July 11, 1979, End of Skylab |
July 11, 1979, End of Skylab |
Jul 11 2006, 12:53 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3008 Joined: 30-October 04 Member No.: 105 |
(Shamelessly re-cycled from Space Modelers http://groups.yahoo.com/group/space-modelers/ )
From the BBC: 1979: Skylab tumbles back to Earth The US space laboratory, Skylab I, plunged to Earth this evening scattering debris across the southern Indian Ocean and sparsely populated Western Australia. All week there has been mounting speculation over where the spacecraft would come down. It has been in orbit six years - for the past five of those it has been unoccupied. Skylab's last signal was recorded at 1611 GMT. Less than an hour later a tracking station at Ascension Island in the South Atlantic confirmed the solar panels were beginning to peel off as the craft descended. The 77.5 ton Skylab could break into as many as 500 pieces. The 5,100 lb (2,310 kg) airlock shroud and 3,900 lb (1,767 kg) lead safe, which protects film from radiation, are expected to survive the heat of re-entry into the earth's atmosphere. Head of the NASA task force monitoring Skylab, Richard Smith, said they had already received reports of hot debris, which had lit up the night sky, from several points in Western Australia. 'Edge of Cornwall' Dozens of residents reported seeing debris falling near Kalgoorlie, 370 miles (595 km) northeast of Perth. Skylab was launched on 14 May 1973 and was lived in by three teams of astronauts for periods of up to 84 days as they tested human endurance over long periods of weightlessness. While the astronauts were on board they were able to carry out many valuable scientific experiments including analysis of the sun's activity and how it affected the Earth. Skylab was abandoned by the last crew in February 1974, since when scientists have only had limited control over it. It was supposed to stay in orbit until the mid-1980s when the new shuttle would have come to its rescue. A Skylab task force of computer specialists, engineers, lawyers and public relations experts has been on standby at various NASA centres. It has been very difficult to predict exactly where and when the craft would finally come down. Only two days ago, a NASA spokesman had been predicting it would land near the "edge of Cornwall". In India, the police in all 22 states were put on full alert and the civil aviation department was planning to ban flights across the sub-continent during the crucial hours of re-entry. Skylab's final orbital path, its 34,981st, passed over the north Pacific, the north west tip of the United States, south central Canada, north of Montreal and Ottawa and the state of Maine -------------------- |
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Jul 13 2006, 06:41 PM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430 |
I had written in the other Skylab thread on this forum the question of why
didn't they use Skylab as a big solar observatory after 1974, seeing how well it did while the astronauts were on board. No sense having this big hunk of metal with a good astronomical telescope just drift around Earth over and over. But apparently NASA either did not want or did not think about using Skylab for scientific purposes after the last human crew left. Maybe they were hoping that a Space Shuttle mission would save it, but they still could have done something scientificially useful with Skylab - after all, it was already in space and had a real working telescope ready to keep going. But I am probably just thinking logically and not bureaucratically. As for rescuing an abandonded space station, the Soyuz T15 mission did that with Salyut 7 in 1986 in an amazing mission that does not nearly get the publicity it should to this day. And NASA was plannnig a special robot ship that a Space Shuttle would have attached to Skylab to boost it into a higher orbit. Perhaps they could have launched the rescue robot on an expendable rocket, but there goes that logical thinking again. -------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853 |
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Jul 13 2006, 07:31 PM
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#3
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
I had written in the other Skylab thread on this forum the question of why didn't they use Skylab as a big solar observatory after 1974, seeing how well it did while the astronauts were on board. No sense having this big hunk of metal with a good astronomical telescope just drift around Earth over and over. But apparently NASA either did not want or did not think about using Skylab for scientific purposes after the last human crew left. It used film didn't it? Some of the instruments certainly did - and without a crew there's no way to bring it back or replace it. Doug |
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Jul 13 2006, 07:58 PM
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#4
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430 |
It used film didn't it? Some of the instruments certainly did - and without a crew there's no way to bring it back or replace it. Doug I know, I just find it unfortunate that NASA did not consider the ability to transmit the science data automatically, and Skylab certainly wasn't all that far from Earth. It is also unfortunate that they didn't equip the space station with the ability to boost itself higher, like the Salyuts of the same era could. The Soviet stations even had the ability to be remotely de-orbited, which would have made Skylab's return a bit less dramatic if it could have done the same. -------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853 |
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Guest_AlexBlackwell_* |
Jul 13 2006, 08:15 PM
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#5
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Guests |
I know, I just find it unfortunate that NASA did not consider the ability to transmit the science data automatically... So you weren't really asking why Skylab wasn't used for something it couldn't do, you were wondering why NASA didn't design a better space station to begin with? I guess one can always think of a better design but, as the old saying goes, the perfect is the enemy of the good. I mean, after all, Orville and Wilbur could have worked a little harder and planned a little further ahead and built a P-51 Mustang, no? |
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Jul 13 2006, 08:24 PM
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#6
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430 |
So you weren't really asking why Skylab wasn't used for something it couldn't do, you were wondering why NASA didn't design a better space station to begin with? I guess one can always think of a better design but, as the old saying goes, the perfect is the enemy of the good. I mean, after all, Orville and Wilbur could have worked a little harder and planned a little further ahead and built a P-51 Mustang, no? Correct, and while I don't think the modifications I would have liked to see on Skylab were all that radical (the Soviets did it in the 1970s, after all), as has been said the budget and plans for Skylab weren't really meant to stretch as far into the future as one might have been originally led to believe, just as with Apollo. -------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853 |
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Guest_AlexBlackwell_* |
Jul 13 2006, 08:35 PM
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#7
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Guests |
Correct, and while I don't think the modifications I would have liked to see on Skylab were all that radical (the Soviets did it in the 1970s, after all)... I realized belatedly that my analogy made too much of an evolutionary leap (a ca. 1910 flying machine would have been better), but hey, why ruin a punch line? |
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