Word: skylab
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...manned program, in virtual hibernation since the last Skylab mission in 1973, will reawaken when the shuttle begins operation next year. Plans call for several missions each year, with the half spaceship/half-glider confined to earth orbit...
...when moonshots started boring people and networks no longer felt like covering them in depth, support for space fell faster than Skylab. Nixon, whose obnoxiousness had interrupted the moonwalk, turned around and canned the last three Apollos. The funds for the proposed space station were cut sharply, meaning that Skylab would be built on the cheap, out of a mishmash of spare parts from the Apollo programs. NASA wanted to put the station into a higher orbit than the one ended in Australia last week, but the money wasn't there...
...lunar landing, on July 20, 1969, may be no more than an exercise in nostalgia, a look backward to simpler times when it appeared that the U.S. could solve most of its problems through its vaunted technology. To others, coming as it does in the midst of Skylab's downfall, it may be something of an embarrassment. By now most of the moon walkers have slipped into oblivion; even Armstrong, boyish no more, was barely recognized when he recently re-emerged on TV screens in automobile commercials...
Continuing its program of manned space exploration, NASA also made ingenious use of castoff Apollo hardware to create Skylab. Despite a troubled beginning and now its embarrassing demise, the giant space station represented another great leap. In 1973, three teams of astronauts occupied the station in rapid succession, one remaining aloft for 84 days. That record was not beaten by the Russians until 1978. More important, it proved to all doubters-and there were many-that humans could live and work together in space for long periods, conquering both isolation and the physical effects of weightlessness, such as weakening...
That may be more than a year behind schedule, and certainly much too late for Apollo 11 's birthday party. But in contrast to the end of Skylab, it should be a fitting follow-up to that memorable first step a decade...