Word: skylab
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...testily how NASA ever got in the awkward position of permitting tons of metal fragments to endanger wholly innocent earthlings. Some of the agency's sympathizers blamed the "bean counters" in the Federal Government's budget bureaucracy during the Nixon Administration for forcing NASA to build its Skylab "on the cheap," mainly with leftover hardware from the successful Gemini and Apollo manned spacecraft programs. Astronomer Mark Chartrand III, chairman of New York City's American Museum-Hayden Planetarium, claimed Congress was at fault in its financial shortsightedness. Said he: "Hell, if I had my way, I'd target Skylab...
People seeking advice from NASA on how to minimize their own risks from Skylab got little help. The agency suggested that one might be a shade safer underground than on the surface, but it warned that the very act of, say, taking a car to get to an underground shelter might increase the danger?because the chance of getting hurt in a car accident is greater than the risk from Skylab. As a general rule, space experts suggested, "Do nothing...
Originally, NASA had proposed in 1968 the $2.6 billion orbiting laboratory program. At that time extra rockets capable of keeping Skylab in space almost indefinitely were considered. The craft's ability to stay in orbit would be reinforced, if necessary, by astronauts transported up to it in a convenient space shuttle, then also on the NASA drawing boards. But under budgetary pressures both vehicles were simplified?and both developed unanticipated technical problems. So when Skylab's orbit began to slip, there was no shuttle to come to its rescue...
...fact, Skylab's history of glitches demonstrated both the futility of taking technological shortcuts and the agility of men working in space to remedy unexpected ailments. When Skylab was launched by a Saturn 5 booster rocket on May 14, 1973, a large section of its meteoroid and heat shield ripped away, taking one of its prematurely extended solar-energy wings with it. A second wing jammed in a retracted position. The craft both overheated in orbit and was dangerously underpowered. But in the space age's first salvage mission, on May 25, 1973, Astronauts Charles ("Pete") Conrad Jr. and Joseph...
...course of its troubled flights, Skylab crews established an endurance record of 84 days in space?a mark since surpassed by Soviet cosmonauts. More than 50 scientific, technical and medical experiments were conducted. Some 183,000 unprecedented pictures of the sun were snapped through Skylab's telescope...