the VAB behind us. It was the loudest sound I have ever heard (and felt), so loud that I turned to a friend standing beside me and yelled at the top of my lungs - and he couldn't hear me. The popping sound wasn't just sound; it was like having someone standing in front of me and hammering my chest with both fists. I briefly glanced back at the VAB, and was astonished to see great vertical walls of water condensing in front of it as the sound reflected from the VAB surface and formed interference antinodes which were low enough pressure to condense the humidity from the air. The IMAX version of the film "Apollo 11" is the only movie I've ever seen that captures even a pale approximation of that sound. I definitely want to witness a SpaceX Starship launch, which has twice the thrust of the Saturn V.
Just Paul's head and hands are visible. Pretty cool actually.
My wife's grandparents were travelling around Australia when Skylab came down.
They happened to be in Western Australia at the right time and headed to Esperance where they found what they believed was a piece of the craft for themselves.
Great video as always. It's just when mentioning the launch of Skylab 2 at 5:30, the launch of Skylab 1 is shown. The Skylab 2-4 launched are quite distinctive with the Saturn 1B launching of a so called milk stool. Love that.
Fun fact:
The E.L.O. song "Don't Bring Me Down" was dedicated to Skylab.
Was ‘groos’ their word for what was left of it when it finally did burn up? 😂
I'm just now learning this. I thought the lyrics were "don't bring me down, Bruce" but no, it's "groos" What the hell is groos?
@@dannydaw59 German word "Gruß" meaning: greeting, compliment, or salute.
Source please
Jeff says they made up the word... Broosh.
Would be an interesting video, talking about some gadgets used by Spies on the Cold War.
It would
@@chudthug there were a lot of ingenious gadgets that were almost forgotten. Plus some classify prototypes.
Brilliant video, Bravo!! The only thing I regretted was not seeing a can of "Skylab Repellent", which hawkers were selling in Times Square... I think the comic image of people spraying an aerosol to "repel" Skylab fragments is a great example of dry, sardonic wit.
As if to say Skylab had so many bugs? 😅😂
that's something i'd have rather expected from the british.
Good to know that people were always that stupid. I was under the impression it had gotten worse
@@ToxNano The hawkers, manufacturers, the people walking down the sidewalk to buy "Skylab Repellent" and bring it home to peals of laughter were not "stupid", they were all in on a joke that obviously strains your acumen.
@@switchmuso There are people buying crystals to "shield" themselves against cosmic radiation. My aunt is afraid her phone will give her cancer. That "joke" is sadly indistinguishable from a bleak reality.
I like the NORAD control room that's a screenshot from War Games.
I don't like it at all. Most people will assume that that's actually NORAD.
I like the picture at 9:30. I believe that's taken from the TV series For All Mankind if im not mistaken. There was an irish astronaught aboard doing solar observations.
LOL. And at 10:22, the "NORAD" picture is from the movie Wargames, not any actual NORAD picture.
That's certainly different....it's like the contrast has been turned down on Paul's shirt.
Pete Conrad's Skylab rescue would make a great movie.
I don't know if you really want the Netflix adaptation. It'll ruin the real work
@@adama7752
Yeah, Pete Conrad as a trans woman would be awkward
Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment would show him arguing with his crewmates, and the flight director shoving a projector into the wall.
What about the MIR space station?
The 70's seems such a forgotten decade, stuck between the swinging 60's and the neon 80's.
I'd have love seeing the shuttle docking with Skylab. Together they might have pushed us a decade or so further down the path of space exploration.
Manned space exploration was as pointless back then as it is now.
STS-2 was initially designated Skylab Rescue, but the shuttle could not accomplish the mission because of construction and design delays.
@@piotrwyderski7848 Yeah worrying about dumb things like climate is much better
@@piotrwyderski7848 So much still to learn. Your life is better thanks to inventions that came from the space program.
The 70s was the best decade. I will never forget it. I saw Led Zeppelin live! ;-) So much great music. I watched Apollo and Soyuz connect and astronauts/cosmonauts shake hands in space for the first time. Most moon landings were made in the 70s. The Shuttle was built in the 1970s. The bi-centennial celebration in 1976. The end of the Vietnam war. And much much more.
The ports on Skylab were not compatible anyway. The ones used on the station and the Shuttle were based on a design by the Soviets that was universal. Any port on a spacecraft or station could connect with any other port.
Apollo's and Skylab's were male/female type and not universal, so even if Skylab had survived all those years there could be no coupling. An Apollo spacecraft could not connect to another Apollo spacecraft in an emergency if needed.
I saw a video from you and I never clicked so fast. I love anything and everything SPACE related! Thanks CD!
I still was quite young when Skylab was started, but it had a massive effect on my and my interest into space programs. For me, this was the last remnant of the golden age of space exploration (Salyut and the shuttle started the silver age)
Salyut stations were there before Skylab. Of course Skylab is American so it is the GOLDEN AGE for you.
@@DamirAsanov That's not the whole story. Before Skylab, there were only Salyut 1 and 2, with 1 only manned for one time, and that ended in tragedy, if you remember :-( 2 was more of an Almas test vehicle and was never manned at all. Those were more of "no matter how, we wanna be fist, at least on paper", they weren't nearly as successful as Skylab.
The Salyut project really gained momentum with 4 onward, when they were really successful and quickly surpassed Skylab. Salyut 6 and 7 were the poster child for space stations in the last 70s and 80s, so yes, I put them more into that era and will continue to do so, that was their heyday.
PS: I'm German, not American. You know the first german in space? Sigmund Jähn? On Salyut 6?? You are performing that sort of bias you accused me of having....
3:17 I know you meant to say "Third Stage." Great video, Paul. Thanks so much for all you. Your channel is one of my very favorites! Take care and please keep them coming!
While Skylab was built from the Saturn V third stage (the "dry laboratory" plan), there was an earlier plan called the "wet laboratory" that looked at using the Saturn V second stage, which is what I think he's referring to there. The idea was that you could use the second stage for a moon mission launch, then re-use it for a space station later on.
@@andrewblackburn1426 Thanks, Andrew! I had heard of that concept, but didn't make the connection to this video. Thanks again!
I just looked on the Smithsonian web site and found they made the same mistake.
Pretty sure Tom Scholz holds a copyright on the phrase "Third Stage." 🤫😆
@@timothyconover9805 Nice to know another "Boston" fan!
What about the Skylab 4 “mutiny”? It was definitely one of the important lessons learned about long duration Space flight.
That's a good story on it's own right. Never send a all rookie crew in space again'
@@cy0031 More likely, don't make people work 16-hour days, and also expect them to work through their breaks.
@@cy0031 Average boomer mindset.
IIRC Curious Droid already uploaded a Video on that. If not, it was probably Scott Manley.
@@SRFriso94 exactly. I wouldn't call that a mutiny they were up there a long time ,cabin fever and assho bosses demanding tasks all day. The guys in space are the captains not the jagoffs on the ground safe and cozy. .
The one that was successful and led to give almost all the knowledge on very long time orbiting stations was the soviet Mir.
The Mir station, up there for more than 15 years, with the first Americans and Europeans sharing knowledge with russians towards the future ISS.
I'm surprised that not a single word about it was mentioned in this video.
I've always had a stronger bond with Mir, as it was the station operational during my childhood, which made me overlook SkyLab, i'm surprised at how different it was to the other stations.
Very cool video!
For most channels I click the video because I'm interested in topic. Here I can click on something I had no idea about and just finish watching interested in it.
I always prioritize Curious Droid videos. Your content is so good that I put aside a lot of stuff just to watch! Thanks for all your hard work.
I was unaware that there was a plan to boost Skylab without using the Shuttle. Now I'm kind of angry they blew that chance. Skylab could still be in orbit today if they had done that, so how much money did they really save by letting it fall? One thing you didn't mention was the incompatibility of Skylab's Apollo-type life support system with the Shuttle's. Skylab used a low-pressure pure O2 atmosphere, while Shuttle (and ISS) use ordinary air at human-normal pressure. A special airlock module was built to allow Shuttle crew to transfer back and forth between the orbiter and the space station.
If more of SKYLAB had come down over inhabited areas, what money they saved by not launching on a Titan could have been inconsequential for what it might eventually have cost.
Really makes you wonder: if the technology was mature... have nations been operating unmanned space tugs since the 1980s in thrilling cold war scenarios?
Yeah, according to plans, the TRS tug would have been launched into orbit by the space shuttle, but then be released and dock automatically on its own. Worse was that it could've been launched on an expendable rocket if the shuttle was not ready, but those plans were also turned down.
Skylab actually didn't use a pure O2 atmosphere, but was instead 75% O2 and 25% N2 pressurized at 5psi (1/3 atmospheric pressure, neither directly compatible with Apollo CSM or Space Shuttle). This meant that the airlock on Skylab served double duty for both transferring astronauts to/from the CSM safely and as an EVA airlock. I'm not sure why Nasa went with this setup, but my guess is that it reduced the risk of fire onboard while still allowing astronauts to quickly evacuate to the CSM without astronauts suffering the bends/decompression sickness (nitrogen in the blood boils when pressure is too low, keeping the nitrogen in Skylab's atmosphere reduces this risk). There's also the possibility that the existing airlock could be modified to accommodate the space shuttle, but I'm not sure.
Reference: history.nasa.gov/SP-400/ch2.htm
Even wrest is that the lack of a target for the shuttle to actually go to hugely damage that program for its early years from with it never recovered, pluse it meant that space station freedom was far more unlikely without a station already there it could build on. One of the worst decisions nasa ever made.
I was not aware that heightened solar activity was responsible for Skylab's premature fall from orbit. Good video!
The following year of 1980 was one of the hottest on record.
The mantra of Gene Kranz is what made Apollo and all later missions to this day possible. He basically set the basics of the mission control ethos and how NASA approaches unexpected problems. And how to plan a mission so that stuff does not go wrong. And let's not forget that one day when NASA learned a brutal lesson: Apollo 1. All this set a culture of taking nothing for granted and was the reason why astronauts landed on the moon and all other following missions...😉
I was 16 in 1979. I remember how sad it was that we abandoned Skylab.
I was 16 that year also. It was very sad.
Thanks. All of the astronauts - from any country - are true pioneers. Also, kudos to all the engineers, mathematicians, computer specialists, etc., who did incredible work to get humanity into space. It looks like their hard work and bravery are finally set to pay off. tavi.
@11:54, OMG the Skylab helmet, hilarious.
I adore SkyLab. I fell in love with it as a small child watching Al Bean doing gymnastics in it on a VHS tape. Seeing the back up in the Smithsonian sealed the deal.
Paul, congratulations for achieving 1M subscribers. Outstanding job.
Thank you for this video! I had no idea that Skylab was made out of the second stage of a Saturn 5 rocket--it is way larger in both diameter and volume than I expected!
As a teen in the 70s Skylab absolutely intriguing. They accomplished so many things, the part I remembered was the so-called mutiny. They loaded up a crew with so much to do and no down time. I also remember that the crew said then whenever the chance arose they'd sneak peeks out the ONE window as the view was fantastic. That seems to carry on with the ISS today.
I'm old enough to remember the controversy around SkyLab. As a space fan, even then I realized the importance of learning to deal with various technical and mechanical problems if we were ever to become competent in space. There was lots to hand-ringing and conversations whether the risk was worth it, but much like our future semi-permanent bases on the moon and eventually Mars, there was much to learn from these experiences. Every failure is an opportunity to learn. Very interesting video about a nearly forgotten piece of space history!
When Curious Droid uploads I am sure to drop off the face of the Earth 🌎 for the length of the video! I love the content keep up the great work 😊.
I enthusiastically followed the Skylab Program as a fresh-faced, space-crazed 10-year old. It was just so exciting coming on the heels of Apollo! I watched live the initial Skylab 2 flyaround of the space station, and the crew's initial attempt to free the main solar array. The day of the hours-long spacewalk by Conrad and Kerwin to successfully free the solar array was the highlight of the program (in my humble opinion). I remember the thruster leak on Skylab 3's CSM, and the preparation for a Skylab Rescue flight to be flown by Vance Brand and Don Lind in late September 1973. Thankfully that never had to take place. Also, the flight of Skylab 4 which coincided with the passage of Comet Kohoutek into the inner solar system promised to be a big show, although the comet's appearance in the sky - as I remember - was way below what was initially promised.
It was a shame that the proposed 21-day Skylab 5, crewed by the Skylab 3 and 4 back-up crew of Vance Brand, Don Lind, and Bill Lenoir, never took flight. It was estimated that mission could have been accomplished for minimal cost. The Skylab 5 mission, although not part of the original program plan, could have given the orbital workshop an additional boost into a higher orbit. Whether that would have saved Skylab from the effects the late-70's solar maximum activity may or not been successful.
Curious Droid - very good presentation! As a long term space enthusiast, I view Skylab as America's "forgotten" space program.
Just one item to be aware of; Apollo 17 spent a total of 12 days in space.
Thank you for making a Skylab video, I honestly don't think the program gets the love it deserves. :(
Got to see Skylab on the back of a trailer in Kalgoorlie town hall as a kid. Awesome stuff.
I did too, from the football stands of a high school near my hometown of New Albany, Ind. in the U.S.
Skylab was the most remarkable project. What looked like a fatal boondoggle was turned into a stellar success by improvisation made in a very short window of time. As a 14 year-old, I sited Skylab with a pair on binoculars on launch day, not yet knowing of its many troubles.
Six years later, I posted a sign in our yard with the words: "Welcome back Skylab." I would have loved having -- oh well, small pieces of it -- landing in our yard, presuming they did not hit the house.
At 7:10, that run was done on Indianapolis 500 weekend and was their version of the '73 Indy 500. As a Hoosier, I thought it was cool that we had the first sports event re-enacted in space. (Unless you count Al Shepherd hitting the golf ball on the moon.)
You saw Skylab with a pair of binoculars, did you? Did anybody try to tell you it was a drone like some jerks tried to tell me when I talked about seeing the ISS pass over several years ago? I'm guessing they didn't because those were the days before the internet. You know, before every freak in the world had a bullhorn to blare their crap far and wide and which all the other nitwits run across and buy into like they do today.
@@Red-rl1xx Network TV, and newspapers posted the times, and the degrees from the horizon we'd have a chance to see it just after launch. We went to the top of the football stands of the high school where my mother taught and matched the degree and the time and lo and behold, we saw a spec of light that was oblong, with what appeared to be a slight protrusion (it was very tiny, to be sure, but it matched in location and in shape.) I'm not sure what you meant by someone saying it was a drone, as the Skylab did not have its crew yet when we saw it, so it was in fact a drone.
@@brianarbenz7206 What these people meant was that it was one of these modern radio-controlled drones. You know, with the electric powered propellers? What they were saying was that it was part of a gov't "conspiracy" to make us think the ISS was real when it wasn't.
A minor correction. The Command/Service Modules used for Skylab were not leftovers from Apollo. The CSM's used for Skylab were special purpose, with many previous hardware requirements being deleted, and others added. The Skylab spacecraft are basically Low Earth orbit shuttles with a fraction of SPS fuel, two fuel cells instead of three, and deletion of the S-Band antenna.
Onboard the CM, several storage lockers were deleted, but special oxygen hose was adde to enable the astronauts to perform EVA's from the CM's open hatch, which came in handy for the 1st crew and the repair work they did.
The main driver behind the modifications was weight. The launch weight of an Apollo CSM for a lunar flight was almost 32 tons which exceeded the payload capacity of the Saturn 1B which launched the Skylab crews, by half.
Thanks for keeping the great content coming in.
It boggles my mind that one man with nothing more than a snazzy shirt collection and passion can be more educational than most school districts.
This almost literal exploring of space by your bootstraps is really interesting.
As always, great job Paul! Thanks!
Excellent video! I was a teenager when skylab went up and followed the missions closely. Yours is the best analysis and retrospective I've seen. Thanks so much.
Thanks Paul! Very informative.
A really great video about skylab. I remember watching the news as a kid at the time about parts of skylab coming down across a part of Australia.
Skylab has always made me nostalgic about Apollo, being the last flight of a Saturn V and use of Apollo hardware for crewed missions to the station. Only a year later the ATSP signaled the end of Apollo. Apollo and its predecessor Gemini, dated yes, technology has advanced and far surpassed it long ago, but they certainly looked cool unlike the 'equipment' being shot into orbit these days.
I see your point. Factor in their return systems and the overall configuration of the entire rocket needs to be be fit for purpose, changing how it can look. But certainly the main crew capsules, Dragon and Blue Origin's capsule lack style. For me, the style they try to achieve looks dull with most people considering them to be phallic in nature and you have to realize it is a pissing contest between JB and EM so why wouldn't they look like big Johnsons! Mine is bigger than yours after all... As for the garden centre flight suits Space X provides and what looks like a toilet bowl for a helmet, nah, no style at all, though many fanboys will disagree. Apollo looked functional, it looked big, it looked ready to take on space and had its own functional style.
I think that Gemini based space lab/station would have been incredible were it ever built.
They made an attempt to do something before coming down. First they had to take command. We were trying to track the thing, but no good tracking data. I was trying to intercept spacecraft visually and try to point to it and move an 85 foot dish at it. Actually had a smaller dish, plus an acquisition dish, and a camera. We tried a couple days but failed. Finally got accurate tracking predicts from NORAD. They had to communicate initially with spacecraft to upload program to computer so it would function.
Anyone else old enough to remember Devo's "Space Junk," inspired by the worry around the impending SkyLab re-entry?
Yeah, I'm old enough to remember Project Mercury.
Excellent video!
😂😂
We keep putting the cart before the horse with these space projects.....
Rhetorical nonsense. Your analogy is not only ignorant but embarrassing for mankind.
Just no. Space projects are the exact opposite of putting the cart before the horse. It’s the only bit of true long term planning our species has done. These projects are literally the foundations for a future in which our species does not go extinct (as quickly as if people with your lack of forethought were in charge).
@@lukefreeman828 oh really. Then tell me why the writer of a book called Project Mars wrote about things he expected to happen in his lifetime? Tell me why their are Mars colony housing designs floating around when there is again no chance of that happening in our lifetimes?
@@samsonsoturian6013 for the literal reason I said you moron. It’s called planning ahead 😂 its LONG TERM. Nobody, even the most optimistic, like Musk, truly expect permanent colonies to happen within our lifetimes.
Putting the cart before the horse means doing things in the wrong order… this is doing things in the right order. I.e. testing and developing technology that will allow our species to survive beyond the confines of Earth.
It’s often said that the reason the dinosaurs went extinct is because they didn’t have a space program. Stop thinking like a dinosaur.
@@coronalight77 Apollo was a wasted effort with a useless goal. Even its astronauts say that.
Cheers Paul! Another cracking video. Thank you for bringing knowledge and joy to us all! I didn’t know that the sky lab even existed!
Just keep up the good content man, really enjoying your videos on all the topics.
Always good to see an upload from curious droid
I enjoy all your videos Mr. Shillito, fascinating stuff
Great stuff. I always look forward to your videos. Thanks.
BTW, US astronaut Owen Garriott who spent 60 days onboard Skylab during Skylab-3 mission is the father of Richard Garriott, AKA, Lord British, the creator of Ultima series of games. In 2008 Richard Garriott who spent 13 days in orbit onboard the ISS, became the 6th private astronaut. This makes the Garriotts the first family in the US to have 2 astronauts in 2 generations.
I met Owen Garriott ten years ago at an event at Kennedy Space Center - really nice guy; spoke to my son for about 20 minutes regarding Skylab and what it was like to live onboard. He later flew on STS-9 aboard the Space Shuttle. (Had the opportunity to meet Gene Cernan, Buzz Aldrin, Eileen Collins, and a number of other well-known astronauts and NASA figures at that event.)
Thank you as always for your great uploads.
Succinct delivery of a fascinating presentation xxx thanks
skylab ruled because you could just do insanely sick gymnastics in it. im kind of obsessed with the videos of the astronauts doing cool flips in it, lol
This is your best video yet. Thank you!
Thank you for doing this. I utterly love Skylab.
The largest Gold Nugget ever was found by someone looking for parts of skylab in the outback (i still remember this factoid from John cravens newsround )
7:41 Man, the Alpine Fault really pops in that image!
Another "brilliant" video from Curious Droid. I love every one Paul!
Awesome insight, thanks CD.
If you haven’t seen it, I would recommend the BBC documentary “Cosmonauts: How Russia Won the Space Race”. Fascinating insight into the huge contribution and how much was been learned (and perhaps not as well acknowledged) from the Russians with their Salyut/Mir stations leading up to the ISS, and which I would say is greater than Skylab due to its limited lifespan. At time of this comment, it is available on BBC iPlayer until Tue 7th September.
I’ve been to the town ( Esperance on the south coast of WA) where Skylab landed. They have a museum right in the centre of town filled with bit of oxygen tanks, shielding and photos of the local high school science teacher measuring the debris for radiation. When the NASA official came to the town for a look he got a big Welcome and a fine of $400(Aussie dollars) for littering as a joke. In the 90s a LA radio DJ found out and managed to get his listeners to help pay the fine as a publicity stunt. It was given to the shire as a oversized check for a laugh. The check is now also in the museum.
Great project summary!
I love the inclusion of the image of NORAD as seen in the War Games movie!
Great video! I can remember the re-entry of SkyLab, I was 10 years old. Being in Australia, it was prime time news!
Whooooeeeeeee! A 16 minute video from Paul ! Excellent !!!! Thanks Droid
Great video on a great subject, covering many highlights of that productive space station, which in spite of setbacks, yielded considerable research (solar astronomy, long duration space flight in microgravity, space engineering, just learning to fix things when things go sideways). A shame they never sent the other one up, but can see it at the National Air and Space Museum.
This was properly entertaining, and I actually learned something.
Great great video !
Learned a lot of fascinating things.
What an era… thx
Congratulations on hitting 1 million my friend.
That was an awesome video! Thank you!!!
Congrats on the big 1Mil, Curious Droid / Paul!
That is perhaps the best segue ever into a Brilliant commercial!
I was fortunate enough to watch the Skylab launch from an area in front of the Vertical Assembly Building, thanks to the Washington Science Fiction Association getting a boost from the then Senator of Maryland. The Saturn V launch was incredible, and the rocket's rumble was powerful enough to feel it in my gut from three miles away. Amazing!
I am certain that someone will bring up the story of the alleged „crew strike“ during one of the Skylab missions. Thing is, this is nothing more than that - a story with no basis in facts. While it is true that the Skylab crew initially had an excruciating workload to handle with loads of micromanaging going on, the crew sat down with mission control at one point and addressed their concerns. After this, things improved significantly.
NASA has published quite a lengthy article going into the details, titled „The Real Story of the Skylab 4 “Strike” in Space“.
According to the article, a writer for The New Yorker came up with the story of the strike, which he derived from a misinterpreted (by him) series of communications between Skylab and ground - and neither NASA nor any of the astronauts involved were interviewed on the matter at the time. I think it is safe to say that the astronauts were less than impressed when they learned about this story, which even made it into an obituary for one of the crew members who passed in 2014. It must truly suck for them having worked that hard and then this baloney story ending up being what sticks in people’s minds.
Skylab interior was much roomier than I imagined.
The name 'skykab' sounds really cool and the large interior space is better than the claustrophobic modern space stations for those reasons I think they should have kept the space station in orbit.
In Portugal back then when Skylab fell, we in jest called it Se Cai Lata. Phonetically it sounds almost the same as Skylab and it mean Tin(can) Might Fall.
Paul, thank for a wonderful review of the skylab program. It was also the site of the first labor strike in space, I do believe.
Funny how the lion's share of the comments are about Paul's shirt and its relative lack of pizzazz.
I just happened to select this video to introduce a friend to Curious Droid, telling her "Even if you don't care for the content, it's worth clicking on these videos just to see what wild shirt the narrator will be wearing".
So we tuned in and she replied "Meh...". 😅 😂 🤣 ...... Paul, you let me down at a critical moment!
Your videos are always excellent.
Congrats on 1 million subs! Hard work pays off! Been watching you since 50k, aerospace engineer myself.