My Uncle Joe was on Skylab 2, as the first medical doc in space, to repair Skylab and study spaces effect on the human body. He was also the capcom on Apollo 13. Incredible stories. Thanks for a great summation of the life of one of the first livable places in space.
That’s gotta be the legend that was Joe Kerwin. Astronaut Group 4. He was on capcom when CMP Jack Swigert uttered “ok Joe”, as first voice confirmation that Apollo 13 got thru re entry. Legend
Thank you for covering Skylab! My grandfather, Al German, lead the team that "invented the space potty" (as he put it). As the story goes; he brought home a mock up scale model of the contraption one day, and placed it proudly on the dining room table. Grandma promptly gasped and told him to "get that thing off my table!". :D He also worked testing aircraft engines, and on the THOR missile project, but he was most remembered around our family for "inventing the space potty". A full scale mock-up of Skylab, and its potty, can be seen on display at the Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL. Thanks for bringing back some good memories. :D Ben
I think it's awesome that the brilliant engineer who invented the high tech zero gravity toilet calls it a "space potty" lol. I mean, he invented it so he can call it whatever he wants!
Yup, back in the 90's there was something in IT called "Mir Syndrome" - which meant you pc broke on average every 3 minutes :D, and yet it prevailed...
Absolutely, definitely do one on Mir for balance. Especially the fire that almost destroyed it and the occasional crash . Now I think, why not do one on the Soyuz? It's almost 70 years old and still used as an escape capsule on the ISS? Some of that old soviet cold war tech was pretty good even if the government wasn't
@@ploppyboothanger4648 Absolutely, Soyuz is an awesome spacecraft and the rocket it launches on can be directly traced back to the R-7 that put Yuri Gagarin in space.
It should also be noted that Skylab featured the largest open space ever to achieve orbit. Unlike everything else before or since, Skylab's main workspace was quite roomy. The ISS and Mir are bigger, but they're also more cramped.
True... the S-IVB the workshop was constructed from had a 260 inch diameter, which meant the inside of the station walls were about 21.6 feet apart. Can you imagine how HUGE the S-II stage workshop would have been?? It was 360 inches or 33 feet in diameter! The Skylab workshop was even longer than it was around, though they divided it into two "stories" with a triangular metal-grid "floor". The astronauts were issued special shoes that had a triangular locking lug attached to the bottom of the shoes so they could put their foot against the grate, push the lug through the triangular holes, and turn their foot slightly to lock themselves to the floor, so they wouldn't drift away from their work. Not sure how much they actually used them though, as most of the time you can see them in sock feet. The station was originally equipped with a pole running the length of the station's main living area down the middle, because some people worried that an astronaut might accidentally "drift" to the middle of the station, where he couldn't touch anything, and be "stuck" there-- with nothing to push off of to send him to the nearest wall or anything, he'd be just essentially "drifting" along with the station in microgravity, flailing helplessly (since air doesn't give enough resistance to "swim" to the nearest wall. The crew reported that this "problem" didn't really exist, and it was decided they could remove the pole and stow it, which they did, since it basically got in the way of their movement around the station. Like the Salyuts and later Mir and ISS, it was soon discovered that basically anything "floating free" or "lost" inside the station would, sooner or later, end up stuck to the air conditioning system intake screen-- air flow throughout the station from the air scrubbers would create currents that would simply gently but inexorably pull things along with the air back to the inlet filter, where it would simply drift up against the filter screen and rest there, like leaves washed up against a storm sewer grate after a rain. There was a "multiple docking adapter" (MDA) with an equipment section and airlock welded onto the front end of the workshop (the converted S-IVB stage's former hydrogen fuel tank) which housed most of the station's electrical equipment and the controls for the Apollo Telescope Mount, which was the large four-winged "windmill" structure atop a foldable metal gantry attached to the front of the space station. It was actually pivoted to the side once in orbit-- for launch it was actually inline above the MDA under the disposable nose cone during flight through the atmosphere. There was a Gemini capsule door installed in one side of the MDA to act as an airlock door, to allow the astronauts to depressurize this smaller area and perform spacewalks outside to service the telescope and retrieve samples exposed to space, among other things. The two docking ports for the Apollo spacecraft were on the front end of the MDA, and to the opposite side 90 degrees from the end, which was the contingency docking port in the event a rescue Apollo had to be sent up to the station. At the opposite end of the main workshop, opposite the MDA welded to the top of the stage, and directly below the "floor" at the bottom of the station, was the curved common bulkhead separating the former hydrogen tank from the top of the oxygen tank. The oxygen tank was unpressurized, open to the vacuum of space, and had a "waste airlock" welded into the center of the top of the common bulkhead, in the middle of the lower level triangular grate "floor" installed in the former hydrogen tank when it was converted into the workshop. This allowed the hydrogen tank to remain pressurized with breathable air for the astronauts, while allowing them access to the tank for waste disposal. Basically when everything was thrown away, like dirty clothes, empty food containers, used medical supplies or experiment packaging or any other waste you can think of, it was placed into the waste airlock like a trash can, and the top lid closed. The bottom of the waste airlock was another hatch, which would be remotely operated and opened into the interior of the oxygen tank, and the waste materials would drift out of the airlock (helped along somehow, possibly with a jet of air to "flush" it out of the waste airlock) into the interior of the former oxygen tank, which acted basically as a septic tank/trash dumpster for the station. Air entering the tank could escape through vents into space, but the trash was trapped inside the tank, just floating around in there. This was fine for an 'expendable" space station, which wasn't intended for "indefinite use" or a "long lifetime" but it wasn't suitable for a long-term space station, because eventually the "trash dumpster" would fill up and then you're left with a big problem-- how to get rid of waste. Clothes aren't washed in space (not yet anyway) and so basically everything the astronauts wear is thrown away when it gets dirty. So are dishes and food packaging and most everything else they use when its been used. That's a lot of waste material over time! The Soviets solved this issue when they adapted their Soyuz spacecraft into an unmanned freighter/tanker resupply spacecraft, the Progress. Progress would launch unmanned with tons of food, supplies, clothes, and experiments for the cosmonauts to use aboard the station, in a pressurized front section, atop a set of propellant tanks and plumbing to automatically attach to the Salyut station's propulsion system when it docked to the aft end of the station, to refuel the reboost propulsion system on the station. The cosmonauts would unpack all the supplies, and then pack the Progress with their trash, and use it as a "dumpster" until it was pretty well full, at which point it would be commanded to undock and reenter the atmosphere and burn up, disposing of their garbage. Progress could automatically rendezvous and dock with the Salyut stations, a capability the Soviets developed basically back in the 60's. The US wouldn't create a resupply vehicle until the Commercial Cargo program developed them for ISS, and didn't develop automated docking capability until Spacex's Crew Dragon spacecraft. The US has only experimented with orbital refueling. Basically anything "supplemental" the crew would need on Skylab that wasn't packed aboard it beforehand, was brought up in the crew's Apollo spacecraft itself, along with anything they took back to Earth (like samples, experiments, etc). Skylab would have needed some sort of resupply/dumpster vehicle if it were ever going to be a long-term space station. Later! OL J R :)
When Skylab was predicted to crash to the earth my coworker had a Skylab re-entry party. To encourage it to Crash in Minster Ohio they made a "Female Skylab". The main body was made of galvanized garbage cans and the solar panels were old screen doors. I told my coworker that it was too ugly to attract the Skylab. His response was that Skylab had been alone for a LONG time and they predicted that they would have the only female Skylab around. It didn't work, but it was nice try
@Suq Madiq it was designed to separate cryogenic liquids (liquid oxygen and hydrogen fuel) and vapors in zero-G, to vent the vapors so the tanks don't explode.
GPS was originally developed and used by the US military alone. But after the Soviets accidentally shot down a civilian aircraft due to a navigation error, US president Ronald Reagan decided GPS could prevent future mishaps and made it available to the public. Other countries then used said technology and developed their own GPS systems. But never forget, the US gave up it's military trump card for the safety of everyone as GPS greatly helped Aviation (among plenty of other uses) navigation across the globe. So no matter who or where you are, if you've ever used GPS, you can thank the US for making it available in the first place. You're welcome. 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
No other space station was ever nearly as roomy as Skylab. It's a shame, that it came down, before it could be rescued by boosting it's orbit, as it could have been added to, updated, and been the heart of a really mega space station.
@@tomamberg5361 (looking at articles) yup - they were deemed non-essential by the Nevada gov (technically true but short sighted). They are still in business holding the patents and fabrication if SpaceX wants to make an acquisition. The LOPG uses the concept as well. They're on hiatus but technically not 'defunct' - more like on-hold (although they really need a contract to be viable).
@@mgabrysSF If you read the "Glassdoor . com" employee reviews of the company, it sounds like it had major problems before the current situation. It looks like Sierra Nevada Corporation - which is executing a lot of active manned and cargo contracts - has an inflatable project as well. www.americaspace.com/2020/08/13/sierra-nevada-makes-progress-on-life-inflatable-habitat-for-lunar-mars-missions/
Skylab fell on me (when 9 years old, living in Esperance, in Western Australia 1979). I was in grade 4, and the next day kids were all bringing in bit's of ash stuff (from their roofs) for 'show and tell' in primary school. I believe the Esperance Shire council made NASA pay a $400 littering fee Lol. My mum got outta bed at midnight and saw it explode - most debris fell in the ocean/bay (and still there).
@@CosRacecar Well, that doesn't suprise me. He was a Nazi. Even worse: He was a member of the SS. But when the Americans found him and brought him to the US, they shredded all his SS-documents, to 'forget' that he was ever a member of these bastards....😡😡😡
Simon/Olly things in low earth orbit loose altitude not because of gravity, but because of drag. Even at that height there is a tiny amount of drag so items in orbit actually loose speed which reduces their orbit
Uneven density of the Earth can alter orbits which could have increased the overall amount of drag experienced. This is what makes orbiting the moon result in decaying orbits.
@@WNxJohnDoe correct but what Luke said has a greater effect. And Skylab deorbited sooner than expected due to a solar storm swelling the atmosphere and increasing the drag temporarily. Once Skylab had slowed just a little, it was enough to deorbit it much sooner than expected. A shuttle mission that was going to be launched to re boost the station was therefore not going to be ready in time.
Thank you Simon for insisting that you get paid to learn, lol This was a great video as all of yours are. May I suggest for a Megaprojects episode, either the construction of the Areceibo Observatory and/or the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array Radio Observatory.
xD Simon adding a bit of the Blaze humor is what a lot of his channels needed. Not comical and informational but have a bit of humor added in here and there to keep the viewers attention
I always thought Skylab was so cool because it had such a large open space inside so the astronauts could fly around inside and do all kinds of stunts. They always looked like they were having a good time flying around like super man. I also thought it was such a waist hardly being used, being it had so much more life left in her.
Simon, I thought at first you made a mistake not calling this channel megastructures, but the word "project" opens you up to pretty much anything large scale. You da man.
As a kid at the time that Skylab was orbiting, I had written to NASA for as much information about it that they could give me. They sent me several press kits over time and I shared them with my classes at school. One item was a huge (3'x4') plastic coated double-sided poster that I hung on the wall of my bedroom. I tried to find plastic model kits of it at the hobby shop, but never found any... same thing with the Viking Mars landers.
There wasn't really a mutiny, that was overhyped yellow propaganda. They were over scheduled and working as normal but the idiots at NASA kept trying to give them more work than hours in the day, and one day they forgot to turn on the com system for a few hours while they were working. Nasa engineers on the ground freaked out when they couldn't talk to them and when the Astronauts said they had been busy working on projects and got pissy, so the Astronauts told them off. This story got repeated and turned in to the mutiny story which isn't true, they were doing their ****ing jobs which is impossible to do when someone gives you 25 hours worth of work to do in a day not to mention interrupting you every five minutes.
@@Steven_Edwards Didn't that lead to NASA reducing their workload with the end result that they actually got more work done when they weren't overburdened?
@@romanklaeger5397 You're welcome. It is an often repeated story, I think because the ground crew was upset at the airing of grievances session/come to Jesus moment that happened after communication was re-established which was really only one orbit or 90 minutes they were out of contact. I get why ground control would be pissy, I am sure the engineers and flight director on the ground were freaking out, but I am also sure they had other monitoring of the crew vital signs and telemetry so they knew everyone was still alive/breathing and whatnot. What happened was they took turns listening to ground control given it was months long mission and one day they were so busy, they simply mixed up who's turn it was supposed to be listening. When they realized their mistake, NASA went Apeshit, so they told them off politely, which of course made things worse and the story became hyped up to sell newsprint and other dead trees. In reality Skylab 4 (or 3 if you follow NASA's renumbering since they only counted man missions) was the most successful mission achieving like 150% of the goals/objectives that were originally set out because they loaded them up with so much extra stuff.
@@CosRacecar right, they actually has the most productive Skylab mission, as both they and the mission planners learned how to optimize and get the most amount of work out of a fixed amount of time. A lot of people say that they were grounded after that and that NASA wouldn't let them fly again, however you have to keep in mind that there was a long window of time between the end of Apollo and the beginning of the shuttle program and so there were many astronauts that didn't fly again after the Apollo era.
The fact Skylab was in service for as long as it was with so many issues as a result of the launch is to me one of the most impressive things about the station.
I remember the time, and news talk of Sky Lab, but it crashed on my 7th birthday. So nope, no memory of the event. :) Come on I was 7, that is an epic birthday!
I have had the privilege of knowing four of the Skylab astronauts (Lousma, Carr, Gibson and Pogue) and had the opportunity to learn firsthand of the highs and lows of living onboard Skylab. The workload was incredibly heavy, especially after the second crew had accomplished 150% of their stated mission objectives (mission commander Alan Bean was constantly asking Mission Control to send up more work), Subsequently, the third crew was saddled with an unrealistic workload and finally had to inform Mission Control that they needed a break. In spite of all of this, the knowledge gained was fantastic. The first crew performed the first repair spacewalk in history and saved the multi-million dollar program (the repair EVAs of Skylab 2 and 3 would make a fascinating video).
thank you sooo much for doing this video i absolutely loved it. its wonderful that you do video requests from the comments , most only do patreon requests, any thing space related automatically is a great topic
I remember being a school child in a small Australian country town when Skylab was falling.. we had Skylab drills.. no joke.. like hiding under an old wooden desk was actually going to save me from a giant piece of space junk 😆
Great video! Brought back a lot of old memories and learned some new facts. I was a total Apollo and Space geek in the 70's . The night Skylab crashed back to earth, I stayed up till 2am (US CDT) listening to the radio on where it crashed. At that time, they were guessing the India Ocean or western Australia but no one was sure. The next morning I got up and looked out the window to see a huge piece of twisted metal in our backyard. Thinking it was part of Skylab, I ran into the yard to see. It was a home turbine ventilator from our roof. A bad storm over the night had blown it off. :) For a moment, it was awesome to find part of a NASA vehicle. Only to find out it was something so common. I had to bent this thing back into working condition and put it back in place... this time with screws. :D
@@ianmorris7485 that it was, also the fine was only issued as a joke by the local council, the remnants of the station can be seen at the Esperance Municipal Museum, visited it when I was a kid and got to see it up close which helped begin my interest into all things space.
My father Arthur Steinmetz worked on the skylab program. Thank you for this great video that brought me back to when I was a child listening to my dad tell me about how interesting and amazing this project was.
My grandfather purchased an old 50k sq ft hanger for his air conditioning company to house from. Corpus Christi, TX .. right next to the old Cabaniss field. As kids, we loved sneaking thru the fence into the retired airfield (back in the '80s) and checking out the larger retired hangers. On the top floor of one, I remember we found a LOT of old teletype printouts from Skylab dated '78 ... just left behind all over the floor. Tons of yellow paper printouts describing day to day useless communications. I guess it was a backup communication post. But was a sweet find as kids. Today Cabaniss field is a park hosting a go-kart track, about a dozen soccer fields, and a scale RC plane airport even! And some old hangers are still intact, but restricted from visiting due to age and neglect.
Western Australian here, this video reminded me that I have seen parts of skylab that were/are on display in a small musem here! It was mostly sheet metal and insulation from memory...
Skylab is also the setting of perhaps the first space mutiny. Due to the incredible expense of space man hours, astronauts at the time were pushed to work themselves to their breaking points. While this is sustainable on short missions, such as the missions to the moon, it is unsustainable for a more permanent and long term living environment like a space station. So the crew of Skylab 4, fed up with ground control's bullying, decided to shut off communication for a while, and spend a few hours relaxing. Once the crew turned communication back on, ground control and the crew had a discussion about precisely how much work was acceptable and sustainable for an astronaut. This has been a case study for future space station missions. Regardless of the cost of space man hours, astronauts are still people, and so, cannot be treated as mindless robots. Some down time is occasionally needed for recuperation. This is even more important on modern space station missions that usually last around 6 months, or in the case of Valery Polyakov, a record setting 437 days. The only incident I can think of prior to this that might be considered a "mutiny" would be the Apollo 13 astronauts ripping out their bio monitors because they were tired of medical pinging them about their out of whack vital signs.
Skylab was hardly cramped. In many ways it was more roomy than the ISS, especially in the ISS initial years. Skylab had a wardroom and more voluminous sleeping quarters than ISS. The upper level had much area to float about and run circles around the bulkheads. It was a truly remarkable vehicle.
My favorite is the exercise ring. The reason it sticks out from the wall like that is to simulate gravity better. At normal jogging pace, a person will experience significant centripetal acceleration without needing heavy or specialized equipment.
Simon: What videos do you want me to do. Internet: Yes Also, I like how he said the ISS video didnt do well and yet this video is doing better than any other he posted today from his other channels lol.
My granddad worked for MD on Skylab. He used to go over the blueprints and operations manual with me and describe why they made different design decisions. Thanks or the video!
as a West Australian I knew about Skylab spreading itself out over 1000kms from Esperance to nowhere. I did not know the extent of how awesomely cool it was when it was still in space. :)
I was 16 when Skylab de-orbited. I recall the announcement that it was going to land in western Australia. My mom was concerned for the Aussies and my dad told her that no one would get hurt because landing in Western Australia would be like landing in the middle of Nevada.
I'm from the USA but worked in Dampier Australia a few months after SkyLab de-orbited and some if it landed in North West Australia. There were a few pieces displayed in town. I remember a ripped and distorted piece of what appeared to be a small metal tank (under a meter). It was attached to a stone pedistal with a plaque and displayed at the entrance to a bank. Also there were souvineeres for sale, mostly consisting of a few strands of insulation in engraved plastic cubes. I bought one, ($10-15 Australian dollars?). I wish I could find it now and if it ever surfaces, I'd send it to Amy Shira Teitel, Vintage Space.
Would highly recommend a video on either the Columbia Basin Project, or the Hanford Site, both in Washington, USA. The Columbia Basin Project is the largest water reclamation project in the US, and supplies water and power all over Eastern Washington. At it's center is the Grand Coulee dam, which was the largest concrete structure ever built until the Three Gorges Dam surpassed it. The Hanford Site is one of the key parts of the Manhattan project and was where they created the Plutonium and shaped it into the cores used in various tests and atomic bombs.
"The emptiness of Western Australia might be the best place for it" About all that Western Australia is good for. That, and profitable dirt. Source: I've been to Perth.
@@--enyo-- I was gonna reply with something about our stunning beaches, but I realised that beautiful white sand beaches are basically still just valuable dirt 😂
@@ONEDVSDVIT Calling a place shit based upon Port Hedland and Tom Price is hardly fair. Two of the most shittiest places in the world, let alone in Western Australia :)
@@tomtheplummer7322 That is awesome, maybe you could help our "boi" with some info if he decides to do an episode on the greatest skyscraper ever built.
As far as a 4th crew visiting Skylab, it is true that there was plenty of air and water to sustain another mission, but the food supply was pretty much exhausted. By the time the 3rd crew had finished their flight, Skylab had been occupied for 6 months. Towards the end of the Skylab 4 mission, it had been considered to extend the flight by 10 days, but was it nixed because there would not have been enough food. If another crew had come up for a month or more they would have had to bring their own food supply.
It wasn't a mutiny. That's a wildly overblown rumor started by bored journalists looking for a story. What happened was NASA was overworking the astronauts, handing them far more work than they could ever get done in 24 hours, let alone with the calls every 90 minutes and 8 hours mandated sleep. So what the three astronauts did was they took turns listening to their morning briefing on their next 25 hours of work to do that day so that the other two could try and get more work done to accommodate NASA as best they could. What happened that day was a simple mix-up of whose turn it was to listen to NASA that morning :) The ground crew freaked out, and CAPCOM "read them the riot act" about it, at which point the astronauts read NASA the riot act about overworking them. The two groups sat down and rebalanced the work load so that the crew weren't working ludicrous hours just to meet NASA's schedule. All three of them were promoted into management positions in NASA in later years.
It's not "the natural pull of the earth's gravity" that explains orbital decay. If you are at orbital speed, there needs to be something to reduce that speed to generate orbital decay. Space at any point is not a perfect vacuum, and in low earth orbit, there is quite a bit more drag than you would have further away from earth, and this tends to be the strongest force generating orbital decay in lower orbits. Other forces can also lead to orbital decay over time, though I'm not aware that they would have been significant for skylab.
Don't care for the title: "The First Attempt at a Space Station". Attempt? No. We had Skylab up there for many years. It was successful. It just got old and had to be burned up in the atmosphere. Should just leave out the "attempt" part.
The Soviet Salyut stations were actually more useful for the development of future space stations. The series of Salyut stations into longer and more complex missions led to the first station that had multiple docking ports (allowing two crewed vehicles to dock at either end) and subsequently the development of reboost capability, using rockets to raise its altitude to prevent uncontrolled reentry and prolong the stations lifetime. This also led to the development of the Progress automated space freighter/tanker spacecraft, to haul up supplies in a pressurized module to resupply the station's crews with more and better food, clothing, and new equipment and experiments, as well as developing a tanker and automated fuel line coupling system in the docking system to allow the tanks on the Progress to refuel the tanks in the Salyut's propulsion system. Of course Progress is still in use today, 50 years after its invention for Salyut and subsequent use resupplying Mir. The addition of extra modules by docking them end-to-end was also pioneered on Salyut and would play heavily in the design of Mir, using a multidirectional docking adapter that allowed extra modules to be launched and docked radially around the adapter as well as axially (longitudinally) as had been done on Salyut. Space repair was also immensely furthered by the revival of Salyut 7 after it had "gone dark" due to a malfunction and sat frozen for months on end while a repair mission was planned and trained for. This, along with Skylab's improvised repair mission in 1973 after its ill-fated station launch and subsequent damage basically laid the groundwork for modern spacewalking in-space repairs. Later! OL J R :)
It would be really cool to do one on the Great Observatories. Most people know of the Hubble Space Telescope, but the equally impactful and interesting telescopes of Chandra, Spitzer, and Compton telescopes.
Oh, I remember when it came down. I was working on the 53rd floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, and it was nervous time throughout the building. Many employees on the upper levels were beyond panicked. That was the day when everyone watched the skies.
My main memory of Skylab is the (still made) 'Swing Away' can opener designed for use on the station, and advertised as such. It really is a great product, as can openers go.
Nice summery but you should have touched on the crew of Skylab 4's day of "Mutiny." After weeks of never ending work they took a day off and refused to answer ground controls communication. NASA HQ adjusted the work load for the crew who were reaching a psychical and mental breaking point. Lesson learned astronauts on the ISS are given some down time mixed in with their heavy work load to keep them from burning out.
It wasn't a mutiny. That's a wildly overblown rumor started by bored journalists looking for a story. What the three astronauts did to manage the workload better was they took turns listening to their morning briefing from NASA on their next 25 hours of work to do that day so that the other two could try and get more work done. What happened that day was a simple mix-up of whose turn it was to listen to NASA that morning :) The ground crew freaked out, and CAPCOM "read them the riot act" about it, at which point the astronauts read NASA the riot act about overworking them. The two groups sat down and rebalanced the work load so that the crew weren't working ludicrous hours just to meet NASA's schedule. All three of them were promoted into management positions in NASA in later years.
I was able to see and touch some of the fuel cells from SkyLab that landed in western Australia, when I did a training course at the Australian Counter Disaster Collage at Mt Macedon in Victoria Australia, just a bit north of Melbourne, thanks for the reminders it was a great time for space and learning..
I met the man who calculated the mathematics used for Skylabs launch. Roger was very matter of fact " it was easy, Newtonian physics", all done with a slide rule. I was still very impressed.
Boeing Starliner launch failed- I feel like this is an important 'mega-project' that deserves the right attention and analysis that this channel provides.
My favorite experiment on Skylab was an experiment thought of by grade school kids to see if a spider could make a web in 0 g's. After several attempts it did proving that there's more than instinct going on with animals.
Love your space themed videos!!! As a boy of 10 growing up in a small town called Crystal River which is due west of the Cape, my mother took my sister and I out to the end of our street to watch Apollo 15 lift off. In the early 80's, I drove across the state to watch the shuttle lift off and in 76 my father took us to the cape for a tour. We were even allowed in the assembly building since they were retrofitting it for the shuttle, that place is HUGE!!! Being a Florida boy, we all followed the space program quite closely and even felt somewhat connected to it :-)
Minor quibble alert! At one point in discussing the astronauts having input into their food options you say it was following complaints with shuttle missions, but there were no shuttle missions while Skylab was in operation as that reusable equipment program was still in the development stage. These were food complaints raised during the Apollo missions.
Instant like! This is such an under appreciated project! The "negotiations" about working time and conditions are still relavent to work done in space today. The (insanely) heavy schedule of experiments and work burned out the crew and they famously took and extended "unscheduled break" to recover moral. Since then missions no longer try to cram every waking hour with activities.
It wasn't "unscheduled". The "actual mutiny" was caused by the astronaut who was supposed to listen to NASA's morning 25-more-hours-of-work speech forgetting it was his turn. NASA freaked out, and when they came back around CAPCOM "read them the riot act" about it, at which point the astronauts read *NASA* the riot act about overscheduling them, and NASA agreed to give them the next day off while they figured out how to rebalance the work schedule. Also, thank you for being aware that it wasn't an actual mutiny. There are a ton of other comments asking about that.
I find these videos more intriguing than most of the others even though you dont make as much its appreciated that you scratch my intellectual itch every now and then with space stuff
