Secrets of the Universe (2022–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - Skylab: NASA's First Space Station - full transcript

Secrets of the Universe -
Skylab.NASAs.First.Space.Station

Today, we take the fact that humans

can live and work in space for granted.

We take for granted doing space walks.

We take for granted that we can repair

a Hubble Space Telescope.

We take for granted that we can build

an International Space Station.

But we had nothing in our toolbox

to let us know for sure

that we could do that before Skylab.



The history of how humans

came to live in space

is full of ingenuity, passion, and sacrifice.

The first pioneers to live off-planet

are often forgotten.

This is their story.

Skylab was just such a frontier moment.

It transformed our understanding of what is possible,

what can be accomplished in human space flight.

It's an amazing story.

It's a story unlike any other.

If man goes to the Moon,

and then comes back to Earth,

then what will man do?



Is he just going to sit down and say,

"Hurray, yay, we made it"?

Or is he going to say, "There are a lot of things

that can be done in space.

Now let's go get together,

find out how to do that."

After the success of the Apollo Moon program,

its mastermind, German rocket engineer Wernher von Braun,

sets his sights on a lifelong ambition,

a permanent human presence in space.

We expect to build a giant satellite station

1,075 miles above the surface of the Earth,

a place there to study the universe

and provide a launching site for the exploration

of the universe, the planets and the Moon.

Von Braun has his eyes on the stars.

It would become known as the Von Braun paradigm:

achieve access to space, learn to work and live in space,

and then to move on to other heavenly bodies.

And it's really that flip that makes,

you know, people like Kennedy,

enamored with von Braun.

He's a salesman.

He knows what he needs to do to get this done.

He's got a blueprint for space travel

and turn something that had been science fiction

into more of a scientific reality.

So people understood the importance of a space station.

Once we've used these systems,

once we've used this technology to go to the Moon,

let's use it to establish a foothold in Earth orbit as well.

The dream was Apollo without end.

So now, this huge national investment

in putting humans on the Moon

has also become a huge national investment

in developing the foundations of a space station program.

My gracious, this universe is going to get really huge

and it's going to get populated.

So, how can I then be a part of that?

We're going to put up NASA's first space station.

Von Braun's first step

is to suggest using Apollo-era hardware

to build an orbiting laboratory.

He calls it Skylab.

Skylab was the next logical step.

Let's take the technology from Apollo

and let's apply it in new and diverse ways.

On the one end, you're going to have

the Apollo command and service module,

the spacecraft to transport the astronauts.

This becomes your Skylab taxi.

At the other end of the Skylab,

you're seeing the large cylinder.

This was the rocket stage

that becomes the living quarters,

that becomes the house.

The other piece is the Apollo Telescope Mount,

cameras, the telescopes for Skylab's observatory,

and that has its heritage in the Lunar Lander.

Those three things give you the story of

how the moon landings turned into a space station.

It was such a stretch of the imagination.

It was sheer fun,

but a foil of a lot of work.

Skylab, this country's first space station,

will be operating in Earth orbit for about eight months.

It will serve as working and living quarters

for three sets of astronaut crews,

for flights from 28 to 56 days.

The most important immediate thing we need to know is,

can man live and work effectively and normally

in space for the long periods of time?

We need to know what happens to man

and weightlessness, whether it's dangerous.

If it's dangerous,

what countermeasures can we apply?

So that we'll get through those days

and perhaps in the future, fly very long missions.

Skylab was a very ambitious project.

Over the course of its life,

the plan was for it to accomplish great science

and to learn about the microgravity environment.

How do you prepare for weightlessness?

If you're going to work and be in space,

how do you handle tools that you're going to work with?

And so one of the guys said,

"Did you ever watch your wife swim underwater?"

We said , "You bet ya."

He said, "What did her hair do?

It just floated.

It just floated in the water.

That may be a clue to weightlessness.

The engineers build an experimental tank

to try and replicate the conditions of space.

Von Braun's secretary was named Bonnie.

So I call Bonnie and I said,

"Bonnie, we have what we think something

that the boss would be interested in seeing."

She says, "Dr. Von Braun would like

to get inside a pressure suit

and go underwater himself."

This is the guy.

You bet we were nervous,

but we just knew that we thought

we were onto something.

And so did Von Braun.

Von Braun came and says, "Ya, ya, it is good.

It is good, keep going, keep going."

We now had a functioning kind of environment.

If you can train underwater, as long as you have air,

then you're good to work for an extended period of time

to simulate the weightlessness environment of space.

We were now developing a real asset

as far as training.

The place is NASA's

Marshall Space Flight Center,

Huntsville, Alabama.

Located here is a 75-foot diameter tank

filled to a depth of 40 feet

with a million and a half gallons of water.

It's called the Neutral Buoyancy Simulator.

Placed inside the tank are full-size sections

of the Skylab Space Station.

The plan is to repurpose the third stage

of a Saturn V rocket that launched Apollo

into a huge cylindrical spacecraft

with a habitable volume three times

the size of a Greyhound bus.

A simple idea, but fraught with challenges.

How do you make a space station livable?

How do we need to establish that

so human beings can be comfortable, productive,

and to accomplish the job that we need them to do?

We need to worry about more than just

the keeping them alive.

We need to worry about keeping them sane,

keeping them happy.

They've got to have a window.

You cannot send these people up there and expect them

to not be able to look out the window, okay.

Not great from an engineering standpoint,

but we're going to poke a hole in the side.

From a culinary perspective,

it is a fine dining establishment.

Skylab was certainly the high point of anything

that they had flown thus far.

I think there are some things with Skylab

that have not been matched since.

As Skylab neared completion,

the Soviet Union caught the Americans cold

and launched their own space station,

Salyut, before their rivals.

Salyut was a big technological achievement,

a flying laboratory, equipped with

more than two tons of scientific instruments.

And it was the home of the crew of three cosmonauts.

So that was the first time that cosmonauts

actually lived in space.

Part of the cosmonauts' mission

was to rekindle Soviet pride in space

after losing the lunar race.

One of the benefits from Salyut

was the ability to show TV.

Entire Soviet community was attached

to the first crew about first orbital station.

Now, cosmonauts were basically visible

by everybody every day.

Now, they had their own heroes

new pages in space history.

The mission last for 24 days.

Dobrovolsky, Volkov, and Patsayev

spent more time in space

compared with any human being on Earth.

They were excited because that was end of

the most successful space mission

in the Soviet cosmonautics,

and they were coming back as heroes.

They didn't know what was happening in the spacecraft.

And from that perspective, recovery crews

were ready to act for any type of events.

They reported to seeing the spacecraft

opening the parachutes.

They run as fast as they can.

A few of them knocked on the window

and there was no response.

They open the hatch.

They got a shock.

They saw bodies.
Three lifeless bodies.

Covered by blood,

no movement, with no signs of life.

They laid them on the ground.

Dobrovolsky was still warm.

No, it was a national tragedy.

They would lie in each state for several days

and they tried to exploit their heroes,

so it was a mournful tragedy.

The loss of three men who were almost the members

of families of very common Soviet citizens for 24 days.

That was shock, absolute shock,

spread across the Soviet Union

and all other countries across the world.

In the United States as well,

President Nixon asked directly,

astronaut Thomas Stafford,

he represented the United States White House and NASA,

and all American astronauts on the funeral.

An investigation into the accident determined

an air pressure valve malfunctioned during re-entry.

All three men suffocated within two minutes.

The failure of that valve took the life of the crew.

What we ultimately find out was that

it was not anything that is a permanent red light

for long-duration human space flight.

The challenge of Salyut is we felt good about this.

Dobrovolsky, Volkov, and Patsayev

were the first human who lost their lives in space.

Unfortunately, somebody must die

for others to live and continue exploration.

Finally, after seven years of preparation,

the Skylab workshop was ready to launch.

The most powerful rocket ever built.

I mean, up to that point, even today,

we have not seen the equal of the Saturn V,

has just sent humans to the Moon, has made history,

has accomplished something unimaginable.

And for the last time, for the last time in history,

a Saturn V, 363 feet of raw power,

is sitting on the launch pad,

ready to roar away from the Earth.

12, 11, 10, nine, eight.

We have ignition sequence, has started,

six, five, four, three, two.

The engine's light.

Saturn V departs from the Earth's surface,

roaring up into the sky.

If you are there watching it, it is amazing.

The Skylab lifting off the bed now, moving up.

Skylab has cleared the tower.

While the sheer raw experience is amazing,

the telemetry is concerning.

There was a problem.

There's a Skylab control.

Preliminary telemetry indications are,

there could have been a malfunction.

We were monitoring and we started sensing

that there was some problem.

These malfunctions were indicated to,

occurred one minute and three seconds after liftoff.

Something has happened here,

and nobody's entirely sure what.

Nobody knew, the Cape didn't know,

Houston didn't know, Washington DC NASA didn't know.

And to lose Skylab at that point

would have been a financial catastrophe.

You lose potentially, you know,

two and a half billion dollar investment.

But it was more than dollars cost.

It was pride cost.

Why did it happen on this launch?

Where did we fail?

Everything they had done going to work

for the last seven years

had been preparing for the day

that this Saturn V leaves the ground.

And in 63 seconds, we just lost everything

that we have put into this moment, just like that.

This has Skylab control.

Internal temperatures ranging

from 170 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit.

External skin temperatures are running

between 240 and 300 degree.

The other thermal environment is insanely wrong.

There's no way it should be this hot.

It's not designed to be this hot.

Skylab was fitted with a meteorite shield

to protect it from heat and debris.

As the rocket reached its maximum dynamic pressure,

this layer was ripped off.

It exposed a section of the external skin

of the habitat directly to the Sun.

We had a habitat up there,

but it basically was not habitable.

And there's no electrical power.

In the control center, the problems

associated with the failure of the Saturn workshop,

solar panels to are being discussed.

Skylab had two giant solar panels that were supposed

to come out on either side of the space station

to provide the electrical power.

With a shield gone, one of those just deploys immediately.

And you know, you can think about, you know,

a giant wing coming out in the air flow.

As the rocket's taking off, it's torn off.

The other solar panel had also tried to deploy,

but oddly enough, it was prevented from deploying.

A small strap of metal from the shield

wraps around the other wing.

It's still there.

It just can't deploy.

Now, that's a good thing because it saved that panel.

That one little strap of metal saved the Skylab program.

The planned 28-day mission is not possible

without deployment of the workshop main solar panels.

Now there are two problems that have to be dealt with

before there can be any discussion of people

actually going and living on this space station.

We've lost our heat shield.

So the thermal environment,

the heat inside the space station,

is out of control.

We don't have our electrical power system

that we're going to need to be able to do the science

that has to happen to make this all worthwhile.

How do we fix Skylab?

The first Skylab crew

are due to launch the next day.

Their mission is delayed by 10 days.

NASA enters a 10-day period of its history

unlike any other time in its 60 years.

What kind of fix would we come up with

in order to make it a habitable space station?

10 Days, 10 days to innovate,

develop, qualify for flight,

and pack solutions to two huge problems.

How do we go fix it?

How do we go fix it?

24-hour work days, working shift work.

They were sleeping at work.

Mind-boggling.

I don't think anything like this had happened before.

I don't think anything like this had happened since.

The pressure was tremendous.

Failure here certainly was not an option for us.

To all the NASA centers, we're working on it.

All our contractors are working on it.

I am taking an active part in the discussions,

in the decisions that were made

as to what's wrong with the workshop,

and how we're going to fix it.

You go to the beach,

you want to be cool on the beach,

you take an umbrella with you.

Let's give Skylab an umbrella.

We've got to have something

that can be put into the command module

that can be taken to Skylab.

Skylab had a couple of small science airlocks.

We're going to take one of those airlocks.

We're going to stick an umbrella out of it.

So the parasol had to be created for nothing.

You had a room full of seamstresses

working on sewing this thing, getting it done.

Then you see them getting it packed up

and rushing it out to get to the launch site.

They were down to the last

30-minute extension, as the parasol,

packed in the flight canister,

was loaded for transport to Cape Kennedy.

Hopes ran high that the parasol would do the job.

Attention now turned to the astronauts

who would attempt to put it in place.

So the first crew of Skylab is Pete Conrad,

who walked on the Moon on Apollo 12,

Dr. Joe Kerwin, the first medical doctor in space,

and PJ Weitz.

They have been training for years for this mission.

And now you have 10 days to train for the real mission.

We have a broken space station.

Can you fix it, please?

They must find a way to cut the metal strap

entangling the solar panel,

using the tools they'll have in space.

Schweickart spent many, many hours underwater,

simulating techniques for fixing the solar panel.

We demonstrated that

just by tightening up further on the cutters,

the large cutters that we had

at the end of the 25-foot hole,

that we could also cut through the staff

using those cutters.

And we were able to demonstrate underwater,

so that we had high confidence

that the crew would be able to get the job done.

Somehow, on May 25th, those three men

were in that space capsule

with the solutions to save Skylab

packed on their spacecraft, ready to go.

They approach Skylab, it's beautiful.

1.5 miles, 29 feet per second.

But at the same time, it's visibly wounded.

Solid gold.

Roger, coming.

Suspected solar wave is gone.

It's gone.

The place we asked , Solar wave 1.

Is it that deployed?

They're able to dock, they're connected.

The next step is opening the door of a spacecraft

that has spent the last 10 days in orbit,

outside of its temperature constraints,

hotter than it's allowed to be,

and hope that you can breathe the air.

How quickly can we leave if we can't stay?

They go inside.

They find, thankfully, a breathable atmosphere,

but a dark and hot space station.

You had to lower the temperature of the workshop

in order for it to be inhabited.

Commander Pete Conrad deploys

the solar parasol through the airlock.

Some four hours after the operation began,

the thermal parasol was deployed.

It was then placed in position

close to the workshop's skin.

And then you have the umbrella

doing its umbrella thing.

I mean, everything is working.

When you see the edge

be free of anything.

There's nothing hogging it up.

Something has gone right.

This is turning our way now, it's a great moment,

but is it going to bring the temperatures down?

And it's not an instantaneous thing.

It took about two revolutions of Skylab

before temperatures began to fall.

Projections showed that if the present trend continued,

the workshop would be below 100 degrees the following day.

Pretty soon and pretty quickly, they can feel

that the atmosphere is becoming a little more livable.

We have a space station, we have a crew aboard it,

we've gotten the temperature under control,

still have that stuck wing.

You still don't have the electricity.

We've to get that other solar panel up

so that we've got power.

How do we free that solar panel and save this mission?

If we don't get it up there,

we ain't gonna get it up, right?

The astronauts climb out of the airlock

and underneath the Apollo telescope mount,

until they are facing down the trapped solar wing.

Unable to move any closer,

Kerwin must use a 25-foot pole, to try

and hook the jaws of a pair of cutters

onto the metal strap, and cut it free.

We were doing a follow the leader

on our hardware underwater in neutral buoyancy.

If they ran into some kind of a problem,

we could immediately say,

"Hey, we've got a recommendation for you.

Try this."

Pick the red skin, Joe.

You just pull a pull back.

Wait a minute.
Hey!

That's a beautiful place to cut it, right?

See?

This?
Yeah.

You're in the right area

if you get through those wires.

Just take your time.

The problem existed in areas where

there had never been any plan at all

for an astronaut to go on a space walk.

There were no handrails to that area.

There were no foot restraints in order to be able

to anchor his body to where he could do work.

It was almost like trying to ride

a huge elephant with no saddle.

Nothing out there but smooth skin,

except for this one solar panel down there

that was now in dire need of some help.

And I want you in a position to pull on me

on the right rope while I'm holding it in place.

I can't do both.

That emotion and tenseness

of when that pole with that cutter on it

was being extended.

And you heard the communication

between the two astronauts

was just almost indescribable.

You know, the best chance you have

is as close to the base of the staff panel.

Is that right

that there's a wire bundle there?

Yeah, I got the.

Pressure was we were at a peak.

Full?
No, you're in front of it.

Now you're behind it.

You're still behind it.

We've got to make this happen.

That's the place to work.

All right, yeah, I'm sure I am.

Now pull it towards me.

Pete Conrad reported, "Strap is cut,."

Man, you could just breathe.

It's like a huge weight

that had been sitting on your chest

had just been relieved.

Solar panels came down.

Now we had power.

We could see very quickly,

the power that we had just fixed

was going to be sufficient

for us to complete the mission.

And the flight crew had trained so well,

so hard in neutral buoyancy.

They just clicked.

They just made it work.

And the sweetness of success,

how sweet it was that day.

Dr. Von Braun, he believed in us.

He said, "Yah, yah, keep going."

How good it feels.

We made it!

That space walk is a major moment

for the future of American human space flight.

They have just proven for the first time

that you can do work, meaningful work,

meaningful repair work outside of a spacecraft

that you didn't even plan for.

They have saved the program.

They have saved the United States' efforts to prove

that you can do meaningful science in space,

with the space shuttle, space lab,

the International Space Station,

all rest on that moment.

The first Skylab crew returned to Earth

after a record 28 days in space.

In an historic moment of solidarity

between US and Soviet superpowers,

President Nixon and Premier Brezhnev

welcomed the astronauts home.

Because it wasn't just the NASA thing, right?

This was an America thing.

I mean, the nation was invested

in at least few days of saving the space station.

It was a big deal for everybody.

So now, the second crew is getting ready to launch

and they're launching not to a broken space station,

but to a fully operational space station.

Only in the last few weeks in the time of Skylab,

have we really begun to exploit and see the potential

of man operating in the near-Earth environment.

The second crew came up.

They worked at a tremendously heavy rate.

They love it.

They love not only being there,

they love the work.

They are accomplishing incredible amounts of research.

The second crew conducts pioneering experiments

on the effects of microgravity on the human body and mind.

They observed the Earth's changing weather patterns

in more detail than ever before,

and carry out groundbreaking science,

including photographing erupting solar flares.

At the end of the mission, they come home,

they have accomplished 150% of their mission objectives.

The NASA press release dubs them the super crew.

The crew spent 59 days in space,

doubling the previous mission's record.

The third Skylab crew prepare

for the last scheduled Skylab mission.

And one of the tremendous stresses

that the final Skylab crew had is

they have incredibly big shoes to fill.

There is a big shift in the 1970s

from astronauts who were just rugged test pilot,

to people who could live and work

and do technically demanding tasks in space

that required tremendous medical and scientific background.

Their predecessors had done miracles.

So on the third crew of Skylab,

you have Commander Gerry Carr,

you have pilot Bill Pogue,

and you have science astronaut Ed Gibson.

The commanders of the last two missions of Skylab,

they were the third and fourth men to walk on the Moon.

How much experience did this crew have in space?

Zero.

This is a last opportunity.

It's a last opportunity to do research in space.

It's a last opportunity to prove

just how valuable a space station is.

The second crew accomplished 150%

of their mission objectives,

so clearly, there's a lesson to be learned here,

that we didn't assign them enough work.

The crew docks with the space station.

One of the things that Skylab was really interested in

was space adaptation syndrome,

a very nice way of saying throwing up a lot in space.

And so it was essential to get all of the information

about how the astronauts were coping.

Were there ever any times it was difficult for them?

What was that like?

They needed the data.

The pilot, Bill Pogue, noticed iron belly

or iron ears.

You could throw a plane around and never get sick.

Bill Pogue gets in space, he gets sick.

He was vomiting, he was not feeling good.

And the crew decided not to tell mission control.

At the beginning of the mission,

they don't want anybody worried.

We're going to be able to go in.

We're gonna be able to do work.

We don't want anybody to think

that these rookies can't hack it.

One of the fundamentals of a successful mission

is you have to have good communication

between the astronauts and ground control,

but this was threatened almost from the outset.

What they forget is that their recordings

are downloaded at the end of the day.

And this is heard on the ground.

A guy with an insensitivity to emotion

that Bill's got, to have a problems,

I think there's something else involved here.

People better start looking around a little more,

you know, of this motion sickness kick.

This is a big deal, right,

because this is not only an astronaut got sick,

this is hiding data, right?

This is hiding information

that's vital to the future of the space program.

It's also just, you know, not being honest.

It got picked up by the media,

so the New York Times had a headline

that the Skylab astronauts had been reprimanded

in their first day, is not a great start.

You disappoint your boss and get chewed out.

And then, you know, everyone knows about it.

Not only did the crew have to overcome this problem

of not reporting the illness and Bill being ill,

the program was heavy-loaded,

really early in the mission.

Because of the success of their predecessors,

this crew had to do more and more and more.

So it seemed like the deck was stacked against the crew.

The work kept piling on.

What happens pretty quickly is

they start falling behind.

And so, the ground decides to help.

Mission control begins to schedule

the crew's tasks down to the minute.

They're sending up the instructions

on a ticker tape.

They have a printer that's just printing out a long feed.

But by the time they've read the ticker tape,

they're already behind schedule.

Feels like you're a monkey,

who's just being told what to do.

You're going through the motions of your master.

They were stressed.

You could hear that in the voice.

One explanation for this conflict

between the crew and mission control

is what psychologists call an us versus them mentality.

The folks on ground control,

they get to go home at night.

The folks up in space say,

"But you just don't get it."

Desperate to keep up

with the relentless schedule,

the crew starts to skip rest days.

The astronauts had simply no down time.

Performing more research,

performing more work, mistakes begin to be made.

As the counsels on the ground,

we knew that it was not going well.

If they'd done it already, that's fine.

Whatever they'd done, we'll take.

The crew was just not performing

to what was expected of them.

Okay, this is a lot.

We need to find, you know, efficiencies where we can.

Every day, all three of the astronauts

had to attend a briefing with mission control.

We don't need to all three be on the radio

every time a home calls.

It was Pogue, Carr, Gibson, Pogue, Carr, Gibson,

rotating through the astronauts.

And this was working fine,

except one day, no one showed up.

Skylab control, Houston,

at 13 hours, 18 minutes Greenwich Mean Time,

standing by now for acquisition,

with Skylab IV through Madrid.

And the folks down at mission control were,

"Wait a second, what's going on?

Why aren't they communicating with us?"

This is Skylab control.

All three of them thought

that somebody else was on the radio.

And so that did create a situation on the ground

where it was misinterpreted as, "They turned off the radio."

These guys are sending us a message.

Sometimes, even accidental instances,

something that wasn't intentional at all,

can be the trigger to really let conflict come out.

And that's what happened with this missed schedule,

this missed meeting, that became the event around which,

finally, there was able to be some open communication.

At this point, these are two teams

that have been working together,

that are frustrated with each other,

this is marriage counseling in space.

We're going to look especially hard

at areas where we think that possibly

that you can help us or look for ways on orbit,

in particular areas that you may not be aware of,

where we'll have a scheduling.

The astronaut, Ed Gibson said,

"It was the first sensitivity training in space."

I think it will help you understand

our problems a little bit better.

Okay, that's now fine, Nick.

We'll try to pick up whatever we can

to help the situation.

So that was a turning point.

That was a peak in a graph.

Bill, are you up

and in speaking configuration now?

Let's check.

Reading you a lot, a little bit of crackling,

but why don't you go ahead?

The one on you and the ground,

seem to be in disagreement on who's responsible

for some of the mistakes made,

and how do you feel now, over.

One of the things that the commander said was,

"Listen, if we were on Earth, you would not ask us

to work 84 days solid, 16 hours a day without a break.

That's what we're being asked to do up here.

It is untenable."

We're still dedicated to accomplishing all of this,

but we've got to do things differently.

We have to make adjustments in the schedule.

We have to allow flexibility.

Mission control said, "Okay, we hear you.

Here's what we need done.

You guys decide when to do it,

in what order, and what time."

And so, NASA gave the astronauts

the most prized gift they could have: autonomy.

And so, as a result of that,

it became the longest mission to date.

I've got the RF congratulating you guys

on transitioning from the first rookie crews

to the most veteran crew in the Solar System,

and as far as we're concerned down here,

doing an outstanding job all the way.

I think we'd probably sandbag you on a couple of cases

on schedules that you're aware of.

Just keep up the good work up there,

stay loose and enjoy it.

Think, to keep going away has been going away.

They're one of the best missions we've ever seen.

This mission showed us that

by giving astronauts greater rein

of what they're going to do,

you can have a more successful mission.

It creates the foundation

for the International Space Station,

where it's not enough just to be tough,

to have the right staff.

You also have to be interpersonally sensitive.

You need to be attuned.

You need to be a good communicator.

You know that in the stresses of space,

conflicts are going to arise.

You just have to learn to deal with them.

And so, more than any other mission,

this mission laid us on a course,

not just to be able to travel into space,

but to really be able to live in space.

How would you like the people of the world

to think of your mission,

the last Skylab mission, over?

I think I like people to think of our mission

as one where three guys went up and set up housekeeping

and tried to live a normal life in space,

to show that it could be done,

and man can live a normal existence in space,

and that he can accomplish a great many things

while he's living up here,

that just can't be done on the ground.

The crew returned to Earth

after living in space for a record 84 days.

They proved that with the right training and management,

civilians can flourish in space.

They end up coming home very much,

as much a super crew as the second crew was.

After these three successful crewed missions to Skylab,

we build an incredible amount of information

about how the human body responds

in the microgravity environment.

Skylab showed that not only can a human being

survive and thrive in space for that period,

they can accomplish incredible things while they're there.

Now, I'm going to turn these loose.

There.

Okay?

Now, I'm going to use these two soda straws

in order to provide the forces that I need.

Skylab proved

that some astonishing scientific discoveries

can only be made off-planet.

It revealed that valuable astronomy

and Earth observations can be conducted from space,

but the most enduring legacy is the proof

that humans can live and work in space.

When the third crew left Skylab,

it's continuing to orbit the Earth,

at that point, NASA's expectation is

that without anything else happening,

Skylab should stay up until well into the 80s.

And at that time, the Space Shuttle program

was in development, and the thought was

to deliver a propulsion package to the Skylab

and allow it to be boosted to a higher orbit

and then used later.

Because that's going to happen.

We're going to send Shuttle up

and it's going to visit Skylab.

It was understood that one day we could reuse Skylab.

But the Space Shuttle program

is experiencing delays.

At the same time, the Sun that they had been studying

is more active than anyone had anticipated.

The Sun has an 11-year cycle

of really heightened activity,

a lot of erupting solar flares.

At the time period when Skylab was in orbit

and awaiting rescue by the Shuttle,

solar activity was an increasing part of that cycle.

This unexpected spike in solar activity

causes Skylab to drop out of its orbit.

And the realization is made

that Skylab is going to come down

sooner than anybody expected.

This very large object,

over 100 feet long, weighing 77 tons,

it's going to be re-entering the atmosphere,

and it's good probability that parts of that

will survive and impact the Earth.

This is a full-up house in space

that's going to be coming down.

The places on this planet where people live,

at some point, Skylab is passing overhead.

Skylab was definitely coming down

sometime in the middle of '79.

NASA had to respond to save Skylab, again.

There very much was a team

that was actively working to control Skylab,

to get it ready to come in.

Roger, sir, we have you scheduled

for an playback at 15:11.

How do we control the re-entry of Skylab

in a way that it doesn't endanger lives on the ground?

There was very limited control.

Traditionally, any sort of spacecraft,

to bring it in, you're going to have a retro-burn.

You're going to have an engine, a thruster,

that's going to fire to slow it down.

Skylab didn't have retro-burn.

What they did have was they had control

over its orientation.

Okay, point one, two, four, three.

Point two, zero, zero, one.

Well, the best case scenario would be

to bring Skylab down in an unpopulated area.

However, there's very limited chance to control that.

The worst case scenario could be that Skylab

could plummet onto the top of New York City, Paris.

Somebody tells us, "By the way,

there's a giant 76-ton house in space,

and it's going to be crashing down."

I think it's very easy to jump to the,

"Well, I hope it doesn't hit me."

Where is this going to come down?

Where is it going to fall?

It's kind of almost like watching a horror movie

in that it's scary, but there's a fun to the scary.

I heard of people in the United Kingdom

that were outfitting a bunker,

an underground bunker to go into and live.

You see people buying hard hats,

their Skylab crash protection helmet.

Liza Minnelli apparently didn't leave bed for a month.

The sky is falling.

We're currently passing over

the eastern part of the hamburger continent,

as Skylab will make its final approach

over the United States.

The decision was made to put Skylab

into a tumbling motion,

because after we lose control

with the solar panel separating and no power,

it wouldn't matter because it's already tumbling.

Last tracking Indication,

the vehicle is tumbling very steadily.

NASA commanded the tumbling

to bring it down over an ocean,

over an unpopulated area.

The confirmation that it has impacted the Earth

partially comes from no tracks.

It doesn't exist.

You've got control, you've got command,

up until that moment of interface,

up until it goes into the atmosphere,

and then silence,

We've done all that we can,

but we're still waiting for that final word

that everything's okay.

We really didn't get indications

until an airline pilot flying

near Perth, Australia, saw it.

We have a sighting from.

Go ahead, go ahead.

What we didn't know yet was,

was anybody injured in Australia?

Preliminary assessment by NORAD indicates

that Skylab has impacted in the Southern Indian Ocean,

southwest the coast of Australia.

Reports came in about pieces being found

and no reports of damage or injuries.

Finally, once again, for the last time for Skylab,

it's all paid off.

Interestingly enough, the government of Australia

did fine the United States government $400 for littering.

Without Skylab, we wouldn't be as far as we are today

on the International Space Station,

or as close as we are now to living on the Moon and Mars.

It's the turn now to what do we need to do

to live off the planet for long periods of time,

and to achieve the great science

that can be conducted nowhere else.

The world is about to enter

a golden era of space habitats.

There's the International Space Station

that's up there today.

China just launched the first module

of a new space station.

Russia is working on a future space station.

NASA and international partners are preparing Gateway,

that will be a space station and orbit around the Moon.

And you're going to see habitats on the surface of the Moon

as astronauts are going for long-duration missions there.

And finally, you know, ultimately,

the habitats that we're going to see

on the surface of Mars.

We are going to leave this little blue marble

that we live on, and we're going to begin

to make homes in our cosmos.

And when we do, the step,

that first toe dipped in the water,

that made us homesteaders of space with Skylab.

I'm getting used to knowing how to fly.

When I was young, I used to fly in dream,

up ways so high and easy, it would seem,

as if Earth wheeled and slanted and not I,

and now it's real.

We move that way at will,

like dust motes in a sunbeam.

Push away, drift down your own trajectory,

tumble, play.

And who can say what moves

and what is still?

In this high sunlit ship,

the laws of space, height without vertigo,

mass without weight,

and train our nerve ways to their easy pace,

as if this rhythm were our native state.

What if man were an exile from the sky?

Are we perhaps remembering how to fly?