first American station
Skylab was the first and, at the time of the attack, America’s only national space station. It was created on the basis of the fuselage of the upper stage of the Saturn-1B rocket: aluminum walls were covered with thermal insulation, and living and working spaces were placed inside. On May 14, 1973, the station was launched into orbit aboard the Saturn V rocket, which sent American astronauts to the Moon.
The main difference between Skylab and Soviet stations was its massive weight of 90 tons. This record would only be broken after the introduction of additional modules for Mir in the 1990s, which increased the total weight to 125 tonnes. Skylab’s large size allowed it to house many scientific instruments, including the Apollo solar observatory. It occupied a section of the station where X-shaped solar panels were installed. The equipment made it possible to simultaneously observe in the ultraviolet, visible and X-ray ranges; The latter is particularly important because cosmic X-rays do not pass through the atmosphere.
Skylab may seem like a strange place to rebel because of its comfortable living conditions. The station had a large volume, since the internal diameter of the compartments reached six meters (for the ISS – no more than four). This even allowed the astronauts to run in a circle inside the station: centrifugal force kept their legs in contact with the walls. Spacious compartments did not put pressure on the psyche, made it easier to do physical training in space, and also provided enough space for conducting experiments.
Overall, the Skylab cabin looked nothing like typical cramped space stations and resembled a small two-story house from the inside. The station featured the first space shower in history, consisting of a water injection system, a circular curtain, and a “vacuum cleaner” for droplets.
During the station’s existence, it was visited by three manned missions. In the first (Skylab-2), astronauts remained in orbit for 28 days, mainly correcting errors in the operation of the unmanned (Skylab-1) to launch the station into space. Later, during the flight, one of the solar panels burst, the second jammed, and the anti-meteor shield, which played a role in protecting the station from the sun, was also disconnected. As a result, the temperature inside rose to 50°C and there was no power supply, so the first thing the crew did was to open the canopy and manually turn on the solar panel. Later, astronauts conducted dozens of experiments and took thousands of photographs of the Earth, the Sun and space. Additionally, participants of the Skylab 2 mission were the first to return alive from the orbital station.
The Skylab 3 crew spent 59 days on the station, continuing repairs and a number of scientific experiments. First of all, American doctors, like their Soviet colleagues, tried to learn about the body’s adaptation to long-term exposure to weightlessness. For another interesting experiment, two female cross spiders were brought to the station. With difficulty, they managed to weave a web, and it was very different from what this species produces on Earth.
The last “rebel” crew, Skylab 4, remained in orbit for 84 days and unwittingly became participants in a natural psychological experiment.
Work 16 hours a day
Like previous missions, Skylab 4 had three astronauts: Gerald Carr, William Pogue, and Edward Gibson. The first two were military pilots (Pogue managed to gain combat experience in the Korean War), while the last was a physicist and engineer. Shortly after the launch, labor problems began: Pogue tried to hide from Mission Control the seasickness that occurred in zero gravity, and the astronauts’ chief of staff, Alan Shepard, severely reprimanded the crew for this. Once at the station, astronauts had to carry and put aside thousands of items: food, film, magnetic tape and tools. This took a lot of effort considering the delay in schedule due to seasickness.
Skylab 4’s schedule was very tight because NASA ran out of Apollo spacecraft to carry the crew and would have to wait until the Shuttle was completed for the next mission. Shortly before launch, some tasks for the astronauts were added to the plan, and the crew was not prepared for them. People in orbit learned about many additional studies during radio conversations with Earth, and two meters of written instructions arrived on the teletype every day. Astronauts often complained about being overworked and not having enough time to rest.
Pogue in his interview for the book “The Challenges of Space Exploration” said about it this way: “You had to carry equipment, then report, then move to another position, see what to do next, and eventually there was a feeling that you were pressed against the wall. There was no time to grasp the movement from one point of the station to another and rebuild for another experiment. We cannot do our job professionally when we are moved around in different corners without the opportunity to mentally prepare for the job, let alone the preparation activities for the experiment!”
As a result, six weeks after launch, tensions between the astronauts and the MCC reached their peak. “We will never work 16 hours a day for 84 days on Earth, and we should not be expected to do that here in space.” — Carr told mission leadership (With certificate former NASA employee Hamish Lindsay, author of the research book “Apollo’s Path to the Moon”).
As a result, the crew notified Earth that they were taking the day off and turned off radio communications. The press called this act of disobedience the “Skylab strike”. Astronauts’ day off full looking out the porthole of the wardroom, taking a shower, or just lying down doing nothing (suspended in weightlessness).
Following this incident, Mission Control agreed to reduce the astronauts’ workload and complied with the request to not assign missions after 20:00. The command decided that his request for a day off was due to depression or a nervous breakdown, but Pogue shallow these guesses: he and the other crew needed time to look out the window and think.
As a result, the remaining six weeks of the flight were much more enjoyable and comfortable. The reduction in payload affected the results obtained, but not much: for example, astronauts took more than 75 thousand images of the Sun and the first space photographs of a solar explosion at its onset. Additionally, the crew broke the orbital survival record, which was broken only by the Salyut-6 cosmonauts in 1978.
Results
The astronaut attack gave new insight into the psychological aspect of long space flights. NASA made several findings: it began allowing more time for rest and encouraging healthy, honest communication between crew and ground mission specialists. It was also decided that the newcomers would no longer be sent into space alone: all three participants in Skylab 4 had never been in orbit before. Notably, every ISS crew includes at least one veteran from previous flights.
It is interesting that some researchers completely deny the fact of the strike. The legend of the rebellion according to one version appeared The incident that resonated with the public due to the overlap of two events: the permission given to the astronauts on December 26 and the disruption in radio communication that occurred on the same days. It cannot be ruled out that the shutdown was caused by unintentional events, but some space historians believe that NASA management did not want to acknowledge the (in their opinion) unpleasant event.
The fate of the Skylab station was not just to wait for the Shuttle, which was ready for flight in 1981. On July 11, 1979, the device burned up during an uncontrolled descent from orbit: solar activity caused the density of the atmosphere to increase, which slowed the station down and took it out of service ahead of schedule. At that time, the United States did not have a ship to raise the station’s orbit. Instead of Skylab, NASA began using a small temporary station carried in the Shuttle’s cargo hold.