Category HOMESTEADING SPACE

Astronauts Carr, Gibson, and Pogue now in their 63 rd day in space were given the go for another seven days. For the remainder of the mission, weekly evalua­tions of crew, consumables, and hardware will be made by nasa officials. The second weekly review was completed this afternoon. Following the review of in­flight medical data and the recommendation of Dr. Charles A. Berry, nasa Director for Life Sciences, William C. Schneider, Skylab Program Director, gave approval for the mission to continue until at least January 24.

Concerned about what effect the extended duration would have on the health of the astronauts when they returned to Earth, NASA doctors were getting more ambitious with the postflight medical protocols for the crew. NASA medical management had been persuaded, over the strenuous objec­tions of some astronauts, that direct measurement of cardiac output by means of a catheter inserted into an artery in the arm and extended into the heart would give valuable data about the possible effect of weightlessness on car­diac function. A dry run was scheduled with the deputy crew flight surgeon as the test subject. A Johnson Space Center press release reported:

A volunteer subject fainted and suffered a brief loss of heart beat but was imme­diately revived during a cardiac output evaluation test conducted under con­trolled conditions for the Skylab medical program. The subject, Lt. Col. Edouard Burchard, required no hospitalization and was back on duty a short time lat­er. The incident occurred after a needle had been placed in Lt. Col. Burchard’s artery during the test. He responded immediately to the normal therapy that includes an injection of atropine and external heart massage.

The test, conducted at the Space Center Hospital near the Johnson Space Cen­ter, was a simulation ofone ofthe postflight medical analysis checks considered for the Skylab iii astronauts after their return to Houston. The purpose of the test is to get a precise measurement ofcardiac output by introducing a dye into the blood system. Such dye dilution tests are routinely used in cardiac research diagnosis and medical officials said Lt. Col. Burchard’s reaction was very unusu­al. As a result of the incident, however, Skylab program officials have decid­ed that the test will not be performed on any of the returning [astronauts]. Lt. Col. Burchard is a West German Air Force medical officer detailed to nasa. He serves as deputy flight surgeon for the Skylab iii crew.

So that was another worry off the minds of the crew. “Upon our return, we presented Dr. Burchard with a bottle of scotch with a note thanking him for ‘his willingness to protect us with his life,’ said Carr.

Another area of concern was the dwindling supplies available on Skylab. From the outset the food supply had presented a challenge—namely, there wasn’t going to be enough of it to extend the mission as much as mission planners hoped. Further, the “gold-rush” attitude of scientists who wanted to get their experiments on the manifest after the success of Skylab II fur­ther limited the amount of space available for other cargo on the Command Module, which carried the Skylab ill crew to the station. With a lack of food on the station and a lack of space to carry more food, there was a need for an innovative solution.

And an innovative solution was found: food bars. When the crew launched, they carried with them a supply of nutritional bars developed jointly by NASA, the U. S. Air Force, and the Pillsbury Company. “The difficulty with stay­ing up that long was that we had only had enough food for fifty-six days and too many experiments to take up in the Command Module, which was already overloaded,” Gibson said. “So we volunteered, actually agreed, that every third day we would eat nothing but food bars. That was probably one of the most supreme sacrifices anyone has ever made for the space pro­gram by a crewperson—food bars! Every third day we each consumed four of these little guys. Breakfast, which lasted about thirty seconds, consisted of four or five crunches, and that was it. There was no more. Meal’s over. I still have a tough time looking a food bar in the face. But the bars worked, and we stayed. They had all the minerals and calories that we needed. It’s not an ideal way to live, but they did work.”

However, the lack of one item really bothered Gibson. “You just can’t over­estimate the value of a good butter cookie,” he said. “We had an econom­ic system on Skylab whose basic monetary unit was the butter cookie. But when we got up there, most of our money had been consumed previously by both the hungry Marine [Jack Lousma] and the Skylab I commander, Pete Conrad. It caused runaway deflation in the Skylab ill economy.”

As if eighty days of food bars every third day were not enough, mission protocols required that the crew follow their Skylab diet regimen for twen­ty-one days before the mission. Even after returning to Earth at the end of the mission there was no reprieve; postflight required another eighteen days on the Skylab ill food-bar diet plan.

Other supplies also became of concern. “In mid-January 1973, when we were enjoying one of our ‘days off,’” Bill Pogue said, “I was looking down at the Earth, Ed was at the atm, and Jerry was doing an inventory of our remain­ing supplies. He floated down to his sleep compartment and left a message on the в Channel tape recorder for the ground control folks. Jerry was tell­ing them that he had discovered a shortage of approximately ten urine sam­ple containers, which we each used every morning to replace our individ­ual containers that we filled the day before. A part of this task was to draw off and put 122 milliliters (about the size of a large ice cube) into the sample receptacle, place the urine sample into a freezer, and put the used urine stor­age bag into a trash bag for later dumping into the Skylab dumpster.

“The next day Capcom called with a solution. We were to change out the urine bags every thirty-six hours instead of every twenty-four hours; using this procedure would insure the remaining sample containers would last to the end of the mission. We followed this makeshift procedure, and every­thing worked out fine. Still we couldn’t understand how the shortage had occurred because the people who prepared the mission equipment were high­ly competent. The waste sampling was to support a mineral-balance study conducted by the National Institutes of Health, and the principal investi­gator, Don Whedon, was most meticulous and careful. Once we got back to Earth we forgot the whole thing.

“Two months after our return the Astronaut Office had a ‘Pin Party’ for those Skylab astronauts who had made their first flight into space. The par­ty is essentially a shindig where the backup crews roast the prime crews for many of their goofs and screw-ups during training and flight. The prime crews swallow hard, thank the backup crews for all their hard work, respond with good-natured humility and perhaps a few light-hearted jests of their own, and then make special individual presentations to their backup crews.

“Jerry, Ed, and I just about fell out of our chairs when Al Bean presented the missing urine sample containers mounted, on a plaque with a person­al dedication plate, to each backup crewman. We looked at each other and burst out laughing. The ‘Mystery of the Purloined Pee Bags’ had been solved. They had been taken mistakenly by Al when the second crew returned to Earth. Of course we all quizzed Al and his crew about why they had devel­oped a personal attachment to our pee bags.”

Of course, the crew and spacecraft were not the only ones affected by the duration of the Skylab program. Neil Hutchinson recalled that Mission

Control was also feeling the effects of the passing months. “It wasn’t like a prize fight where you train, fight, and it’s over,” he said. “In Apollo and now the early Shuttle flights, you train and train and train, then the mis­sion goes, you work your tail off for a number of days, and the mission’s over. Skylab was never over.

“Chuck Lewis, another Skylab flight director, got very ill. I flew the last flight with a kidney problem that ended up in a very serious surgery. It’s not serious anymore, but in those days it was. It really, really took a lot out of people because you never got loose from it.

“We did all kinds of crazy stuff. We had our families in the control center for affairs to try and change the pace of things. I held a big dinner. Maybe all the flight directors did. It was a big sit-down catered dinner in the con­trol center while the spacecraft was still up but during one of those times between manned missions. We were just trying to keep people’s focus and attention. Still we had guys drop out of teams, and we had to change play­ers. It wasn’t that the control center was wilting on [Skylab ill], it really was the sum of the three missions; we were all on duty for nine months.

“But by this latter part of the mission, both the crew and Mission Con­trol were feeling really good because it all was going dramatically better. It became obvious we would get everything done and then some, and every­one could see the light at the end of the tunnel. As the last weeks of Skylab ill went by, we all felt better and better.”

Finally, the end of the mission neared. “I recall the last six weeks of the flight were very pleasant for me for two reasons,” Pogue said. “One, we’d achieved the skill level sufficient to do the job quickly and accurately, and second, I no longer suffered from the head congestion that had plagued me for about the first six weeks of the flight. Midway through the mission it didn’t seem to bother me much but became more like a low-grade head­ache that doesn’t really hurt very much even though it still slightly decreas­es your efficiency.

“We all had a much better feeling about the whole flight toward the end. In fact they asked us if we would stay up for another ten days. James Fletch­er, the administrator, had suggested it. Mentally we were prepared to come back, but more important, we didn’t have any food left even though we prob­ably could have scraped together enough for a few more days. But we came back on schedule after eighty-four days.”

“Medically,” said Gibson, “there were at least two reasons for our feeling so good: after our bone marrow greatly slowed its production of red blood

43- Carr and Pogue have fun with the possibilities presented by weightlessness.

cells, because our hemoglobin concentration had gone up in the first few days of the mission when we lost about three pounds of plasma from our circulating blood volume, it took a while for the hemoglobin concentration to drop low enough to trigger red blood cell production again. That pro­duction brought our circulating red cell mass back to normal, if not high­er, toward the end of our flight. Also the tone of our cardiovascular systems had improved as measured by our response to the lbnp, which saw us reach presyncope [nearly pass out] about midway through our mission, before we significantly improved.

“From a personal standpoint, I would have liked to stay longer. I had come to think of our space station as an average, three-bedroom home, just 270

miles high and whistling over the ground at five miles a second. It felt so sol­id, so secure, that it didn’t really feel like flying at all until we left it in our reentry vehicle. Then it felt just like leaving my home down here, sliding into a sports car, and accelerating back onto the road again. It was a comfortable home for sure, and I would’ve been content to live there for many years, if I had friends and family along. . . and maybe a good pizza delivery.”

There were things about the Earth that the crew missed, though. In his book of humorous space anecdotes, The Light Stuff Bob Ward, a newspa­per editor at The Huntsville Times reported:

As the final Skylab flight approached the end of its nearly three months in orbit, Houston used the onboard teleprinter to send up changes in the plans for closing down the workshop and preparing for the trip back home.

Astronaut Carr noted that these teleprinted instructions stretched almost from one end of the space station to the other— about fifty feet. That evening, when the new team of flight controllers came on duty, Carr couldn’t resist remarking that he fully expected Houston next to transmit the Old Testament.

Later Carr notified Capcom Bruce McCandless that the Skylab 3 crew want­ed a book sent up via teleprinter that evening.

“War and Peace? ” asked McCandless.

“No,”replied Carr, “Little Women.”

Then there was a brief pause and the astronaut added: “Bill (Pogue) says send him up a big one. ”

That the spacemen manning the last, and longest, Skylab mission may have had the opposite sex on their minds had been suggested a few days before the Little Women episode.

From orbit the astronauts had held a live press conference. nasa intended to include a set ofquestions from a sixth-grade class in a small town in New York, but time ran out. During the next orbit, flight controller Dick Truly went ahead and asked the children’s questions, anyway. He savedfor last the question ofone sixth-grader who wanted to know, Did the astronauts miss female companion­ship after so long a time?

Ed Gibson, taken aback by the frankness of the query, responded: “What grade did you say that was, Dick?”

Then the astronaut answered the precocious child’s question with a frank­ness of his own:

“Obviously, yes. ’”

Though the lumps given the Skylab ill crew by the media early in the mis­sion would affect their reputation for years to come, coverage of their suc­cesses by the same media was not as forthcoming. As the mission neared its close, it was one of the first missions ever since the early Gemini missions that the flight itself was not extensively covered by the media. In fact they didn’t even cover the return after the crew had set a time-in-space world record.

“At the time it happened, I didn’t realize it,” Gibson said, “because I was not looking at it from the outside. People were making a big deal out of it being an exception, but once I thought about it after a couple of months, I realized that in a way it was good. We’re trying to make space to be more commonplace and space operations to be more accepted because they were being done repetitively and routinely. People can’t be sitting on the edge of their chairs all the time, especially during long space station operations. So it’s only natural that people’s attention would drop off. I thought, ‘Well, maybe we’ve reached a point in the space program where it’s become more mature and lack of day-to-day interest it’s only natural. So, let’s accept it and move on.’”

And so, for Skylab’s final crew, preparations for the trip home began. Before they left, this final crew of Skylab made sure to leave the welcome mat out for any future visitors. Although there were no plans for another Skylab mission, there were hopes that a crew of the Space Shuttle, which it was then believed would be in operation well before Skylab deorbited, might come up, check on America’s first space station, and even boost it to a high­er orbit to extend its lifetime.

A time capsule was even prepared for a visiting Shuttle crew to return to Earth. In it were a variety of materials, which would allow scientists to study the effects of long-term exposure to the spacecraft’s environment. Although the time capsule was left inside Skylab, the venting of the atmosphere after the crew left meant that the materials were exposed to vacuum.

A few hiccups arose in getting ready to button up Skylab, close the hatch, and deorbit in the Command Module. “The frozen urine samples had to be put into an insulated container for their trip home,” Ed Gibson said. “Each of these frozen samples, about the size of a very large ice cube and often called ‘urinesicles’ by the crew, had expanded just slightly beyond the size allotted for them in the return containers. Thus I had a problem. Reentry was a few short hours away, and the whole sample return for a major exper­iment was in jeopardy.

“As beads of sweat seeped out, clung to me, and soaked my suit, out to the rescue came the old trusty Swiss Army knife with its coarse file! The sharp plastic edges on the entry lips of the containers were all then filed down to a bull nose so that the urinesicles could be forced into each container with only minimal damage. To say the least, I was elated that the knife was on board. Because of the concern for inhaling particles, we were not allowed to have files in the tool kit, but the one in the Swiss Army knife had slipped by detection.

“In the midst of these busy preparations to leave Skylab, the back of our minds began reflecting on its future. I thought that Skylab was a great office, lab, and home that had set the bar high for all space stations to come. And I also thought that in another three to six years, our current home would be replaced by either Skylab в, which is now sliced up and residing in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, or another space station, which would be much easier and cheaper to build since we had the Skylab experience. ‘We only needed a few large tanks, a couple of dock­ing ports, a door for spacewalks, some first-class experiments, three or four cmgs to stabilize it all, and a few large solar panels hung on the outside for electricity. Nope, it’s not hard. All of it can be off the shelf. Let’s go do it.’ But that was not to be when it was decided to throw away the booster capa­bilities we dearly paid for in Apollo and hang our future on only one access to space, a shuttle.

“It all had seemed like it would be so simple, yet it’s come out so hard. The history of pioneering tells us that we shouldn’t expect progress to take place in a straight line. Thus, I have confidence that in the future we will have fully completed space stations in Earth orbit, each manned with six to eight highly competent personnel and that their scientific and techno­logic productivity will be judged far worth the effort by all but the most ardent critics.”

“Just as we were leaving Skylab, I almost had one last task to complete,” said Pogue. “We had lost a coolant loop between the second and the third mis­sions, so one of the first things I had to do when we arrived was to replen­ish and recharge the glycol solution in the failed coolant loop. It was that loop that we used for our water-cooled long johns [liquid cooled garment]) that we wore under our space suits on eva. So I was really interested that

it worked. We got it fixed real quickly. But just as I closed the hatch as we were leaving, the other loop failed. They asked if I wanted to go back in to fix it. I asked, ‘Why?’

“After we got in the Command Module, we went through a long series of involved procedures. We were almost euphoric all during this period. Of course, we did a fly-around, and I took about seventy-five pictures of Sky – lab as we went around for the last time.”

“When we undocked and made one trip around Skylab to photograph its condition,” said Gibson, “it was obvious that the sun’s ultraviolet light had greatly discolored all surfaces. What was white preflight was now tan. Even the white sunshade sail erected by the second crew had turned a gold­en tan with one notable exception. As we maneuvered over the surface that faced toward the sun, both sunshades rippled and waved in the gas stream from our reaction control thrusters. The sail erected by the second crew still displayed the creases from when it had been tightly folded in its stow­age container before Jack and Owen pulled it out and hoisted it up the twin pole supports. Jack had done a great job of unsticking and unfolding the sail, an unanticipated chore, except for one fold that now opened up under the wind gust of our thrusters. Like light from a cracked door, the material inside the fold beamed back a stark white in contrast to its surroundings, a feature readily apparent in pictures today.”

“Pretty soon after we separated,” recalled Bill Pogue, “we could see Skylab going away. After we did the first deorbit burn, which brought us down to about 125 miles, I remember thinking that, after looking at the Earth from 270 miles for several months, it was almost like hedgehopping at 125 miles where you perceive the ground going by a lot faster.

“Almost everything worked out quite well except that we did have a prob­lem with the reaction control system in the Command Module. One of our two rings [sets of attitude control jets] system had already lost pressure and had to be deactivated. The official record says that they told us to put on oxygen masks at this point, but we never heard the transmission so we nev­er had them on.

“The problem came after we had separated from the Service Module. I looked over at Jerry as he was moving the hand controller to get the right entry attitude, which we absolutely had to be at for reentry to avoid landing in the wrong location or being cremated before our time, and nothing was happening! I yelled, ‘Go direct.’ Direct is a mode that is entered by going to the hard stops on the hand controller, which bypasses all the black boxes and puts the juice directly to the solenoids controlling the propellants in the reaction control jets. It worked. We got close to the right entry attitude and threw it into autopilot, which steered us during reentry. No problem.

“When we got down on the deck, we were hoisted aboard the aircraft carrier, and everybody was in pretty good shape. We later found out that Jerry had inadvertently pulled all of the circuit breakers to the Command Module reaction control thrusters instead of those for the Service Module, which were to be unpowered to prevent arcing when the guillotine cut all those wires between the modules before they were separated. The Command Module breakers were right above those for the Service Module. Since Jerry was floating a little higher in zero gravity than in the simulations on Earth three months before and it was dark, it was an easy mistake to make. Human factors should dictate that you don’t put these sets of breakers adjacent to one another if you require that kind of a time-critical safety-of-flight pro­cedure. He just pulled the wrong ones, which was a real easy error to make. But it turned out fine. That was our biggest excitement during reentry: Jer­ry moved that hand controller and nothing happened.”

“At first,” Ed Gibson said, “reentry was like living inside a purple neon tube whose brightness gradually increased when we began colliding with air molecules in the upper atmosphere at mach 25. About the time we got the.05-G light [reached a deceleration of one-twentieth of gravity], I felt myself start to tumble but in no specific direction. ‘Strange,’ I thought, but then my vestibular system hadn’t felt any linear acceleration for eighty-four days, and my brain was trying to figure out how to interpret these faint murmurs coming from my inner ears. As the Gs increased, this feeling of tumbling was replaced by the strong sensation of deceleration that eventually hit over four Gs. The violet glow had progressed to a white-hot flame, the Gs and tur­bulence continued to build, and it was now more like living inside a vibrat­ing blast furnace. The flames from the heat shield streamed by my window and out behind us. Sitting in the center seat, I could watch the roll thrust­ers fire as the computer rolled the spacecraft to bring us down precisely on target, exactly three miles from the uss New Orleans, the aircraft carrier that waited to pick us up.

“Eventually, the light and turbulence subsided, a firm explosion above our heads told us the nose-cone ring had departed, and small drogue chutes streamed out to stabilize us. At ten thousand feet the drogues also departed, and the mains appeared. At first they were held partially closed or reefed, and then they billowed out to three good fully deployed chutes, which we were all happy to see. But I felt confused. Once on the mains we were obvi­ously pulling only one G. But then why did it feel like we were still pulling three Gs?

“We splashed down onto a calm sea with no wind. However, we still ended up in what NASA called Stable 2. Translated that means that we were hanging upside-down in the straps, bobbing up and down on the water in a closed damp cabin with the heat of reentry soaking back in—for me the most uncomfortable part of the whole flight or recovery!

“Before we got the balloons inflated that would right us, my mind flashed back to our training when we practiced what we would do if we remained in Stable 2 and had to exit the spacecraft by ourselves. We did the training in a Command Module mockup, very much like the real one, in a water tank in Houston. A lightning and thunderstorm was in full bloom as we began the exercise.

“As we got out of our straps, prepared to dive down into the tunnel to open the hatch, continue further down and out the tunnel, and swim to the surface, we noticed that the mockup was actually sinking! A relief valve had not closed properly and water was pouring into our habitable volume. No longer was this a casual training exercise; this was for real. With very little breathing air left, the last of us made it out and to the surface, using a pro­cedure we had never practiced before. The technicians outside had a crane that they could have used to pull the spacecraft out of the water—except that its use was not allowed when there was lightning in the area.

“I looked around our Command Module for signs of water. There were none. The bags inflated, we popped over to Stable i, and we gained access to the warm ocean air outside.

“We felt elated. We knew we had gone through an ordeal on this mis­sion yet made many major accomplishments that contributed to the space effort. It was a mission of which we would always be proud perhaps even more so because we had worked through some early and very difficult situ­ations before we turned it around and reached full stride.

“Nothing was left but medical tests, speeches, and a return to our fami­lies. Smiles were frozen onto our faces.

“Outside helicopters were hovering as frogmen jumped into the water and connected floatation devices and attachments to haul our Command Module aboard the deck of the uss New Orleans (lph-ii), an Iwo Jima—class amphibious assault ship (helicopter). It was clear these folks really knew what they were doing, since they had previously completed several Apol­lo recoveries.”

The uss New Orleans had been commissioned on 16 November 1968, exact­ly five years before the launch of the Skylab ill crew and wouldn’t be decom­missioned until і October 1997. In addition to supporting real space missions, it also supported the filming of Apollo 13, the movie. It could accommodate twenty-five helicopters on its 592-foot-long deck and reach the scene of the recovery at a speed of twenty-five knots. It was the third of four ships in the U. S. Navy to proudly bear the name of uss New Orleans; the fourth ship, a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock, was launched in 2004 and is still in service today.

Gibson continued, “Once back on the carrier deck, a part of me was depressed. No matter how hard I pushed off, I could no longer float. And no matter where I went, I was painfully aware that once again I had to haul along massive amounts of meat and bone. Later rolling over at night became a real engineering challenge. But the exercises that we did during our easy, lazy days of zero gravity, paid off. Unlike some other crews and after months in space, we could walk as soon as we landed and suffered no lasting effects.

“Yet even with the G-suit squeezing my legs and the switch on forehead thrown to one-G, I felt just a bit wobbly. We were all glad we had those G-suits because climbing out of the spacecraft, crumpling into a ball, and rolling off the platform into the crowd would not have been good public relations. After about two hours I could maneuver pretty well but with my feet spread wide apart. I suffered no nausea just as I hadn’t when entering zero gravity. Training, hard work, or fortitude had nothing to do with it—I was just lucky.

“After about two days, I could walk without any noticeable difference from my preflight gait, but it took about two weeks to hit my preflight per­formance in the balance tests.

“There was another disappointment to deal with when we came back. Without gravity in flight, each of our vertebrae had expanded a bit, and we each became about two inches taller. What a great deal! But our new height was short-lived as soon as gravity got us back into its clutches again.

“Upon return to Ellington Field in Houston, we had to stand on a plat­form for almost an hour trying to say something historic. The wobbly legs returned, and I again feared tumbling off the platform into the crowd. But the legs held and the wobble abated.

“Then I did a dumb thing. About four days after landing, I felt better than I thought I might, so I figured I ought to stop lollygagging around and get back to my standard exercise, a relaxed five-mile run. Wrong thing to do! Muscles and joints that had little stress on them for three months screamed their pain at me for the next two weeks.

“At least in addition to our pride and personal satisfaction, we were hand­somely compensated by NASA. After all, we had traveled thirty-five million miles. Each and every day we received a government travel allowance, which because our meals, quarters, and transportation were government provided, came up to $2.38. Over our eighty-four-day flight, that came up to a whop­ping $ 199.92 for each one of us!”

There was great rejoicing when Skylab ill — and the whole Skylab pro­gram —ended in success. A lot of tired people got to know their families again. And the participants busied themselves with documenting their les­sons learned for the future, hoping that the future would soon include a per­manent space station.

Skylab had clearly demonstrated the value of human intelligence applied in a hands-on way onboard the nation’s first space station. It had also shown that humans retain all their abilities and needs even when they are several hundred miles up. Proper work scheduling, positive motivation, and mean­ingful communication are just as essential in flight as they on the ground, if not even more so.

Those directly involved began to reflect on what had been accomplished and contemplate our future in space. “But shoot,” said Pogue, “talk about something that was successful, Skylab was highly successful! It was our first space station and focused attention on long-term reliability of systems and proper integration and support of the crews. Apollo flights lasted eight days or ten days. That’s one thing. But when you stay up there for months, your systems and crews are going to see a much greater exposure to all the problems that are waiting for you in zero gravity and the space environment. Now we see how difficult it will be to design reliable systems and support crews for something as long as a Mars mission, which is nominally about two to three years.”

Ed Gibson said, “It was a great sense of accomplishment; we had met all our mission objectives, averaged as many accomplishments per unit time as previous crews, despite our slow start, and had set a world record for time in space. But in only a few short years the Russians eclipsed our mark.

“However, our mission did set an American record that lasted for twen­ty-one years. Actually we expected and wanted to have our American record broken within four to six years—on an American station! But that was not to be. Norm Thagard, a very capable guy, broke our endurance record, but he did it on the Russian Mir space station.

“We all recognize Skylab was the beneficiary of the program that came before it: Apollo. Skylab itself was constructed in large part with hardware that became available when the last three missions to the moon were can­celed. Unlike today it was launched all in one shot using the Saturn v, which was the greatest rocket system the United States has ever developed. It could put 250,000 pounds into low Earth orbit, about seven times what the Shuttle can do today. It launched many flights in the early years and got the whole space program off to a fast start including Skylab.

“My own view of this fast start began back in 1957, when I, my parents, and Julie, my girlfriend then and wife now, stood out in the backyard of our home in Kenmore, which is just north of Buffalo. We watched man­kind’s first satellite go over, the Soviet Sputnik. Back then, I’d never heard the word astronaut. But just fifteen years later, my parents stood out in the same backyard and watched me go over.

“But the rapid pace and success of the early years was not because of hardware alone; people and leadership made it happen. We in the astro­naut office closely experienced one of the very best: Deke Slayton. He was one of the Original Seven astronauts but was medically grounded before he could fly. Rather than quit, he was driven to contribute wherever he could, and he was appointed the head of Flight Crew Operations, which included the challenge of keeping over forty headstrong astronauts under control, a daunting task. But he was tough and very mission focused. If you were also there, like him, to advance the mission, he gave you his full support. If you

were to advance yourself, he’d rip out the flamethrower and turn you to a crisp in nothing flat. He was the right guy for the job.

“In Deke’s demands for an overwhelming focus on the mission, which he applied unselfishly to himself as well, he was tough but fair, harsh but kind, someone I respected, trusted, liked, and feared all at the same time. I’ve seen many leaders in my career, some very sophisticated, but I regard Deke as one of the best I’ve ever encountered. He and many others like him made Apollo and Skylab happen. To the cheers of everyone around him, Deke finally did get to fly on Apollo-Soyuz, the joint U. S.—Russian mis­sion after Skylab.

“Future space stations will have a hard time matching Skylab’s high scien­tific accomplishments for its relatively low cost. Based on Skylab, we should expect that future stations will discover new materials of engineering and biological importance, as well as new knowledge of how our bodies func­tion without gravity, important for better understanding how they function right down here on Earth, as well as on future long-term missions far from Earth. But with the more complex systems that must last for many years, not just months, we would expect that proper manning of a station should reach at least six crewpersons, preferably seven or eight, to keep the station in full operation, properly perform really top-notch science and technolo­gy experiments, and realize the real potential of a space station. There is no good reason that we cannot perform Nobel Prize-quality science up there, just as we do down here!

“In the long run, despite tragedies and budget droughts the prospects for America in space remain bright. Most important, we have within our peo­ple, still, a spirit and will that wants nothing more than ever-deeper explo­rations of space, and its profitable use. We have physical facilities in America second to none. And charging in the front door, we have our youth, equal­ly motivated and far better trained than those young engineers who took us to the moon and into Skylab. Lastly, we have our graybeards, engineers and managers with the knowledge and wisdom from decades of experience.

“Certainly, in time, we will complete and properly staff the Internation­al Space Station, return to the moon, land on Mars, and eventually explore the rest of our solar system. But beyond that? In the back of my mind I spec­ulated when I was on Earth’s dark side during evas. The stars were clear, steady, and not a twinkle to be seen in any of them. A dense hemisphere of

stars swelled into existence as my eyes got dark-adapted. There’s got to be life out there!

“As we find more and better ways to visualize planets around other stars, we just might visualize a blue planet, one with an oxygen atmosphere. Then the pull would be irresistible. We’d have a crash program for near-light-speed flight, then a mission that’d fire our imagination far more than any fantasy from Star Trek. But we all understand that the distances are immense. On our Skylab flight, we traveled thirty-five million miles, which is the distance that light goes in just three minutes. Yet it takes light over four years just to reach our closest neighboring star. Clearly when it comes to deep space travel, we’ve just barely put a few layers of skin on our big toe out the front door.

“But it’s also clear that we’re on the front end of something much larger than any of us can imagine, travels and adventures far greater than anything we can now picture. And it’s also clear that we’ll never stop exploring, nev­er stop reaching outward—it’s hard-wired into our psyche. I believe that if you scratch deep enough into the tough hide of even the most cynical, hard – boiled, space engineer, like a few of those you’ve encountered in this book, lurking at their core you’ll find a Trekkie; that’s someone who realizes that space probes and all their data are interesting, often exciting, but ultimate­ly, it’s we who have to go there, in person, to see and feel new turf up close before it truly becomes a real part of our own world.

“One day, certainly in the long-term, driven by the human spirit, we will travel in vehicles that are derivatives of Skylab and subsequent space stations out to the rest of our solar system and, eventually, beyond.”

Alan Bean, for whom life on Skylab was a follow-up to his experience of walking on the moon, said that the station was a vital step in the history of manned spaceflight. “My impression of it was that it was the best possi­ble investment of NASA money,” he said. “It’s so much more valuable than sending one other mission to the moon, which they could have done with that Saturn v.

“It was so much more valuable, I felt, as far as understanding the future of spaceflight and taking the next step. Taking another step on the moon would have been nice, but it wasn’t going to do much different. Different rocks, nothing new particularly. And so we made a breakthrough on another branch of spaceflight, and started out in a way that gave us a foundation.” In retrospect it’s easy to forget how many unknown factors the Skylab crews dealt with, how many things astronauts today are able to take for grant­ed because the Skylab crews proved that they could be done. “My biggest concern before we flew Skylab, or anybody flew Skylab, was, at the end of twenty-eight days, and then at the end of fifty-six days, would we be strong enough to go outside and recover the film and do the work in our space suits? Now it seems like a dumb idea. But I can remember thinking that is one of the real huge hurdles that I wondered if we’d be able to do. As it turned out to be, we stayed just as strong as we were at the beginning.”

Bean said that he regrets the extent to which some of the knowledge gained on Skylab was lost during the decades before the United States once again became involved in long-duration spaceflight. While on orbit, he said, the crewmembers spent time each week answering habitability questions about life on Skylab—everything from how well the equipment worked to what they thought of the colors in the workshop. Their answers were recorded on tape, dumped to the ground, and then written up. “We talked about every­thing you could think of,” Bean said. He said that, in talking to members of the astronaut corps about the International Space Station project, he’s found that the habitability reports produced based on the experiences of the Skylab crews have gone largely unread.

Bob Crippen agreed: “The one thing that I really worried about was—we did it, then we let it sit up there until it was falling out of the sky, and now we’re starting to finally get a space station up there again.” Crippen said that the time gap between Skylab and the first International Space Station crew was very disappointing to him. “I thought we learned a lot of lessons, and it wasn’t obvious when you get that big of a gap that you can transfer a lot of knowledge. That’s the only disappointment that I felt.” (It is worth noting that this is not due to a lack of trying on the part of the Skylab astronauts, many ofwhom were involved in the planning for the later space station pro­grams either while still at NASA or as contractors.)

Overall, Crippen said that he was very proud to have been involved in the program. Learning of the problem with the micrometeoroid shield at launch, he said, was one of the lowest points of his career, and the recovery from that disaster amazed him. “I thought we’d lose the entire mission right there when that happened. The way the team worked to pull off getting the thing back flying again I thought was fantastic.” The can-do attitude that began the program, he noted, continued throughout with the work that was done during the mission on such things as changing out the gyros.

“The Russians were over here about that time, and they were impressed at how we could do on-orbit repairs, some of those kinds of things,” Crip­pen said. “In fact, we took some of those lessons into Space Shuttle, that we needed the capability to do in-flight maintenance on things we didn’t even know we were going to have to work on. So I thought it was a great program. I think everybody that participated in it will tell you that.”

For Bob Schwinghamer also, the effort to save Skylab after its disastrous launch was a defining moment. “I mean, that enormous recovery effort, and the ability to pull that off— in retrospect, you just wonder how people were able to do that in the short time that they did,” he said. “And then the astronauts did their thing. It was something you can remember with pride, everybody that had anything to do with it. It was an uplifting experience.”

The program, Schwinghamer said, lived up to its expectations. “I think it more than did.”

That sentiment was echoed by George Hardy: “I think Skylab was in some ways, without question, the best space program this country has ever had. Now there are some space programs that had maybe higher, greater technical challenges, but I guess if you were to characterize it as ‘bang for the buck,’ I don’t think there’s been a program that’s gotten the bang for the buck that Skylab got.”

Hardy, who went on to be involved in the space station program, also said that he has been disappointed with NASA’s failure to fully capitalize on the lessons learned during Skylab when moving forward. While he noted that many parts of the Skylab experience—such as the lessons learned about crew and ground operations for a long-term program—informally influenced later programs, lessons of other parts of that experience have been largely lost.

“I don’t think there was a formal, structured program for carrying ‘les­sons learned’ from Skylab into space station,” he said. “I don’t know exact­ly why that was. I think for the most part a lot of people working on space station thought to themselves that space station would be so far advanced from Skylab that there wouldn’t be any useful lessons to be learned. And that was a big mistake.”

George Mueller was even harsher in his views on the subject. He was very proud of the accomplishments of Skylab—“I thought it was great”—and very disappointed with what he saw as NASA failing to learn the lessons of that program in the space station project. “The design of the station really did not take advantage of what we learned on Skylab,” he said. “That was my impression the first time I walked through that mock-up; I thought, ‘We haven’t really learned anything.’”

In particular, he said, the decision not to use a heavy lift vehicle, which would have allowed large volumes to be launched into orbit, was a major limitation in the space station program. “Volume is tremendously impor­tant in living conditions,” Mueller said. “Engineers want to build everything into little boxes, but if you’re going to live in it, you’d like to have some dis­tance, you’d like to have some privacy, and you’d like to have some things that are pleasing to look at.”

Jack Lousma said that he also is proud of the groundwork that Skylab laid for the future of spaceflight. “I think we demonstrated that you could live and work in space for a long time and do a good job,” he said. “One of the most important legacies was the demonstration of long-duration flight, demonstrating that not only could you survive up there but you could do useful things, that you could work up there like you would in any laborato­ry back home. We demonstrated that we could do zero-gravity spacewalks. It gave us the confidence to go on to longer missions, having a sense that if you stayed there a year, you’d still be ok.”

Where Are They Now?

Alan Bean

After resigning from nasa in 1981, Bean devoted himself full-time to his painting. He has found a devoted audience for his work, which is based on his experiences as an astronaut on the moon.

Bo Bobko

Bobko flew on his first space mission in 1983 as the pilot of sts-6, the first flight of the Space Shuttle Challenger, seventeen years after he was first select­ed as an astronaut by the Air Force. Bobko also went on to command mis­sions of his own, Shuttle flights 51-D and 51-j, both in 1985. Bobko left NASA in 1988 to work as an aerospace contractor.

Vance Brand

Despite missing out on the Skylab rescue mission, Brand would fly into space four times—on the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project and as commander of the sts – 4, 41-B and STS-35 Space Shuttle missions. After the retirement of John Young in 2004, Brand became the senior member of the astronaut corps still work­ing at NASA, serving as the deputy director for Aerospace Projects at Dryden Flight Research Center until his own retirement in 2008.

Jerry Carr

After leaving NASA in 1977, Carr was heavily involved as a contractor in pro­viding consulting input for the development of the International Space Sta­tion. He founded camus, a family owned business that combines his con­sulting with wife Pat Musick’s art and sculpture.

Pete Conrad

After leaving NASA months after his Skylab experience in 1973, Conrad remained involved in aeronautics and space exploration until his death in 1999 as a result of injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident.

49- At the Skylab Thirtieth Reunion (from left): Alan Bean, Jerry Carr, Joe Kerwin, Owen Garriott, Bill Pogue, Paul Weitz, Jack Lousma, and Ed Gibson.

Bob Crippen

Crippen, who served as director of Kennedy Space Center before leaving NASA in 1995, was awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 2006 in recognition of his role as pilot of sts-i, the first Space Shuttle mission. In addition to serving as pilot of that mission, Crippen commanded the STS-7 and 41c and 41G Shuttle missions.

Owen Garriott

After flying into space one more time on the STS-9 Spacelab mission of the Space Shuttle, Garriott resigned from NASA in 1986 and is now an adjunct professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He spends additional time in charitable activities and as a founder of two new businesses.

Ed Gibson

In addition to working with aerospace contractors after leaving NASA in 1974, Gibson also authored two novels, Reach and In the Wrong Hands. He recently retired as senior vice president and contract manager with Science Applications International Corporation.

Joe Kerwin

Kerwin served as the NASA representative in Australia in 1982 and 1983, then as director of Space and Life Sciences at jsc from 1984 to 1987. He worked

for Lockheed from 1987 to 1996 and finished his career as senior vice presi­dent with Wyle Laboratories, retiring in 2004.

Chris Kraft

Per Kraft: “Chris Kraft is now retired and trying to stay compos mentis. He is very proud of his part in the early days of manned spaceflight and espe­cially the Space Shuttle, which has been unfairly maligned by the media, NASA and other ill-informed engineers and scientists.”

Chuck Lewis (msfc)

After Skylab, Lewis spent a few years in the propulsion division, working on the srb booster separation motors among other things. He then worked in crew training and interface for Spacelab missions. At retirement in 1996, he was Chief of the Mission Training Division at msfc, where he had the plea­sure of watching young engineers continue to support the flight crew with great training and man-systems design for the remaining Spacelab flights and well into the iss era.

Jack Lousma

Lousma made one more spaceflight after Skylab, as commander of Colum­bia’s STS-3 mission, the third Space Shuttle flight, in March 1982. He resigned from NASA in 1983. In 1984 he won the Republican primary for one of Michi­gan’s seats in the U. S. Senate but was defeated by the incumbent in the gen­eral election. Since that time, he has been involved in several technology – related businesses and still lives in Michigan with his wife Gratia.

George Mueller

Mueller continues to be involved in the advancement of space transpor­tation, actively pursuing the fundamental physical requirement for a via­ble space society: a completely reusable space vehicle capable of delivering tons of payload to low Earth orbit at a cost of dollars per pound, a goal he describes as well within our reach.

Bill Pogue

After leaving NASA, Pogue turned his attention to the next generation of space stations, serving as a consultant for what became the International Space Station, and to the next generation of explorers, making spaceflight accessible through his books How Do You Go to the Bathroom in Space and Space Trivia.

Don Puddy

Puddy served as a Shuttle flight director and as the lead flight director on the Shuttle approach and landing tests. He subsequently served as a special assistant to the NASA administrator, as the deputy director of the Dryden Research Center, and as the director of Flight Crew Operations at jsc. After retirement he succumbed to cancer.

Rusty Schweickart

Schweickart left NASA in 1977 to join the staff of Gov. Jerry Brown of Cali­fornia. He served as commissioner of energy in California for nearly six years then as a senior executive in several space and telecommunications com­panies. He now chairs the board of the B612 Foundation, which champi­ons plans to protect the earth from asteroid impacts. He is the founder and past president of the Association of Space Explorers, the international pro­fessional society of astronauts and cosmonauts.

Bob Schwinghamer

Schwinghamer retired from Marshall as assistant director, technical in Jan­uary 1999. Since that time he has consulted for NASA on the Shuttle Colum­bia accident and also on the successful “return to flight” of the Space Shut­tle. He still resides in Huntsville.

Phil Shaffer

After Skylab Shaffer served as a principal interface between jsc’s flight oper­ations organizations and Rockwell International for establishing operations requirements for the Space Shuttle. In the early 1980s after leaving NASA, he served as a consultant supporting several of the NASA contractors supporting the Shuttle and the Space Station. Phil Shaffer died in June 2007.

Jim Splawn

As a director of marketing and business development for Boeing, Splawn is responsible for acquiring new business through advanced technology appli­cations for the Department of Defense. These technologies may be used in either an offense or defense weapon mode, including missiles. Applica­tions include military operations, both local and foreign, and Homeland Security.

J. R. Thompson

Before leaving NASA, Thompson served as deputy administrator at NASA headquarters and as director of Marshall Space Flight Center. Today he serves as vice chairman, president, and chief operating officer of Orbital Sciences.

Bill Thornton

Scientist astronaut Bill Thornton waited sixteen years after his selection by NASA before he first flew on sts-8 in 1983. The mission further explored human adaptation to the microgravity environment, with much of the research being performed with equipment he had designed. Thornton flew once more, on the Spacelab-3 51-B mission in 1985, on which he was responsible for medical investigations. He left NASA in 1994 and returned to academia at the Univer­sity of Texas Medical Branch and the University of Houston, Clear Lake.

Paul Weitz

Weitz commanded the sixth Shuttle mission in 1983. He served as deputy chief of the astronaut office until 1986, then was appointed deputy director of the Johnson Space Center. He retired from NASA in 1994 and moved to Flagstaff, Arizona, where he says he “took up birding, fly fishing, and loaf­ing, in reverse order.”

Nine men were fortunate to live the Skylab experience, and their names will forever be recorded as NASA’s first to truly live and work in space.

But while the names of those nine are the best known of the Skylab pro­gram, their voyages were made possible by thousands of men and women who helped establish an outpost on the frontier of space.

“Their legacy is that it is possible for humans to live and work in space for extended periods—but only with a terrific ‘Home Earth’ team to sup­port them,” Joe Kerwin said. “We, the homesteaders, thank them for their gifts of problem solving, support, and cooperation.

“It was fun to learn how to fly.”

Appendix Alan Bean’s In-Flight Diary

The following is the complete text of the diary that Skylab II commander Alan Bean kept during his time on the space station. It is presented unex­purgated and largely unmodified, with the primary exception of format­ting. Bean’s handwriting does not differentiate between capital and lower­case letters, and the diary included minimal use of punctuation. For the sake of readability, those issues have been addressed.

Bean numbered the entry with the day of the year on which it was writ­ten, so the first entry, 209, for example, refers to the 209th day of the year, 28 July 1973.

209

Launch Day

(I am writing this early in the morning of day 10—Could not sleep, eva today, so thought I might catch up.)

Slept well early tonight, took Seconal and hit the bed about 7 p. m., so did Jack and Owen.

Don Lind had come around to pick up my things, brief case, clothes, gifts to take back to Houston—some to Sue and some to home—Some are in the isolation trailer in Houston which will stay locked up till we get back.

Awakened on time by Al Shepard. He and Deke kept track of us the last few weeks more than usual. This has mixed blessings.

Early morning urination in bottle and weighing in gym—seemed strange to see Paul Buchanan, Edward & Dee standing in the gym waiting. First there was the microbiological samples. Then physical—Then eat—We wore white terry cloth robes.

No traditional sour balls for the launch crew. Looking back now, may­be we should have.

Al Shepard rode in van as far as the Launch Control Center. I watched him because he held the rdz book—when he got up to get off, he forgot he had it and I had to ask. On the way he told us he was the last minute back up—he then mentioned Glenn having his suit at the suit room prior to Al’s first flight.

4, 3 (engine noise and damn the machine starts to shake), 2, 1, more and more violent shaking—it seems to want to go like a car spinning its wheels

о—God, and you feel it pull away from the launch site—vibration, rough jerking, much much feeling of an unleashed power house wanting to go sky­ward —almost the same feel in reverse when you step off the high diving board—You can hear and feel the beast start to accelerate. Jack and Owen are spellbound, so am I for that matter. Lift off, tower clear, whew, that’s a big one, roll & pitch program. I call—my voice sounds ok, don’t sound too nervous, that’s good —Jack and Owen ok.

210

Slept in the ows sleep compartments last night—Place not fully activated but better than csm. Slept pretty good because I was so tired, and sorta sick to my stomach. Owen looked so-so but Jack looked real bad.

Stuffed up head feeling present and will probably be with us the rest of the flight—Nose gets lots of buggers in it & when I blow it it expels blood. Dry climates like Denver do the same.

May have had the straps too tight on the bunk last night.

Breakfast in csm, no water yet in the workshop—Not a pleasant get together—Nobody wanted to eat but knew we had to. No one wanted to think of the things we had to do today— I was behind with stowage, put­ting the rate gyros together (a last minute add on) and trouble shooting the condensate leak. In fact spent most of today responding to ground request for troubleshooting the leak—seemed disorganized—kept doing things too fast, causing delays, lost 50% of my time today for things I should not have let loose.

211

We are farting a lot but not belching much —Joe Kerwin said we would have to learn to handle lots of gas.

Got to stop responding to ground so fast and just dropping what I am doing—causes us to run behind on the time line. Do not know just what to do about this.

I am feeling good in the morning and between meals. Meals themselves tough to get through.

Still losing a lot of things, too big a hurry. Wish the flight planners would let up. The time taken to trouble shoot the condensate system shoots the whole timeline. Got to stay on schedule.

Floated too much at a work station—wish my triangle shoes were adjust­ed correctly.

Guess we had the failure. Because except for a stuck thruster it’s about the worst we can expect — We handled it well but not perfectly.

гіг

Jack was taking a cooked fecal out of the dryer—laughing—well, here is a real nice ripe one, I said, bet you are a good pitza cook. No, said Jack, pancakes.

We had too many fecals and vomitus to cook—

(Look at down voice and we can see what we did each day in ref. to Flt Plan.)

213

Without triangle shoes you can get a free return to our early ancestors; namely holding and swinging feet, legs, arms and wedging feet and arms, feet and butt or feet and back to hold position, you get good at it where you do not have to pick out specific place for each limb or which technique to use, but it comes naturally.

All were in extremely high spirits today, first day we all feel good.

Discuss location of items in particular pockets—left lower leg, trash.

Owen said that today we ought to ask for a reduction in our insurance rates because we were no longer running the risk of drowning or auto accident.

217

Left sal vent open last night after water dump. Thought I was so good at it, did not use check list—fooled because this was first night without exper­iment in SAL.

Wonder what happens when we cross the international date line multiple times a day. Well, no matter.

Saw Cape of Good Hope.

Owen let Arabella out of the vial. She had been in there since____ days

prior to launch. She had not come out so Owen got the vial off the cage, opened the door, shook her out where she immediately bounced back and forth, front to back, four or five times, then locked onto screen panels at the box edge provided for visualization—there she sits clutching the screen. Owen and I talked of giving spider food because she has not moved one half day. Owen said “no” because when she gets hungry is when she spins her web. (More description.) She can live two-three weeks without if she has too.

First back-to-back erep. Jack vts sites Lake Michigan. But got Baltimore instead. Or Washington, his prime site.

Saw what we thought was a salt flat but turned out to be a glacier in Chile. We could see Cape Horn — Cape Horn and Good Hope all in one day, fantastic.

Owen wanted to know if we had tried to urinate upside in the head. He said it psychological tough. Jack said he tried it and he peed right in his eye.

Diving thru workshop different than in water—here the speed that you move (translate) is controlled entirely by your push off so for some spins you can have a D, і Уг, 2 У2, 3 У2, etc. Difficult to push off straight and to get speeds you want. You must watch your progress as you spin—it’s tough to learn but to keep from hitting objects, it’s a must.

It was a great day — first back to back erep and it came off perfect. Jack and Owen good spirits for eva tomorrow—we worked all afternoon and evening on prep, much more fun than on Earth in ig.

Owen worked 22 hours today because he counted his sleep cap time. Talk­ed with Sue over Guam tonight. She asked about rdz from Dave Scott. He said і quad out at so some skill required—he is going to Flight Research Center, great! Every day is filled with memorable experiences—sites, sounds, emotions, hope, fear, courage, friendship. I just wish we could go home to our wives at night.

My urine volume lower than Owen and Jack. Been drinking a lot but must do better. Been concentrating on eating too much. Owen said meals were the high point of a day on Earth and here too. Only difference is there it’s the start, up here it’s when you finish. I got ahead today with a snack dur­ing erep, don’t ever fall behind.

I cut a hole in the bottom of my sleeping bag near the feet—too hot, had to tie a knot to keep from freezing in the early morning.

Heard about leak in am primary and secondary cooling loop. Pri should last 17 days and secondary 60 days. Wonder what ingenious fix they will come up with.

No csm master alarm today.

Almost a no mistake day. But just prior to sleep Crip calls and ask we turn the ess (medical) off. I had just ridden the bike.

218

eva day. I had a tough time sleeping. ok for first 6 hours or so then off and on—finally writing at normal wake up time, iiooz (0600 Houston) because they let us sleep late. Bed is great. I am going to patent it when I get home. The bungee straps and netting for the head and the pillows were my idea. Might come in use someday because no other simple way to make og feel like Earth.

Jack sleeps next to me then Owen at end—the reason, his sleep cap equip­ment fits better.

Funny how good we feel now, I think we all would have said “to hell with this, let’s go home.” I—we were not old enough to know time would pass and we would feel better. No one ever said it in words but that was the way we all looked at each other around day 2 and 3.

Sleeping is different here because the “bed clothes” do not tend to rest or touch your body. This causes large air spaces about your body, that your body heat just doesn’t heat. It’s difficult to snuggle down. Have to put under­shirts (long) and t-shirt on during the night. I cut feet out of the long han­dles then use them for pajamas. Also I mod’ed my bed by cutting a hole in the netting near the feet, too cold at night so close it up with a knot.

Little worried, Funny—Owen’s pcu is #013 and his umbilical is #13. I’m not superstitious, but. . .

Started taking food pill supplements today. Kit is junkeys paradise.

Jack discovered new way to shake urine to minimize bubbles. I called ground and said, “we even have our professionals—Owen atm checkout, me condensate dump, Jack urine shaking.”

eva thoughts

Owen was having trouble with the twin poles—the elastic was tight at either end of the pole plate and as he pulled the poles out the rubber grommet locking the lock nut would tend to roll off. We had not pulled out any poles at the pre check last night because we were afraid too, we might break the elastic. We could not even break it today as Owen tried. He used his head and stopped—thought of a new approach, right foot out of foot restraint to pull pole the right end and left out to take the poles.

We are going to have the twin pole sail configuration on our medallion when we get back.

Watching out the STS window as Jack worked in the dark; I could not look at him in the light as he was too close to the sun, it was fantastic to see the sunrise. It began as a light blue band which grew with a fine yellow rim near the Earth’s limb—the blue gets larger then.

The line with the gentle curvature of the Earth and the fact it became dimmer as you looked off to either side of the sun’s future position.

Just before sun up you could see dim flashes of light toward the horizon where thunderstorms were playing. This pin pointed the coming horizon

which was not discernable against the dark of the Earth from the lighted cabin.

Gold grows at last 15 sec to cover much of dark blue then bright orange and a bright glint as the sun. As it rises the Earth’s horizon moves slowly from head to toe on Jack as he is silhouetted against the blue line. It gives the feel­ing of going around a big planet, a big ball rather than just a disk moving from in front of the eye. The science fiction movie effect was fantastic.

Pole deploy was also difficult because line got tangled by 180 degrees—had to roll back the grommet and then unscrew the nut and remove it.

Poles nice and straight and not bobbing around—white tape at forward edge foil/nylon sail stuck together—did not want to unfold but Jack pulled it in and then out again as sun sets.

Jack said, being out on the sun end, was a little like Peter Pan—or that you were riding a big white horse—feet spread wide across the whole world—the Earth is visible on both sides, at the same times and you can see 360 degrees—riding backwards.

Jack kept teleprinter flight plan as he was going to bed. Owen ask why—Jack said “I want to keep the memorable and unique days”—I said “don’t lose your day off flight plan then.”

219

Passed the lbnp today for the first time. Think I was too far in it and squeeze around stomach cut off blood, will move saddle from 9 to 6.

Did a lot of flying about the workshop just before sleep tonight. Skill need­ed, but great relaxer. Wish Owen would move Arabella.

Arabella finished her web perfectly. When Owen told Jack at breakfast, Jack said “well that’s good, I like to see a spider do something at least once in a while.”

220

Lost our day 5 menu card today. Had to fake it at breakfast. I finally found it as I was looking in the toolbox for a Phillips head screw driver for the wardroom foot restraints. My green copy of Childhood’s End floated by. If you wait long enough, everything lost will float by. A dynamic envi­ronment no one can be stranded in center of a space because small air cur­rents have an effect.

Tried to fly (like swimming) last night. But air currents much more dominant.

Fire and rapid Delta p drill today. Owen needs them the most but hates them the worst. I try to stick with him and do this together, Jack goes alone—when I am distracted, Owen will be doing other things not drill related and I must get him back.

Slept better last night (upside down) because it was cooler from the twin boom sun shade.

Arabella ate her web last night and spun another perfect one.

222

Day off— we had mixed emotions. We were tired and needed rest yet our chance to do good work was almost one-fourth over. When each flight hour represents 13-14 Earth training hours then you can make worthwhile a lot of pre-flight effort with a little extra in flight effort. We did however do some atm and some SO19. We asked for extra plus housekeeping. Wipe, dry bio­cide wipe, the place is immaculate and not a predatory germ within miles, much less traveling at 18,000 mph.

Got a thrill today. Tried to put our a urine bag with the metal fine fil­ter for the head in it [the Trash Airlock] in addition to three urine bags. It would not eject. I tried to close the doors and breathed a real sigh of relief as it came closed. I removed the filter from the now shortened bag and tried again, this time it moved 1” or so then stuck. I tried gingerly to close the door but this time it would not. My heart was beating fast. Can this be happen­ing to us? I tried the ejection handle again, and no luck, the door was stuck. Finally the only way was to force it. I rapped it again and again at first no success, but finally a little at a time then she broke free. My heart still beat fast but maybe a lesson was learned. Why did they not build the lock as an inverted cone so whatever was in there could always be moved down the ever expanding diameter.

Owen did the spider TV three times. Once because he recorded it all on channel A, once because the TV select switch was in the atm and not ows position, the last time it was okay. He got behind and I did some of his house­keeping as he was still up when Jack and I were headed for bed. Jack said “Owen, do you have anything left I can help you with? ” Owen said “no.” But that’s the way Jack is. Noticed Jack uses aftershave on his crotch. Old Spice after shave and skin conditioner complete with a NASA part number.

Notice we do not seem to reflex to catch something when we drop it as we did the first few days. It’s enjoyable to just let a heavy object float nearby.

223

Jack replied to Hank Hartsfield, he felt real good today. Owen said, uh oh, Jack must be sick again. Go look for a full vomitus bag in his bunk room.

Had a PP02 low caution alarm—ground said, we can inhibit as it was erratic recently.

We moved our suits up to the mda getting them closer to the csm and out of the way for the maneuvering experiment later in the week—we moved three silent friends and stashed two at the front end of the mda and one under the atm foot support.

Almost screwed up erep pass today—put in switch command to go to ZLV then did not enter bias in the das. Time to get to attitude starts over which the das bias maneuver is entered and when have Hank reminded me from the ground I had not enter — I did—& immediately knew I should not have — Owen and Jack were up there in a minute to say I should not have. We ask the ground for a new maneuver time to still get there and they quickly gave us 18 minutes where I entered and turned out okay, although we were one minute late to local vertical attitude. This is where I believe all our training paid off— a foolish mistake but we caught it and recovered to make it go—got three sites and then could not get a volcano in because of the overcast clouds.

Owen called me up to the atm and then took my picture with this Pola­roid, out came a picture of a naked gal with big boobs. He took some oth­ers, turns out they were put there by Paul Patterson prior to launch. Owen said he said he was going to call Houston and going to tell Paul, but I said – careful, do not pique the curiosity of the newsmen because they will want to know what’s up and the world has a few little old ladies that do not want pin up pictures in a U. S. space station.

Owen was discouraged today—the experiment

Jack mentioned there was only one requirement for peeing in og, and that was keeping your pecker in the cup — Owen allowed, well, he found that he could minimize the urine drop at the end by being aware that the blad­der was near empty then really press and increase the stream’s speed, only a small drop remains.

224

Had a thriller, was writing in my book when caution tone then warning tone came on—Jack on toilet—Owen and I soared up and found cluster ATT

warning lt and Acs (attitude control system light) on. We looked at atm pan­el and found much tacs firing and x gyro single, y gyro okay, z gyro single. A quick look at the ATT power showed multiple tacs firings. Both Owen and I were excited, it had been some time since we practiced these failures, plus we are in a complicated rate gyro configuration—we both really were looking at all things at once—das commands, status words, RT gyro talk backs, momentum and cmg wheel position readouts. We elected to go ATT hold but tacs kept firing, so we then turned off the tacs, looked at each rate gyro and set the best of one set back on the line. We would have gone to the csm but with our quad problems that would be a last resort. No, we had to solve it right then. We put the rate gyros back into configuration then enabled tacs, then did a nominal momentum cage—this seemed to make the system happy—namely tacs quit firing. Owen and I had settled down by then and were solving the problem again and again to insure we have not forgotten any step. We came into daylight—were two degrees or so in x and Y off so went to S. I.—maneuvered too slow so we set in a five sec maneu­ver time and selected S. I. again—Houston came up and I gave them a brief rundown—Owen, never giving up atm time, started my run for me while I went down for dessert of peaches and ice cream.

erep passed today, Jack got four targets, we then had an erep cal pass taking specific data on the full moon—all three of us working well togeth­er, we have trained a long time for this chance and we want to make the most of it.

Jack made a suggestion to walk on the ceiling as the floor for a few min­utes —we did and in less than a minute it seemed like the floor although covered with lights, wiring runs and traps it seemed like a new place — clut­tered but nice—the bicycle hung overhead was different as was the ward­room table but many lockers and stowage spaces were much easier to see and reach—I might use this technique to advantage when hunting a miss­ing item or looking in a lower drawer.

Had to ask Capcom, Story Musgrave, to give us more work today and also tomorrow—we are getting in the swing—when you’re hot, you’re hot. We will have about 45 more days to do all the things we were trained to do for the last 2 У2—3 years—time is going fast and we must make the most use of it. Much of what we learned will have no application after Skylab—such as how to operate specific experiments, systems, where things are stored, experiment protocol, how to operate the atm, erep, etc.

225

Had bad experience today, sneezed while urinating—bad on Earth—disas­ter up here.

Did 10-15 minutes on dome lockers. Handsprings, dives, twists, can do things that no one on Earth can do—fantastic fun and I guess good lim­bering up exercises for riding the bike.

I went up and looked out of the mda windows that face the sun, but at night. What an incredible sight, a full moon, Paris, Luxembourg, Prague, Bern, Milan, Turin all visible and beautiful wheels of light and sweeping under the white crossed solar panel of the atm. Normally you cannot look out these windows because the sun glare, I could not watch Jack and Owen on their eva. Now we are in the Bay of Bengal. In just 16 minutes we swept over Europe and Eastern Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and finally over India. Too cloudy to see Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Sumatra and Java will be here soon. We repeat our ground track every 5 days but 5 days from now as we go over the same point of ground the local time there changes so that in 60 days we will have seen all points between 50N and 50s at 12 different times of the day and night. At least once we can watch Parisians (Paris residents) get­ting up having breakfast —

It’s not so much that we are 270 miles up in space that isolates us from the rest of the world it’s that we are going so fast. To come home we must most of all slow down, not too much or we would come in too steeply and aerodynamic forces would be too great. And not too shallow for the upper atmosphere is tenuous and might not slow you enough and you would enter off target and there is a lot of ocean.

Owen and I spent his first night in 17 days just looking out the window during a night pass. We came over France then down over Turkey, the Dar­danelles were visible, then he pointed out the Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee—I said I had been as high as anyone on Earth and had been to the lowest point on Earth, the Dead Sea last year. Owen talked of the night air glow — the fine white layer about a pencils width along the surface of the Earth.

We had looked last night for Perseid meteor shower with them burning up below us. Did not see any doing SO19 — funny to hit the atmosphere and make a shooting star, they all flying past us—with no meteoroid shield any­more, hope we do not contact any one.

Flew 509 today, disappointing because took too long to go anywhere, just jumping and diving more fun—strange we did not realize that prior to flight during training. Kicked up much dust and items that we had not seen for weeks-M092 subject cue card showed up, thank God because we needed it.

Went to bed wondering if we would have a master caution warning with the rate gyros but maybe the computer patch for course gains will work—we can’t point as accurately but we should have less disagreement between gyros.

22 6

Fixed my sleeping bag today, safety pinned at two top blankets and took up slack in blankets—too much volume of air to warm at night. Have been waking chilly about i to 2 hours prior to 6 o’clock (normal wake up time) Houston time and having difficulty going back to sleep. Maybe this will help, sleeping upside down has helped, the cooler ows as a result of the twin pole sun shade deployment is perhaps the greatest contributor.

Normal morning sequence is wake up call from Houston, I get up fast, take down water gun reading, then put on shirt and shorts for weighing in the bmmd. Take book up and weigh while Jack gets teleprinter pads and Owen reads prd. I weigh, Owen weighs, then Jack. I fix breakfast after dressing, with Owen a little behind. Jack cleans up, shaves, does urine and fixes bag and sample for three of us, I finish eating as Jack comes in and I then clean, shave and sample urine, I’m off to work at first job as Owen goes to the waste compartment. Jack is eating and about 30 minutes later we all are at work.

A sudden realization hit me this afternoon—there is no more work for us to do—atm is about it. Except for more medical or more student experiments what a sad state of affairs with this space station up here and not enough work to do — with S020, T025, SO73 gone there just isn’t much left.

We could think up some good TV productions getting 5000 watt/min of exercise per day and that should be enough.

Boy oh boy have I been farting today. You must learn to handle much gas up here and I wondered if we would forget when we went home. Owen said can’t you just see Jack in his living room with all his family and friends around and he forgets.

Funny you want a flight so badly you work hard when you get it you can’t wait to launch but once you are in orbit you’re still thinking of entry. Doesn’t make sense when examined closely. We are on the world’s greatest adven­ture, experience, sight seeing and it’s that desire to get home before some­thing breaks mechanical thing do you know.

I am so glad that Owen and Jack and I are on the same crew. Our person­alities fit one another well—Jack always working, always positive, always happy—Owen always serious, well may be not always.

Owen looks funny lately as he has not trimmed his mustache hair. Shaved under his neck too well—our little windup shaver and the poor bathroom light being the problem. I don’t look too great either, my hair getting long, wonder if “O” or Jack will cut it on our day off.

Talking with Sue on phone vhe through Canary Islands and Madrid—she wanted me to call her in London and Zurich somehow and gave us the number. These calls are great, best entertainment—last one I had was on s-band and it was a bomb. Only talked last 3—4 min. Sue getting ready for school and for London trip. [?] in Las Vegas and in Los Angeles. Home sounds close but it’s still 6 weeks away. Lots of living to do till then, lots to see, lots to accomplish. Amy sounded sweet. I love her more than my heart can understand.

I look forward to Jack and Owen’s calls home too because it is a way of getting news without the censoring influence of open communication.

Took the crew pictures tonight—they will look like mug shots when we get home. Should have taken them earlier for a better comparison with lat­er in the flight.

Our tape recorders are great entertainment but continually need drive wheel cleaning. Like mine best when peddling the ergometer.

Owen got his ego bent last night. He had been commenting about weight loss, wanting more food, and salt—peanuts a favorite, Dr. Paul Buchanan called on his weekly conference and told Owen, Jack and I we’re doing okay but he needed to have a chat with him (Owen). Paul said, Owen we have been looking at your exercise data (over the last two days) and don’t think you are doing enough, maybe your heart isn’t in it—Owen about flipped because he takes great pride in his physical program, pound for pound he does more than Jack and I. He could hardly hold back, afterward he worked out till sweat was all over his body then called on the recorder to tell Paul and those other doctors the facts of the matter. Maddest I’ve seen him in months.

227

We have been trying to get the flt planning changed. I especially have had a lot of free time, Owen and Jack to a lesser degree. Jack keeps on the move all the time, so my suggestion of cutting down some was okay. Owen thought otherwise, he has a long list of useful work that he brought along, things that other scientists have suggested, worthwhile. How do I accomplish this feat of us producing our maximum without infringing on Owen’s time. He deserves some amount per day to do with as he chooses.

In a way space flight is rewarding but on a day to day it is awfully frus­trating. Up here we are manipulating thousands of switches, controls, dials, etc. to accomplish some precise tasks/experiment and so with all the actions you make many mistakes, more than you would like to—each session on an experiment I say this time I will do it perfectly, but 90% of the time not so, it’s a difficult assignment. Some miscues do not mean a thing, some ruin experiment data. Hopefully none ruin an experiment. It’s hard to stay up for all these experiments day after day, but that is one of the challenges that is a real part of the job. Jack today spent whole night pass taking star/moon and star/horizon sightings on his own time to satisfy an experiment. When the pass was over, 20 marks made, he was debriefing and as he was talking he said, well, I did those sightings with the clear window protector still on. He had not noticed it in the dark. The data would be off.001 arc sec or so and that just didn’t suit Jack. He told the experimenter on record that he would repeat them later.

Food stains get all over. Not yours so much but your crewmates’ food gets on you—shirt, face, hair, you don’t know it but at the end of the day your shirt has little spots where orange juice flew over, or steak juice. Once it starts to move it doesn’t hit the floor, it keeps going in its initial direction till it contacts something or someone. You tend to shield yourself when you open your own food so the spray heads toward your crew mates who are not watching.

Teleprinter message: To Bean, Garriott and Lousma

We have been watching and listening as the three of you live and work in space. Your performance has been outstanding and the observations that you are making are of tremendous impor­tance. Through your efforts Skylab 3 is a great mission.

Keep up the good work.

Signed,

Jim Fletcher George Low

Received this today. Why do they not send something similar when you are not doing too well, like days 2—4, we appreciated this but just wonder­ing not only them but about myself.

Went to bed on time, do not feel as energetic as usual so feel something was coming on. Sleep is the best thing to repair me, it always works on Earth.

228

Good day today, first part anyway. One hour after wake up had an atm pass. This was the first of our new schedule. We are taking good atm pics and lots of them. We must be ahead of our nominal mission plan, I hope so. I have not felt good the last day or two. Think it’s my low water intake, I had hoped nature would take its course, but it did not. Better start forced drinking.

Failed my lbnp — had to cut off at 1 min 2 sec to go of a 15 min run. I was at 50mm and started to feel tingley—bp dropped and my heart rate start­ed down, it took a while (5 min) to feel normal again. Pulse got as low as 47—don’t think I’ll go that far down again. This is not like Earth in that you cannot put your head low and gravity force the blood from your head and heart from your legs — it could get a bit sticky if your heart beat got too low.

Jack was observer for the run and hated to put the results on the recorder I could tell, I had to remind him—he has a fine heart. Jack opened up the 2nd tape recorder and it also had a failed drive motor belt. Two failure of a complicated expensive recorder because of a plastic circular belt one-half inch wide and 3 inches long.

Performed T013 today, went well, all equipment worked. Hope the engi­neers can use the data to design control systems for future space stations and there is a need to know just how man moves the station because many experiments have delicate pointing requirements and the control system must maintain this accurately pointed during manned occupation. We had wondered if it would be difficult back in training to bounce back and forth between the force measuring panels but it was not. Hand-to-hand, feet-to – hand, hand-to-feet, all were simple. Jack feels a bit 2nd level, because for the last few days with 509 and T013 he has observed and reported me, rath­er than do it himself.

We received a “heads down” report down from our Dr.—it means don’t look out the windows at certain times because of possible nuclear explo – sions—this time it was near the French testing sites near Tahiti—French

Polynesia. When we awoke there was a teleprinter message for three con­secutive days.

229

Just found out our day off was tomorrow— Boy, the week goes fast as I hon­estly thought it was 2 days off.

Jack made a boo boo today. (I was flying M509 suited, boy did the umbil­ical give problems, especially on the rate gyro and ними modes—initially the thruster impingement on the suit caused big disturbances.) I mentioned to Houston (Dick Truly) how the back pack seemed to be too far back and the hand controller seemed too short—he came back and asked if we had taken the back spacer out—I looked at Jack and he looked at me. If they asked us later, we were going to say we flew it both ways — we made sure we could say so by flying it for 2 min with the back spacer out.

You soon find out not to set items down free without a tie down strap or spring or in a crevice or in your pocket. Even if released with zero velocity, the air currents will soon take it away, and which way is anyone’s guess. If the object is too big to tie down for just a minute you release it carefully and visually check it every 10 secs—after 2 or 3 checks you will have to reposi­tion it like you put it originally. It’s a habit easy to break but when you do, it then can result in many minutes of lost time hunting.

Owen and I stayed up and looked at the night pass over Mexico, Houston, New York, Nova Scotia and then Paris, the Mediterranean and east Afri­ca. We looked so big and strong and steady as we glided over the Atlantic in 15 minutes. Our atm solar panels were reflecting in the light of the near full moon behind us. We did not see Paris because of early morning haze but could Sardinia, Greece, Crete, Turkey, Israel, the Galilee, the Dead Sea and Africa where Montgomery and Rommel—Bet they would have given anything for a manned satellite to provide observation of the others troops and armor movements.

Owen became excited over the northern U. S. as he looked out and saw some aurora — this was a stranger yellower than the fog bank like aurora the other night but spectacular. There were vertical shafts of light almost like close spaced yellow green search lights.

230

Our first real day off. Best news was in the morning science report where it said we would catch up with all our atm science as well as the corollary except for medical which was reduced by 25 hours the first half of the mis­sion, we would do the rest—I called and discussed the additional blood work, hematology and urine analysis (specific gravity) that Owen had been doing and wanting them to count that.

We did housekeeping a bunch and had to plan two TV spectaculars. Since we have atm all day we had to schedule it in the 30 min night time crew eat (first night pass for 487). Hair cut next, then acrobatics, then shower. Lots of planning for 3 ten min shows but think the folks in the old U. S.A. will enjoy.

17,112.8 mph is our orbital speed. Had used 18,000 mph on TV and want­ed to be sure — (look at TV tapes for details of what we did) it’s fun but time consuming to do the TV. Just as we were to finish the shower scene my phone call to Sue came in—so Jack got out and waited—when I got back in 10 min or so he undressed and got in and lathered up — we took the TV scene, he rinsed off, we then took the last shot—the one where he floats out of the shower with his shorts on. Owen came back down in a minute and told us the TV switch was in atm so we did not get it—back in the shower Jack went and we ran again—but before he could completely dry his call came in so as he dried I ran up and configured the comm in the csm for him and talked to Gratia—when she heard what was holding Jack she laughed and said “you photograph him in the strangest places.” How can we make him famous if we don’t do it a little different. Anyway we finally got it done—I did more work on the day off than a normal work day. It was late but I ped­dled 5004 watt/min and took my first shower.

It was cooler than I like it—the biggest surprise was how the water clung to my body — a little like Jello in that it doesn’t want to shake off. It built up around the eyes, in the nose and mouth (the crevices) and it gave a slight feel­ing of trying to breathe underwater—I would shake my head violently and the water would drop away (not down but in all directions) some to cling to other parts of my body, some to the shower curtain, some sort of distended the water where they were and snapped back. The soap on the face stayed and diluted with rinse water. Tasted sour when I opened my mouth—that little vacuum has sufficient pull but is rigid and will not conform to the body—so does not do too well there but okay on the inside walls, floor and ceiling. Jack had said it was better to slide my hands over the body and to scrape the water off and over to the shower wall. This worked for hair, arms, legs, but difficult for body especially back—two towels were required to dry off because water did not drain.

Owen was a little annoyed with the TV effort. He did not want to prac­tice the acrobatics for the second time. He usually gets over it in an hour or so. It’s part of our job and we should give it equal time.

231

Flew T 20 for the first time. Jack as usual had the dirty work but was trying harder because of his error yesterday. The work was slow and tedious because it was the first time around and because the strap design was poor—the whole thing was.

Jack said “I’ve done some pretty dumb things in my life but I never got killed doing it—in this business that is saying a lot” —

Owen said “Well the dumbest thing I can remember was flying out to the observatory near Holleman nm — short hop so I decided to do it at 18,000 ft—as I neared there I started letting down, called approach control-we talked and as I descended their communications faded out—I kept think­ing why should they fade out—it suddenly dawned, shielded behind moun­tains — full power and a rapid climb in the dark saved my ass—I think of that incident several times every month over the last three years.”

Jack was saying that when we got back he and Owen might be considered regular astronauts—Owen laughed—it was beyond his wildest dreams to be classed as a real astronaut.

Been wishing Owen and I had taken pictures of the Israel area the first time we stayed awake to see it—I want to give pictures of this region to some of my religious friends.

Sue told me last night that Boe Adams would be indicted for borrowing twice on the same bank stock—she told me about the 37 murders in Hous­ton —we had not heard because on our nightly news they tend to eliminate the stressful news. Putting our 5,000 watt/min on the ergometer (or is it ergrometer like some say) in one 10 min and one 20 min run—have to stop at 15 min usually and let my 185 heart rate reduce to 150 or so, then finish.

Was supposed to photograph the Antipodes Islands southeast of New Zea­land but was too cloudy—Antipode is the opposite place on Earth and the opposite from the islands is on the English Channel—so the original discov­erer must have been from near there—these are on the 180th meridian.

We are crossing the date line every 93 minutes so we gain a day but of course as we go east we lose it an hour every time (look up some news on Glenn’s flight, might discuss this). 24 hours, so it all averages out.

Jack’s having his ice cream and strawberries. Jack’s food shelves when we transfer a 6 day food supply are almost full of big cans plus a few small—Owen and I have half full shelves with more or less equal amounts of small and large cans—he really puts down the chow.

All are in a good mood, morale is high in spite of all the hard work, we are getting the job done.

I was supposed to take pictures of the plains of Nazca in the Andes in Peru (about 300 mi se of Lima). Criss-cross patterns are the dominant features but I could not pick out even the 37 mi by 1 mi place called the airfield of the ancient astronauts. I was supposed to photograph with the 100 mm Hasselblad and the 300 mm Nikon and identify the plains and describe the geometric pattern. Also describe the general appearance of the plains and geographic relation to the adjacent features. — All in 5 min 10 sec of viewing—weather was broken clouds and I did not see the target. Could have several days ago many times—we must change our approach to ground targets.

232

A tough tough day. Worked almost all day on trying to find the leak in the condensate vacuum system—hundreds of high torque screws, stetho­scope, soap bubbles, 35 psi nitrogen, reconfiguring several pieces of 20 equip­ment —we never found the leak—that effort must have cost $2 Уг million in flight time.

Jack feels down, the SO19 stuck out and would not retract—we will keep using it but may have to jettison if it won’t come in. He’s hit the bed early, tired—the last atm pass of the day he ran all the S055 in mechanical refer­ence (102 steps less than optical) when it should have been optical—he was dragging—it was partly my fault as I left it there after my last run.

Owen got the word that the citizens of Enid would be putting their lights on for him to see—I went up with him—it was the clearest, prettiest night we’ve had—we could see Ft. Worth-Dallas perfectly—a twin city, one of few — then Oklahoma City then Enid then St. Louis then Chicago—Owen made a nice narration. He said he started to say he saw Tulsa up ahead and realized it was Chicago. Paul Weitz said that was the one thing he never became accustomed to on his flight—the speed which you cover the world, especially the U. S.

Passed my mo 92 today but used saddle position 5, may be too high out of the lbnp and not pull my blood so hard—Owen and I had a laugh by say­ing my delta p of 50 never gets lower, I just keep getting further out of the can—we visualized late in the mission sending TV to the doctors with just my feet in the unit but still pulling 50mm.

Heard tonight we may put in the rate gyro 6 pack — I told Owen I would do it because they did the twin pole and because that sort of work fits my skills better than Owen’s—hope it did not hurt his feelings but that is the way I see it and that’s my job—Owen even brought it up by saying “I think you want to put out the 6 pack and that’s okay with me—I’m glad to do it but know you want to”—I said you’re right we don’t need this job but if it comes up we will pull it off.

233

Today was a special day — found out we were going to put in the rate gyro 6 pack—who to do it—Owen still wants to do it and so do I. Made up my mind that it would be Owen and I but after reading the procedures real­ized that I should stay in because of my csm experience—Owen and Jack are just not up on it and it is the best decision—Jack will do the 6 pack as he is the most mechanical—Owen does not do those things as well as Jack, it will be tough to tell him tomorrow — I was awake for about two hours trying to put the pieces together and think Owen and Jack outside—me inside is the best way.

Got SO19 in today—just decided to turn the retract crank hard—did so for 10-15 turns but the clutch slipped and it did not move. When I looked in the optics. I think turned it out (extend) then in (retract) then out then in and low and behold it came in.

I took it apart and looked okay as far as possible ice—looked as if a chain synchronizing the x screw drive was loose and may have stuck on a sprock­et. I checked with Houston, adjusted a idler sprocket and it seemed to work okay. Jack looked at it too and noticed another chain that might be too tight so we loosened it. The mirror was so cold that it had condensation on it for several hours. Houston (Karl Henize) wanted it out in a vacuum so the mois­ture would sublimate and minimize residue deposited.

Had to laugh, Jack said he couldn’t fart in the lbnp because he was being pulled down too hard on the saddle—needs a hole in it said Owen—we all pass gas up here—the nice way to say it is “watch out for my green cloud” if someone else comes near.

234

Told Owen and Jack about eva crewman, they both seemed happy, told them what factors influenced me and who I felt most qualified for each position. Called Houston and told them later, they seemed happy. I started looking at the equipment for the job—all in good shape. Gingerly tested the tool for the interior plug removal and it looked promising. Will have to work on check lists later—need many questions answered from Houston.

Day went fast as it always does—only hard part was exercise io minutes (i min ioo watt, i min @ 125, 2 @ 150, 2 @ 175, 2 @ 200, 2 @ 225) on the ergom – eter. Then some Mk 1 and Mk 11 work—then 25 min where I increase my 1700 watt-min to 5000 watt-min. It’s a good workout and more than I did on Earth.

Owen seemed a little distant later today, don’t know whether it is the hours or the EVA.

Worked on the coolant loop leak inspection. Jack made a break through by taking out screws which we could not turn using vice grips—did not fin­ish procedure but found no leaks either, must be outside (I hope so).

Owen reported an arch on the uv monitor in the corona yesterday. We called it Garriott waves to the ground—he was in the lbnp and was embar­rassed and told us to knock it off— we were happy for him. Today he heard the ground could not it see it in their taped TV display — he went back and checked and found it to be a sort of phantom or mirror image of the bright features of the sun except reflected in the camera by the instrument. He’ll get over it (maybe that’s why he was distant).

Crippen woke us this morning with Julie London singing “The Party’s Over.” Jack wanted to make this Julie London Day, so did Crippen so he could call her but Owen won out with Gene Cagle Day.

Got my exploration map up on the wall of my bunk room—Have to write propped up on the wall since my bunk is upside down.

233

Would you believe it we get better н-alpha pictures at sunset than we do at sunrise because our velocity relative to the sun is less and that effective­ly changes the freq of the filter in our н-alpha cameras and telescopes—not a small item either.

Owen’s humor—I said “watch your head” as I pulled out the film drawer. Owen replied “I’ll try but my eyeballs don’t usually move that far up.”

We were laughing about the malfunctions we had after we discovered the water glycol leak — I wanted to call Houston and say “Jack is working on the cbrm mal, Owen on the camera mal—tomorrow after we fix the door mals, the 9 rate/gyro mals and the 149 mal of the nylon swatch mal, I’ll start work again on the coolant loop some more or the water glycol leak mal”.

Everyone feels better about eva—I worry too much and Jack will pull it off. Funny how easy it looks now that we are going to do it—did it get eas­ier as we understood the plan or did we just want it to be doable? Morale is high—did perfect on my mo 92/171.

236

eva day. I was talking to myself during eva and Jack wondered what I was saying—I told him “I was just shooting the shit.” Jack quipped, “get any?—what’s the limit on those?”—Owen was saying “Come on, . . . hustle. . .” Give us some of that (positive mental attitude)—pma (he doesn’t believe in it. But knows I use it on me and them also.) “Go Earl (Earl Nightingale).” I said “you need it, it’s worked on you whether you like it or not.”

Jack had a difficult time with connector number two—it was difficult for me to keep from asking questions of Jack as I wondered if that would be the end of the show but he said don’t talk for awhile and just let me work on it. He did for a very long 5 minutes and then reported connected.

Owen was elated with the view over the Andes—the 270 degree panora­ma with 3 solar panels in the field of view to form a perspective or frame work they were flying over all the world outside of the vehicle going 17,000 mph (get transcript of evas). Lost three shims and one nut taking off the first ramp.

We have only 1 to 2 min of TV recorder time left so have to hold it for Owen’s return to the fas. Owen had to come out of the foot restraints to remove the ramps from the so 56 and 82 a doors. Sun end eva lights worked this time —Jack said he can see many orange lights, we were over mid Rus­sia —not many cities—Orion came up, a beautiful constellation, Owen still working on bolts at Sun end.

Got a master alarm—cmg sat — s/c going out of attitude—I put it in att Hold—TACS when was out 16 degrees.

Sometimes, like on a tall building, you get a controllable urge similar to jumping off which is to open a hatch to vacuum—or take off a glove or pop a helmet—fortunately these are passing impulses that you can control but it is interesting to know they take place.

Great eva today — all happy tonight. Owen summed it up when he said “It’s something that needed doing.” Jack said he thought I made the right decision—so do I and we are all satisfied.

Owen bitched about the medical types that take care of our food because they told Paul Buchanan our food cue card were wrong for optimal salt and they had not bothered to update and had been making them up with sup­plements. — Owen flew off the handle because he has been needing salt.

It is comforting to know someone (many someones) on the ground are working your space craft problems faster and much better than we. We gen­erally perform a holding action if we can. Till help and advice comes, then take the info or suggestions and do them, this is the only way you can free your mind to do the day to day tasks, the productive tasks while someone is trouble shooting your problems.

Heard yesterday that Fred Haise crashed in a Confederate Air Force T-6 and was badly burned but would survive. Seemed his engine out and he dead sticked it into a field, a wing tore off and the whole thing caught fire—burned him over his whole body except his face, so that’s lucky—heard today that he was on oral foods so he must be improving.

Rearranged my bunk room—put a portable light on the floor near the head of my bed and turned my beta book bag upside down so I could grab the items inside easier. I use the door of the bottom locker (pulled out about 30 degrees) as a writing desk. Stole the power cable for the light from the spiders’ cage—hope Owen doesn’t get upset. He has been getting messages to feed them both filet and keep them watered. Will we bring them to the post flight press conference?

The teleprinter is a device about which you can have mixed feelings — it would be hell to get the information any other way so it must be cared for as an expenditure of effort. But at the same time every time you hear it print­ing you know it’s more work for you to do. Wish we would get a non work related message sometime.

237

Felt good to have atm film again. Operating the atm telescopes and camer­as is one of the most enjoyable tasks here. It is challenging, you can direct­ly contribute to improved data acquisition—Owen has effectively changed the method of operating it in just % of a month. The Polaroid camera and the persistent image scope have made a significant difference.

I had Houston give all the atm passes tomorrow, our day off, to Jack and I, so Owen could finish some things he is behind on and do some addition­al items that he has planned prior to flight—the flight is Уг over and he has little spare time—he needs some to be happy.

Using the head for sponge baths (bad name because sponges squirt water out when pushed on the skin).

(Tell story of mdac test) has become more pleasant as I have been less careful about sprinkling water about. I tend to now splash it somewhat. And after the bath is complete wipe up the droplets on the walls. None on the floor like on Earth if you did the same.

We passed Pete, Joe and Paul’s old space flight mark, in fact we now hold the world record for space flight—it feels good to be breaking new ground said Jack today. We will be Уг into our mission tomorrow night.

Our TV got too hot during eva and quit working—we will do the rest of the mission on one TV I guess. Funny, they did not insulate it sufficiently. We had a plan to put it out the solar air lock for eva but can’t do it now.

Sue and Amy will be getting up soon over in London—we do not go over London, it above 50 degrees N latitude.

Europe is an awfully small part of the Earth—so is the U. S.. Jack has mentioned several times that each time he looks out the window it’s either water or clouds or night.

The odds for man all beginning long ago back in the sea is reasonable just from a total volume of water available to total area of land available.

Jack has a small sty on his left eye, he wanted some “yellow mercury” but settled for Neosporin. Jack treated himself but Owen will examine it tomor­row — Paul Buchanan said for us to be extremely careful because that could be contagious. Perhaps a streptococcus of some type.

Our little Sony tape recorders are holding up so so. It is necessary to clean the rubber drive wheel about once per two days—lots of trouble.

Did Mk I exerciser TV today, also some Mk 11 and side horse swinging on the portable hand grips.

I keep my personal items in a locker above my head—it was across from me at eye height till I turned my bunk up side down, it has a hand hold with a thin rubber sheet covering it. The rubber sheet has a horizontal slit in it and serves to keep objects inside when my hand is inside searching for one of the 20 or so objects within. As I look inside I see chewing gum, stereo tapes,

Skylab sticker, my dental bridge, a string tether for books. Some tape drive wheel cleaning swabs, a couple of old teleprinter messages.

238

We are going to sleep just under one hour to the mission midpoint. Our sci­ence briefing today showed that we had made up the atm observing time we missed early in the mission and predictions are for us to exceed even the 260 hr atm sun viewing goal. We are ahead in corollary experiments. They are even having us try a new so 63 using the ams that was not to have been till sl 4.

Took my second shower, noticed that you could not hear much of the time less you shook your head because large amounts of water cling to your ear openings. I was the only one showering today.

We did urine refractory tests to determine specific gravity.

Exercised today although that is not my plan for day offs—not doing the exercise would be a nice reward but did not have time eva day.

Think the reason the days pass so quickly up here is the variety of tasks we each do—we never do any one thing longer than 3 hours and the typical would be one hr or less — and you feel you’re doing what you trained for for more than 2 Уг years. I spent much training time in the Navy for war and never went, thank God.

Talked to my mom and dad. Mom is so happy with Pepper and David’s new baby, Brandi Frances, that she doesn’t know what to do — if it had been a boy they were going to make the middle name Arnold. That might suggest Pepper’s feelings toward her grandparents. Mom said Clay was leaving for school next week—had returned from California at 3 in the morning.

Am going thru all my music tapes to grade them pop or easy listening. And very good, good or so so. Seems I listen to the same 3 or 4 all the time.

Jack made an excellent observation when he said NASA should play down the spider after the initial release because it tended to detract from the more meaningful experiments we are doing up here. Will the tax payer say, now that I know what they are doing up there, I don’t like my money going for that sort of thing.

Owen tried to do a science bubble experiment with cherry drink but didn’t look too promising to me. He kept losing the drop of drink from the straw.

Jack suggested we put a pair of trousers in with our clothes in the csm so we would have a full uniform on the ship — we will wear our hypertensive garment for entry—in fact we may wear it for the sps burn since we found out Paul and Joe had a gray out during this burn.

We may want to give the entry guidance to the cm early if gray out occurs there too.

I have noticed if I do not force myself to drink then I will drink much less than on Earth and will dehydrate—I do not seem to automatically desire the proper quantity of water. Owen and I were talking about a possible advan­tage to the 18 days post flight urine and water measuring period—I suggest­ed that when we get back we may not naturally readapt to one G and become dehydrated there. He does not agree at all.

Jack is playing his music in bed. Owen and I both agree on his music at least.

I slept 9 hours last night, a record for me in space.

239

Spent part of the morning composing a message to the dedication of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Space Center. Thanks to Owen’s and Jack’s sug­gestions, it turned out acceptable I think. It must have because Dr. Fletch­er read only President Nixon’s and ours.

When I used to go from compartment to compartment I would be lost when I got there—now I look ahead as I enter and do a quick roll to the “heads up” attitude for the space I’m entering.

Owen said his only regret was that he would never adapt to Zero G again—he thinks Pete is the only one besides ourselves that has ever done so — the weight loss and the poor appetite are the evidence. We could gain all sorts of weight if we wished.

My pockets are most useful—Lower left—all trash I pick up I empty from time to time. Jack just keeps it there till he throws the pants away. Right low­er, tape and tools if needed. Upper left, timer and tools. Upper right sizzers and flashlight. The little pockets for pens and pencils, knife and sizzers. Far from perfect—flaps too short, needs snap & need more width.

I’ve noticed I enjoy the atm time—The controls are an intellectual chal­lenge and just interesting. Mostly I think it’s because it’s the only solitude that is available. No noise from anyone else—It’s a time to be alone. In the sleep compartment someone is right next to you & it is not so private some­how —Here, seldom does anyone float by.

By the way, living in og means you make no noise generally as you approach someone else, no footsteps, no ripples in the water, just silent swift move­ment. I’ve noticed that each of us tends to say something to another as we approach just to keep from surprising him—startling him. I noticed this silent movement first in skin diving — I could look around and suddenly there some 3—5 feet away would be a big fish—It all depended on the visibility of the water because much of the time one kept a good scan going.

The sty on Jack’s left eye is going away — He found no “yellow mercury” but used Neosporin.

This message was sent to the ground by Alan for the dedication of lbj Center.

Owen, Jack and I would like to send our best wishes to Mrs. Johnson, Governor Brisco, Dr. Fletcher, Dr. Kraft and all the other distinguished guests and officials at the dedication ofthe Lyndon Baines Johnson Space Center. The work in which we are engaged now in Skylab would not be possible had it not been for the strong support and leadership of Pres. Johnson in the Senate and the Presidency.

Our present preeminence in space is in no small way a result of his grasp ofthe fact that a progressive program of space exploration contributes significantly to the future well being of our nation and its people. We are proud to be represent­ing nasa and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Space Center as we circle the Earth.

We believe the work we do here now is an extension of that which he char­tered and championed.

240

So I feel on top of the world.

Ergometer broke, I fixed it then went back and overtorqued it (should have stopped at 30 in lb) and broke the bolt. Jack used the bone saw then his Swiss Army knife (wonder if the Swiss army really uses them) hack saw blade to fix it—I pedaled 6007 watt/min with 3 min at 300 watts. A new record both for time & for max power. We are whipping into good condition.

I got mad at Owen today — He has a habit of acting disgusted when I make a mistake—Today I had aligned the atm wrong and he was nodding his head—I lost my temper and told him to quit. Maybe he will take the hint.

I asked the ground to let Owen fly M509 soon—He has not flown any simulator, it is safe & it would answer some important questions. Hope Jack won’t mind.

Also asked the ground to invent a pointing device for locating ground sites we should photograph rather than just telling us which window—Hope they will because it would help. Most of the flyover time is spent verifying that you have the right place by looking at the maps, that other observa­tions are compromised.

They wanted to know tonight if Owen would fly on our day off and I said sure—later I asked him and he said ok.

Did a TV tour with Jack today. He was shifting his eyes a lot at first and I told him—he never did so again, he likes TV and will be very good at it when we return. I try to teach them all I know—or think I know.

About every other night I get up because of unusual noises — mostly they are all thermal noises. The most unusual view occurred once as I left my bunk and peered up to the forward compartment. The Уг light from the lock revealed three white suited figures, arms outstretched, leaning sever­al awkward ways—silent, large with white helmet stowed over them—one drying, the others waiting to dry. I was shook a little by the eerie sight so I went to the wardroom and looked out. The dark with white airglow layer and white clouds filed the lower right portion of the window like it was one foot away. It startled me even more.

241

Morale is high—work level is high. Last night after dinner Owen asked Jack if he (Jack) would like him (Owen) to take his late atm pass. Jack said no he was looking forward to it—he wanted to find some more Ellerman bombs—(bright points in penumbra near sun spots) as he got some earli­er —I interrupted and mentioned that the flight planners had voice uplinked a change in the morning, assigning me to the pass. Owen laughed—here we all are fighting for the last atm pass.

Kidded Owen about wearing his M133 cap—said Jack and I better watch our ps & Qs tomorrow, Owen will be in a bad, criticizing mood—he took the kidding well, hope it will have effect.

I have been decreasing my number of mistakes significantly by only doing one job at once —atm is the one most enticing to doing special task as a set of instruments is operating. Invariably if I do, I do not get back in time or do not catch a simple error in the set up. I am waiting now doing SO19 which requires little thought other than checking the exposure time every few sec­onds. Exposures are 270, 90 or 30 sec.

242

Had another run with T-20—suspect it was the last unsuited run. Worked somewhat better but the restraint straps were too time consuming to put on.

Noticed I have begun to think of places I like to go — spaghetti joint in la, drive down the San Diego Freeway too. I can see it in my mind’s eye. Our trip to Israel, I see the drive to the Galilee with Mathew Simon. Driv­ing the Gulf Freeway in Houston, Christmas time in the Ft. Worth/Dallas area—shopping at Northwest Mall, driving home last Christmas Eve with gray skys, funny the places you remember, often the least memorable.

I declared “This is the captain speaking, this is proclaimed ‘loud music day’ aboard Skylab, only loud music will be played.” I may have to wres­tle Owen to the floor. I noticed Jack was playing loud Dixieland at the atm panel—he sent some to the ground.

Owen was testing our Achilles tendon this morning—funny to hear Owen ask Jack “how about tapping my leg?” You must get used to touching one another in this job. Doctors do and probably some other professionals, but test pilots usually do not. Putting the sensors on the upper right and left but­tocks (sacrum) is a difficult task for us—handling the fecal bundles before they are dried is also a bit new and not comfortable although completely natural and sanitary.

Owen has been unusually pleasant today—wonder if it was the kidding last night.

Jack and I did TV last night—finished up the tour of the lower compart­ments, Jack did an excellent job, soft-spoken, a few jokes sprinkled in here and there, shower bit with him inside was good. He had to do the ending twice but it turned out okay, I advised him to complete the show in the lbnp he did, it just wasn’t right.

Been way ahead on my time line today — the flight planners gave me house­keeping time and a long lunch—they are really scratching their heads to think of useful things for us to do.

The ergometer must be easier to operate at zero G—perhaps because of no weight the legs only have to push pedal force 35# and not the weight of the body.

We did some activities Achilles tendon reflex TV today and later I acciden­tally put some 183 TV on the recorder over it. We repeated the test later.

Brought our 6 day food supply down—all helped put it in the pantry.

Be glad when erep starts again so we have more good solid science to accomplish. We have been doing a lot of s/ c tests and bmmd tests lately.

The condensate dump line plugged up last night—worked on it off and on all day—hot 35 psi water finally cleared the line—wonder if it will give more trouble, bet it will.

Exercised 10,041 watt/min today for a new world record for me—my nor­mal is about 5,000.

Jack said Gratia said he was on TV last night with part of the tour. She liked it—Sue gets home from Europe, London, Braunwald (Switz.) late tonight. I’ll call tomorrow.

Jack’s boy (6) got on the phone and told Jack their dog was the father of a litter of puppies next door. Jack wondered how he knew and his son said they were black like his dog—Jack had a cat named Detail because as a kit­ten it slept on the warm car motor one too many times.

243

Good day—we all hustled all day long—Jack almost got a big flare. He was on the panel and the Be counter went up almost enough to have the size flare called for today (counter one, 4,150 counts). He had counter 2, 3,000 or so counts—when I arrived (had been exercising on the Mk 1), he was slewed to a bright linear region or plage that was several times brighter than anything else on the display. It almost looked iridescent (in B&w) Jack could not make up his mind whether to go all the way or not—he elected a prudent course and went into a modified low film usage flare mode. Sure enough, it did not go any higher, he had calculated right. This is where man in the loop comes. Can use his judgment and commit resources as appears wise at the time.

Had a slight argument with Mission Control—we have for two days try­ing to make the waste management dump system work to empty the hold­ing tank and water separators. They have had us do all sorts of procedures to clear it out, dump air, dump hot water at 35 psi-suddenly today Bruce McCa – ndless calls up and yells, “cdr, that last dump you made may have backed up and cracked the separator plates, turn off both condensate valves, switch air flow to heat exchanger в on both Mole sieves and quit dumping.” Well, I quit dumping several hours ago. Next site I told them we were operating this space station like an unmanned station, we could change probes bring up the old probe, look at it, plug it in and check the heaters, blow it out with high pressure nitrogen, they said they would take it under advisement. I also said you could not inspect the plates for cracking as they had a chamy cloth over, under and between the two plates (like a double decker sandwich).

Did my exercise while Owen did M092-93 and I was the observer—ped­dled 200 watts for 4 min then adjusted his setting, then 200 more for the next 4 minutes. While he did 93 I went upstairs and did Mk 1. There are many ways to get ahead on the time line.

The sun has lots of activity on it—it looks like a Christmas ball with many bright lites on it—strung across the equator mostly—wonder if could be like Owen’s water bubble experiment the other day where as he spun the 1 Уг inch ball of water the air bubbles in it all lined up along the equator of the spin axis.

Owen and I were laughing about this night we both went up to see the lights of Enid—he talked of Mexico, Ft. Worth, Dallas, here comes Tulsa, Oklahoma City, look at St. Louis, Chicago—everything but Enid—Hel­en Mary called up there and tried to sooth the people—she gave Owen hell—I kept telling him to say something about Enid but guess he was too shy, they had a direct TV hook up, radio hook to us and all lights including the football field.

Found a stereo tape of mine in one of Pete’s cassette holders. Must have been there since day one—knew some of my music was missing—found it because I was trying to mark the good/so so tapes. We have not played any of SL-4’s music yet I may ask them if it’s okay to do so.

We have been thinking about asking to be extended. We all feel good, obvi­ously healthy. Don’t exactly know how we can go about it ethically — there must be a proper way.

We are going to ask Dr. Buchanan (Paul) about Fred Haise.

Sue had a great time in London and Switzerland—She said Amy was so perfect. She is that anyway. I know the trip was good for both as 60 days is a long time to wait. She will not sit and wait but she will have to wait never­theless. It felt good to hear her voice and know she is nearer.

Owen, Jack and I were laughing about the fact that we are on our 6th food bundle and have filled 6 fecal return containers. He thinks the whole flight might be a phony and we are up here just to process food—I said we could just invent a machine to do this and eject the waste for aircraft recov­ery. Think of the trouble it might save. Jack chimed in Hey, I’m going on strike, I won’t eat. I’ll just put my food directly in the fecal bags—yes, cans and all—Owen quipped don’t forget to include the supplemental pills.

There are many islands in the world. Some small one lost way in the mid­dle of a vast ocean. Some green, some brown, some sandy with light blue green water, the beach—some are just the circular edges of ancient volca­noes —who knows how they slipped beneath the surface.

244

Writing this on day 245. Yesterday we had our first erep pass in a long time. It felt good to be back at it. We are good at erep and it’s a worth while experiment. I mentioned for the first time—since the timing seemed just right—that we wondered if they had heard anything about our staying an additional 10 days. It caught all by surprise, (except Jack and Owen, they were caught a little by surprise because I had intended to wait about 5 or so more days), the time just felt right.

We are all in such excellent health physically and mentally that this is the right way to do—it could be a great thing for NASA to keep us up here it wouldn’t cost much and the sun is very active right now.

Jack, Owen and I are eating the overage food much more than any of us thought. Jack needs more calories, Owen more salt and potassium and I need more potassium also.

I sure feel different about our physical condition now than I did when we were losing leg circumference. The question was when would it stop.

245

Day off— Two erep passes plus some good atm — Owen caught a flare, Jack and Owen a couple of smaller flares. The sun is hotter right now than it’s been in 14 years. We can even see 8 or so active regions on the xuv monitor without integration. Jack says it looks like a 3 day after Halloween pump­kin Jack o lantern.

Dr. Paul asked if we really wanted to go the extra 10 days and we said “You bet.” He asked if we had talked to our wives and Owen said he did last night and she is 100% in favor, for as long as he can. Paul said he would just let that drop without comment. As predicted, Owen explained how she meant it.

Owen played his classical music all morning, so I would not put on my loud stuff. I’m enjoying the newly discovered music tape.

Came over San Francisco just before sunset—It’s a beautiful place even from 270 miles. The city was clear but the fog was covering the bridge and just sticking into the bay. It will be a pretty night there tonight I bet.

Did not take a shower. Takes too long.

Heard Jack debrief M487—I need to get his comments (all the guys’ comments)

246

Clouds are like snowflakes, no two alike—patterns are every kind imagin­able and unimaginable—light furry white, furry grey.

Got my first flare today—A C6 in active region 12. I noticed it while doing some sun center work as an especially bright semicircular ring around a spot. There were 8 or so similar bright rings but this one became exception­ally bright both in Hydrogen-alpha and in the xuv. I debated with myself about stopping the scheduled atm work and going over and concentrate on the possible flare. As of this time it had not reached full flare intensity and it is not possible to know whether it will just keep increasing in intensity or will level off then drop. As I elected to stop the experiments in progress and repoint I noticed about 5800 counts on our Be counter aperture 2 —A true good flare would be 4150 counts aperture 1. It never got much higher. Owen hustled up at once to help—He noted 55 was not at sun center so we repointed it (It was 80 arc sec too low) We took pictures on all except 82A which is extremely tight on film at this point.

Paul had Joe Kerwin talk with us the other night. Joe had heard we had asked to stay and he indicated they had discussed it on day 22 or 24 and decided against it. He seemed to think they had made the proper decision. Joe indicated Pete, Paul & he were in preflight condition—the only real funny was the fact their red blood cell mass was down 15% or so and their bodies did not start making it up till about Day 17. Why it waited that long they do not know. I wondered if it were possible to affect the mechanism so that it stopped forever. Seems far fetched but a thought.

As an astronaut you become very health conscious—if we were not so healthy we could become hypochondriacs. I’ve worried about a rupture in the lbnp. My legs losing circumference, back strain on the exerciser, gain­ing too much weight, not having a good appetite in zero G, heart attacks. You name it—I worried about it —As Owen said—from a health viewpoint these may be the most important 2 months in our lives. He could be right with the changes going on and the remoteness of medical aid.

Owen stayed up late doing atm because of the activity.

247

Jack told Story we had only 1 set of salt packets left—or 11 normal days worth.

Sounds like a monumental screwup to us. No one counted the salts as what everyone was using—I said it shot a hole in our staying extra days —Jack responded, yeah, all they need is an excuse to get us back on time. Besides if I don’t stay longer, said Jack, how can I finish my bmmd work. It is a joke just how much bmmd work we have done over the last weeks. Repeatabili­ty tests, 50/150 gram weight change tests/insensible water loss tests (mount­ing food trays & calibrating).

Jack sure loves to talk on comm. and especially on TV—on erep he chat­ters away constantly. Bet the guys on the ground enjoy his blow-by-blow descriptions. Jack started maneuver back to si with too short a maneuver time in while talking.

Jack’s extra food is eating into SL-4 supplies. It’s hard to tell which his motive, to hold weight now or to eat up SL-4 food so they can’t stay so long.

I mentioned to Owen that our attitude varies like the sun’s activity — now it’s way up because the sun’s activity is up. Owen avowed that ours is up or way up. Always positive. I mentioned that the first few days it didn’t seem way up. He allowed that. It wasn’t down—sort of like rain on a camping trip — You just have to be patient, good times are ahead. He also allowed that that would be a quotable quote when we got back.

Forgot to mention Jack saying that if they extended us we could always do bmmd calibrations all day — Right, 1 on the bmmd, i on each smmd, then rotate every hour.

In the middle of last night I heard a loud thump—It actually shook the vehicle. I got out of bed and looked at all the tank pressures in the cluster and even in the csm. Nothing seen—I recorded the time 0725 and told Hous­ton this morning. They called back and said they broke the data down at minute intervals and found nothing—they are now breaking it into Уг sec increments. Something happened, but what I don’t know. Perhaps it was a sharper than usual thermal deformation possibly caused by lower beta angle & more rapid sunrise/sunsets. It may show up someday—I hope not entry day with it being a csm pyro. Maybe we got a small meteoroid hit. Well, forget it, or at least, put it in the back of my mind.

248

I mentioned to Owen about it becoming colder now, especially noticeable in the early morning—You might freeze your ass off if you don’t watch out. Owen said yes the fyao (pronounced fay-yo) number is going up—hope it never reached 1 because

APPENDIX | 505

Jack is pedaling the bike with his arms—good for shoulder and arms, he can do 125 watt/min for 5 minutes.

Owen just flew by with the evening teleprinter messages—We try to find a new record, our old record is from the dome hatch to the ceiling of the experiment compartment.

My pocket timer has been invaluable. It allows you to concentrate on two jobs at once without worry you will forget the first. I keep grey tape on both switches so they won’t get accidentally knocked off while in my pocket.

I’m doing 2 16 min exposures on SO19—forgot and left the wardroom win­dow open for the first 30 sec on the first one.

Stowed the erep film in CSMA9 locker complete with brackets—Easier than I thought. We are getting ready.

Owen was on the atm almost all day doing jop 12—Calibration rock­et work to compare with a more recent sun sensor instrument to insure our instrument calibrations have not drifted.

erep tape recorder easy to load, tape has not set and does not float off the reel & make a tangle.

Story Musgrave said there was a sound in the background like a roaring dragon—It was the sound of Jack pulling the мк i exerciser.

Jack’s triangle shoes are wearing out—Hard work on the bike & мк її mostly. He is going to recommend SL4 bring up an extra pair.

Did TV of SO19 set up—It was quick. Did not use the checklist much as it is a familiar one. Did it efficiently.

Took a soap (Nutregina) & rag bath today after work out—Do a soap one every other day—And a water one the other day. We are all clean—Body odor just is not present nor is a sticky feeling after exercise.

If one gets stranded in the middle of an open volume he could merely take off clothes & throw the opposite direction you would like to travel. With no clothes you could wait till the urge to urinate was upon you & jet over. Actually there is enough air flow to prevent any stagnation except against some other object—Sometimes though you will accidentally let loose or your triangle shoe will slip out and you will start a slow drift across the forward compartment—It’s exasperating because there is nothing to do but wait.

Several things I have learned up here but the most valuable for any opera­tion is “Do not try to do anything else while you operate atm — You invari­ably make atm mistakes.”

Another is 2 to з minutes is too short a time to let your mind wander on another subject when you are within that time from a job that must be done then—such as a switch throw, photo exposure, etc.

Our condensate system vacuum leak has fixed itself— somehow when I connected it all back up after the dump probe changeout it did not leak. The ground thinks it’s a fitting on the small condensate tank. Glad to see it go because the і to і Уг hours per night to dump was time consuming.

Changed my jacket today. Wasn’t dirty but need the 2 patches, the flag and the name tag off them.

249

Good day. Did erep. Got 3 Phoenix sites on one pass but did not find the 4th one (Sand Dunes National Monument) Probably had it in the vts but could not see the dunes. It’s hard to find in a short time. Had my chosen photos of the targets (nasa wants them called sites) all clipped or taped in close view—As I was waiting to start the erep pass we had a 3 min maneu­ver time to z-lv I did two chips of the atm contingency plan for no erep then powered it down for erep. Bet that’s a space first.

Grand Rapids blinked its lights for Jack Lousma tonight. He said some good words over the headset.

Our private medical conference which seems to drag a bit because we are all well with nothing to report. It’s good to hear Paul because sometimes we get straighter information than from Capcoms.

My exploration map has not been of much use during the flight. I’ll have to look at it more. — Our synoptic view just isn’t as great as I had imagined. So many things seem commonplace now that prior to flight were unknowns, for example the physical condition we would be in by now or the final eva. How we would get around inside the vehicle, how much work we could do, what our mental attitude would be.

Talked with Sue tonight — Amy had a sore throat — She, perfect person, knew how many days before I came home—what date today was, what date I would splash down—she is so competent. Sue seemed tired from her first few days of teaching school. It will do her good to earn the money to sup­port the swimming pool. She is giving a party (going away) for the Scotts inviting all our group that can make it. Dick Gordon, who has the perfect job, the one Pete & I picked for him, and his wife Barbara may come from New Orleans.

Owen threw some peanuts from the experiment compartment floor all the way to the dome and I caught them in my mouth—may be a distance record for that sort of thing.

Fun to move objects like SO19 around and just let them float.

Owen was playing some waltzes and remarking “There’s music to waltz by, no better, music to float by” — Jack piped in with, “Hell, that’s music to fart by — In fact all music is that way up here.”

250

Owen got a x class flare first time manning the atm panel this morning, we all hustled up there to help. It was well done. The big daddy flare we have been waiting for. All of us were laughing and cutting up. Owen had said yesterday he had used all his luck up. Guess he didn’t or he’s running on Jack’s or mine.

3 of Jack’s 4 erep sites were overcast. We did TV prep prior to the pass.

Took apart the video tape recorder and removed 4 circuit boards, 63 screws did the job. No sign of circuit problems, burns, loose wires, etc.

Owen & Paul had it out on the exercise as Paul said last night Owen was slacking off. Jack was up at the atm and was laughing and hollering as was I. We have been calling Owen slacker this evening.

Owen and I got 10 erep film cassettes, 1 erep tape, 3 Earth terrain cam­era mags and a SO19 mag out of a plenum bag where the sl-2 crew had left it. Wonder if we could use it on our mission or on a mission extension.

Owen & I went up and got out some grape drink & lemonade & pears & peaches & pineapples from overage for all of us to eat. We probably won’t eat it all but then will not have to keep going back.

Jack told us about boot camp. How he was told to get in line and be quiet. When he got to the airport. How the Di’s treated everyone. How they han­dled the situation if your bunk was not made right or rifle was not clean or clothes not in place. Jack said it taught you to follow orders without asking questions among other things—Owen said he was not prepared to go thru that type of training at his age—one time maybe yes, but not with what his attitudes are now.

I am very happy with the way our crew is performing—We are doing the job without problems & without giving problems. In my view, it’s a profes­sional performance.

Pete was sitting by Bob Crippen tonight. He sent congratulations for pass­ing him in space flight time—I told Bob to tell him the reason I said for him

to never look back was that I was right on his heels. Pete said that’s the name of the game. I then asked him to ask Pete to fly our entry timeline a couple of times when all the trajectory was finalized—He and Vance.

251

Made a decision for Owen & I to do the eva. Talked it over with Jack before I asked Owen—Reason was that he would probably get another chance to fly & to eva, but Owen would not. In my opinion Owen has made this space flight much more interesting than it could have been with 3 opera­tional types.

Tried reading while exercising today. It was much better than just look­ing at the panel.

Jack mentioned he felt bad after the spin chair — He wonders if we are becoming sensitive again—I told him I had felt that way last time and believed it’s because we have not been doing flips, somersaults, spins as much. We will start doing them the last 4 or 5 days.

Owen & Jack could not reach wives for private comm. because all the wives were going out to dinner. They will try tomorrow.

I timed a fastest time from wardroom table to atm and got 11 sec. From csm to wardroom 15 sec. Fastest.

Owen was measuring insensible weight loss during sleep again.

252

Day off. Good day—We worked at steady pace—1 erep cancelled because of weather, the other very cloudy. Jack shot a site that they did not send up because they thought he would not be able to see it. Owen has been excit­ed by seeing such fantastic aurora due to the big flares we have had recently. We found out in the science conference that the big x flares we had the oth­er day peaked 3 times in the night before we saw it. We got it just after peak. Today on the atm we got 3 flares—2 mi class just at the last pass and Owen stayed up late to finish the synoptic the next rev. Jack earlier had an eruptive prominence that was large enough to see with the Hydrogen-alpha zoomed fully out (min magnification) You could not see it move but in a few min­utes it would be in a different place. It was the only thing Jack said that he had seen move on the sun. It was bigger than any we had in the simulator.

Gratia told Jack not give up hope on a mission extension. Keep up a good attitude and in good health.

253

Looking back over the last few weeks I’ve had to laugh—we’ve been like hogs in slop—one day we had erep, a flare, and aurora all in one pass. Once Jack saw both north and southern lights in the same day—he may be the only man in history to do so. I got the man in space record.

Tonight, I wonder what Dr. Buchanan is going to say. Today I rode the bike when Jack was doing M092—No real problem at all but the Earth doc­tors just don’t think operationally — my guess is they want full attention to watching the subject. Owen thought it was bad form too because it was not called for in the experiment protocol.

Good erep—did a dry lake near Boulder Colorado and also took data on a hilly site near by—These multiple sites are fun—Got to quit using the worlds targets & shoot on the air.

Did a TV pass over the Sahelian zone (a 500 mile strip just below the Sahara desert) running from the Atlantic to the Red Sea where a 4 to 5 year drought is causing hunger, disease, etc. We hope images from future space vehicles will help these situations — not make it rain but maybe aid in locat­ing potential subsurface water areas, water runoff routes, and so forth. The state department had requested it and wanted a more “promising” speech but I thought best to play it straight.

I have been doing TV of our operations for SL4 guys—it hasn’t had much class but I hope it will help them. Just showing on TV what things should help them get going faster and smoother up here.

Owen brought out his tape with Helen Mary’s voice playing like she was up here—it started with her muttering over the comm box about the inter­action between the comm boxes and causing a squeal. Then she said, “Hel­lo, Houston, this is Skylab.” Long pause. “Hello, Houston, this is Skylab.” Now Bob Crippen, who was in on the joke says, “What’s going on up there.” Then Helen says, “Houston, is that you, Bob — (Owen had them made up for several of the Capcoms) I haven’t talked to you in a long time.” (pause) Bob says, “Where are you?” Helen replies up here in Skylab, the boys need­ed a hot lunch so I brought them one.

“Boy Bob, this forest fires are fantastic. Smoke as far as you can see, and the sunsets, they are magnificent.”

Then in a low voice Helen continues “I better go now. I see the boys drift­ing up to the Command Module. They don’t like me talking to the ground. Bye now.”

It was effective, but the ground just changed the subject. It was kind of a letdown.

Owen has a tape of continual laughter, you know the kind, and one with party sounds. We are going to use the party one when we hear we are extend­ed. We can tell them we are going.

On Sunday Jack always has the Capcom call his Sunday school class at the Harris County boys home and tell them he’s thinking of them—He plays some of the religious music he has up at the atm by himself.

254

This was a good day right up to the end. I had a М092/171 scheduled after din­ner (supper) and at about 2 min from completion I had to punch out. I had a very warm tingly feeling in my arms and shoulders. Don’t know whether it was too much hard driving today or just what—my urine output 2 days ago was larger by 100% my normal—It even beat Owen & Jack. It proba­bly means something. Also I found a knot on the left back side of my neck just below the point where the neck joins the head.

Then while I was riding the bike Bob Crippen, the Capcom, said we had a teleprinter message and to check it—he obviously did not know what it said as it was from the Flight Director Don Puddy reading “Crip’s birthday is today and we have a surprise for him. Maybe you could sing Happy Birth­day from orbit. (Incidentally, our wives and kids were at mcc tonight.) We rounded up Owen’s sound effects tape, found the party sounds and when he came up the next site we played the tape, told him we were having a par­ty in his honor and sang Happy Birthday. Jack stood back and hesitated to sing for some reason. Crip was moved I could tell—they brought out a cake for him—He is one swell guy, and efficient too.

This was the last comm. pass tonight so he told us that he hated to be the bearer of bad news but our request to stay longer had been considered but that it was decided to hold to the present entry schedule of Day 60. We answered with a simple, “ok, thanks.”

We talked of it the rest of the night—I ran around saying how great that was—now we could get home—Now we could get off the food—our Com­mand Module would never last more than 60 days—Owen said, “He never thought we would be extended because there was no positive reason for doing so, atm film used up, more erep sites than ever thought possible, we’re all healthy, all corollary experiments overkilled—to sum up—more risk with

little to gain—we could not think of any directorate but our own who would support us. atm wants us back for data to look at prior to SL4, erep wants its data, medical wants our bodies. Jack was disappointed.

Got call from the ground wanting to know who had been riding the ergom – eter during Jack’s M092/171—I said me. I knew Paul would ask about it lat­er (by the way, this occurred yesterday) tonight Paul wondered if I thought I could monitor M092 from the bike—I said yes, but that I knew the med­ical directorate would not like it. I asked if he could ride a bicycle and car­ry on a conversation at the same time. He said he went over to the simula­tor and tried it & it seemed ok to him.

When you push off the floor to go to the dome, it’s flatfooted and reminds me of the way Superman did it on tv.

In Apollo you go for just a visit or trip to zero G. In Skylab you live it.

Morale a little down today because of the mission duration decision. All of us moving a little slow—except in erep I got my alternate site after look­ing for chlorophyll bloom in Chesapeake Bay then almost got another site but the gimbal down ran out. We know our sites and its fun to work on erep — Jack & I both have 191 sites tomorrow—Jack has been down because he has had on nadir swaths lately.

I zeroed in on Seville, Spain, Marseilles, France, and Milan Italy this morning—Did not get Milan, too hazy, saw the airport though.

Got several changes to the entry check list—going to use the docked dap while undocked to maneuver and to hold attitude — must still use the old undocked dap for the burn—I enter it at 1 min to the burn.

I spent an hour or so reading the procedures. I will start to work and prac­tice them in the csm in the days to come—the other evening I spent an hour or so in the csm touching each switch as I went thru the entry check lists. Nice to find out one does not forget too rapidly—I knew them all and felt at home—But somehow tense. I have noticed I get cold when I get tense—In an airplane in bad weather just prior to a landing approach I always get cold and have to turn up the heat—once in the approach I forget and warm up. It happens all the time, and I guess it is an evolutionary protective mecha­nism—blood internal to support life, external flow minimized so cuts would not bleed excessively.

Had to reduce Owen’s schedule tomorrow—they had him doing post

sleep, miio (blood draw), hematology and urine specific gravity. Two hours assigned for a three hour job—My evening comm. with Sue is over the Van­guard —ship off some of these sites have good comm. Other just don’t seem to have it. Guam’s is one we have difficulty with.

The coolant leak in the csm has dried up — we do not operate the suit cir­cuit heat exchanger every 7 days any longer so the leak is probably in that valve.

256

Had 3 or 4 bumps on my head for the last couple of days—think it may be soap drying on my scalp because I have been washing it with soap a lot late­ly & the washrag rinse just doesn’t seem to do the job. Will use the brush & just water for a few days. It is necessary to learn a new way of life up here in many ways not always preconceived. Here we live at zero G and in Apol­lo we just visit or take a trip at zero G.

Jack & I almost pulled a great trick on erep. I had just taken the sched­uled site (Mono Lake) and an extra site + granite outcrop (Walker Lake) and finished a nadir swath (Boy does Jack burn when he has those) and he sug­gested we swap for a minute and he would get his site up in South Dakota. He had mentioned this just prior to the pass but I didn’t like the idea—Any­way as the time approached we swapped positions — I fumbled with the c&D pad but didn’t miss a switch —Jack found the big dragon-shaped res­ervoir but his site located between the dragon’s back legs was barely cover with clouds. We switched back—we lamented the weather the rest of the day because it was executed properly but could not be completed. We will try it again before coming home. Looking for the sites in the T-38S has paid off handsomely.

We then did T-20 suited—suiting up was long as was strapping in—we used the modified umbilical and found little tether dynamics—will be a good fix for SL4—Jack & I hope we do not do 509 again—we did not fin­ish till about 8 o’clock (1300Z) so we then ate and put the equipment up & exercised and got in bed about 30 min late.

Houston said they were going to slip our circadian rhythm around by get­ting up 2 hrs earlier on entry-6 days and entry-8 days for a total 4 hrs. We didn’t have to do it this way but if we can make it work. We thought one 4 hr earlier wake up would do the job better but it lost out—we can make this work though.

Owen commented on no time off & made up list for day off— This I trans­mitted to the ground along with a request for our day off (erep & atm) and get the trouble shooting done and all tests by entry -5 days. Our plan is to work entry whether they do or not and do other things after.

257

Eat, sleep, exercise and entry.

Jack was saying his memory was good but it just doesn’t last long. Anoth­er of his favorites is “I have a photographic memory but it just hasn’t developed.”

Haven’t felt too spunky the last few days. Owen mentioned it—I sug­gested it had something to do with my high urine volume 4 days ago—He thinks not, but that it is hard work, long hours—He may be right because we have hitting it steady for almost 2 months. I may go take a little nap pri­or to SO19 & M092 today.

Had a hard time going to sleep—felt guilty emotionally. Intellectually I knew I should but emotionally I had difficulty.

The M092 was the best I’ve done. Guess the rest was good but probably the greatest reason for the difference this time and last was last I had gone all day on afterburner and the test was just prior to bed. I had essentially run out of steam. Overconfidence will get you if you don’t watch out.

Should we fly the paper airplanes? NASA would love to show it on TV—but would it convey the mission the taxpayer is paying for? I do not know—Owen will have to decide.

258

One of the spiders died today—Anita, we think. The prime spider Ara­bella who is in the vial is ok—She had more time out of the vial. Got out earlier, and guess just remained healthy.

Tried to set up private comm. with Sue tonight—3 different sites—Either

1 could read them and they not me, or vice versa—or nobody read any­body — the ground always says to check our configuration. It hasn’t been wrong in a month. Wonder if there is any follow up on this.

259

Day off. We did our usual 2 erep & atm plus not much else. We go to bed

2 hours early tonight to shift our circadian rhythm around —We did not want this but can live with it. I went to the csm to get a Seconal to sleep on time.—Owen couldn’t find the ows Seconal—it was in some other drug cans that the ground had him move. Later he inventoried some drugs—This sort of thing always puts him in a bad mood. He gave the ground a partial hard time.

Pedaled the ergometer for 95 straight minutes, to establish a new world’s record for pedaling non-stop around the world — and as Jack said, I did it without wheels too. Owen was interested and thought he might do it lat­er in the week when our orbit had decayed and then beat my time by a sec­ond or less. Bruce McCandless pointed out that he must exceed by at least 5% to establish his claim.

I also took some movies of me exercising on the mki, the mkii and the mkiii for use later in post flight pictures. Need to do others of acrobatics soon.

Owen did some good TV of how the TV close up lens could be used medi­cally — He looked at Jack’s eye, ear, nose, throat & teeth and discussed how the TV might be used by doctors to aid us in diagnosis and in treatment of problems we might have, say, an eye injury, a tooth extraction, suturing a wound or any number of things from a broken bone to skin rash. Owen has a mind that dwells on the scientific aspect of all that he does. He knows much about much—he is interested in all branches of sciences. He is a great back of the envelope calculator — able to reduce most problems to their sim­plest elements. He has done great school room TV demonstrations of zero G water, magnets, his spiders.

On the erep c&D panel was
CDR /PLT DUMB SHIT

erep CUE CARD S192 Door—Open S191 Door—Open S190 Window—Open Tape Recorder Power — On

260

Jack said he felt good today. I had noticed he was not as happy as usual the last four days. He says it’s because of sleep lost.

Our circadian rhythm is in good shape today after the shift. The contin­uous day/night cycle makes it easer than on Earth — Also we are the only ones we see and we are all on the same schedule. Maybe that’s why days off that we work are no sweat, everyone we see is working.

Found out today that we had 6 hrs from tunnel closeout to undock—then і hr 45 min from there to deorbit burn then 24 min to 400,000 feet. A nice slow timeline that will allow us to get set up, double/triple checked for our entry. — Maybe we should get up 2 hours later—well, we’ll see.

atm operations have become much simplified the last week—with all the solar activity the film is gone.—It was a peak on the sun and we were lucky to see it.

We have had the opportunity and were prepared — who could ask for more. They call it luck but PREPARATiON/opportunity must both be pres­ent. I am very satisfied.

261

Owen & Jack were doing TV of paper airplane construction and flying. The trick is not to cause them to have lift or they will pull up into a loop—with more space they would continue in loop after loop. The designs were differ­ent than we’ve all made as kids—more folds in the nose and on the inside edge of the wings.

We interrupted our work to do some special TV—I took 2 of the M509/T-20 pressure bottles put a twin boom sunshield pole between them and taped that up. I then put some red tape and marked 500 on each. We now had a 1000-lb barbell. We showed Jack with Owen and I lifting the barbell on Jack. He grimaced till he was red as he lifted it up. We then moved it so it was to his front and he lifted it again as he came to full up he released his triangle shoe locks and kept going off the top of the camera. We then set up the atm for 2-3 minutes and did the Bean push up—both hands first, then with Jack on my back, then also Owen on his back — then a one arm push up then the finale a no arm push up with all 3. The piece-de-resistance was a 3 man high with Owen at the bottom, me in the middle and Jack on the top. We had to mount the TV on the first floor and do our stand up on the forward compartment floor to fit all of us in the field of view. Owen was great. He wobbled around like we were toppling. We now must put it all on movies to use after we get back. — Funny, you never know what movies people will find funny—It gives a welcome relief from the science we do.

At lunch Jack was talking about “stretch gut”—wherein he postulates since our stomach has not been pulled down for 2 months by gravity the tendons that hold it up will be weak and when we get home to ig, the stom­ach will drop and fall out over our pants. We laughed and further thought

if that happened our testicles would have the same problem in the scrotum. “Stretch nuts” I guess. Jack said he finally found out why people had trou­ble sleeping in space—no gravity to hold the eyelids down when the body gets tired of doing it. Up they come and you wake up.

Just went to the cm to put our pants that we will wear on the ship on our couches so that as we come up with items we wanted to take home we could put them right in the pockets rather than have items hidden all over the s/c. We have been discussing bringing Vance, Don & Bill’s patches (U. S.A. flag, NASA symbol) home for them but we wanted them to fly the maximum distance so should we leave them for SL4 to bring? We have been thinking what to bring to the troops we work with.

When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied, “Only stand out of my light.”

262

Woke up ~2 hrs early today. It’s our last time shift to fit the post-landing medical checks. The doctors are on the boat right now, heaven knows doing what. Waiting for our landing in 6 more days. Owen told Paul to take along his Scopedex and to do head movements.

263

Out the wardroom window we saw a bright red light with a bright/dim peri­od of 10 sec. It got brighter and drifted along with us for 20 min. or more. I said it was Mars but Jack & Owen said a satellite—it was because it also was moving relative to the stars. It may have been very near, it was the bright­est object we’ve seen.

Also saw a laser beam from Goddard. It looked like a long green rod per­haps as long as your fingernail held at arm’s length when viewed end on, that is 20 times longer than in length (which was parallel to the horizon) than in width. Tomorrow the ground will tell us that Goddard did not have our trajectory right and did not point at us—we may have seen the side view somehow. Owen said at the time a laser should appear only as a bright point of light and not a bar.

Entry – 5 day. csm checks went well—somehow I knew they would. We only look at the g&n and the real problem might be the rcs. Well, we’ll know soon enough. There’s no reason to believe anything’s wrong with the two remaining quads A&c. Got to bed an hour and Уг late tonight because

of late scheduled meals and not wanting to exercise prior to M092.—I talk­ed with the ground about watching our meals and sleep periods and exer­cise periods and keeping them on time because of the physically demand­ing features of returning to the ig on Earth next Tuesday. The days can’t pass fast enough. We have done our job and are ready to get back. At least I am, I don’t know about Jack but Owen would like to stay.

erep went well till I got to talking too much then I turned off 190 (the camera) rather than 192 (the multispectral scanner). Wish we could come up with a big play on erep like on atm but we have not had the weather.

Took Seconal because I wanted to get to sleep. It worked.

264

Got up feeling a little high from the Seconal and went right to the atm. Did ok, usually make mistakes early in the morning.

Thinking about eva all day, did our pre-prep—installed new umbilicals without water. We will use 02 flow cooling for the first time. Dick Truly mentioned a 4 hour eva limit before this but we should finish well before the time. I need to give my suit a good last minute check out. The drying and desiccants have helped my confidence with their integrity.

Had a TV press conference come off well—all of us had question asked us and we answered well I think. We are going to have many more of those the next few months—glad Jack and I are going to Russia in November. Wish Sue could go.

Found out where Elba and St. Helena Islands are—Dick Truly looked it up.

Helen Mary mentioned that the office’s reorganization had begun already. 5 groups, don’t know where I’ll be. Glad to be backing the Russian flight.

Our last erep today. U. S. & Sicily & Ethopia I saw an active volcano on Sicily and the Aswan Dam in Egypt. It is the most well defined man made object I’ve seen to date.

ickam

Until Skylab, crewmen had worn biomedical sensors pretty much all the time during flight. On the early Mercury and Gemini flights, when ground sta­tions in the Manned Spaceflight Network (known by the time of Skylab as the Spacecraft Tracking and Data Network) were scattered around the world, the flight surgeon attached to each station crew would study those heartbeat and respiration traces intently as the spacecraft passed overhead, looking for signs of stress. Heart rates during spacewalks were useful as they were a pret­ty good indication of crew workload and oxygen consumption.

As the NASA doctors looked at the heart rates of astronauts under the stresses of launch acceleration, weightlessness, spacewalks, and just hang­ing around, they inevitably witnessed the occasional irregularity — usually a premature beat or a run of two or three of them. They came to accept these as within the limits of normal. But the arrhythmias they saw in the Apollo 15 crew on the way back from the moon were more marked and a cause of considerable anxiety on the ground. Future Apollo flights carried medica­tions for such arrhythmias.

With this background and the greatly increased duration of the planned Skylab flights, a medical desire for as much data as possible remained, as exemplified by the following excerpts from NASA memos:

To: EA/Manager, Apollo Applications Program October 3,1968 From: CA/Director of Flight Crew Operations [Deke Slayton]

Subject: Bioinstrumentation for Apollo Applications Program (aap) Missions

The long duration, large volume and required crew mobility of AAP core missions will require different guidelines for the transmission ofbiomedical data. Contin­uous-wear instrumentation will not be feasible. Numerous medical experiments will be performed which require instrumentation, and which will give medical monitors the information needed to assess crew status.

Therefore, the following guidelines are recommended: Bioinstrumentation will be worn for launch, entry, eva and medical experiments. It will not be worn at other times unless requiredfor diagnostic purposes. . . .

To: CA/Director of Flight Crew Operations Oct 16, ip68 From: DA/Deputy Director of Medical Research and Operations Subject: Bioinstrumentation Requirements in the Apollo Applications Program

. . . I feel it is inappropriate for you to propose guidelines for the acquisition of biomedical data without full coordination of these guidelines with our Direc­torate. The following comments regarding your memorandum are offered in a constructive vein in the hope that you may be persuaded to address future rec­ommendations to this Directorate….

It is our present hope that the principles enunciated in your two proposed guide­lines can be fully satisfied but we do not have sufficient technical or operation­al information to accept these guidelines as program constraints at the present time.

The doctors had a point; it was pretty early in the program. Deke withdrew the memo, and the problems were worked out amicably. Not without a glitch or two along the way, however.

To: cb/Pete Conrad From: CB /Joe Kerwin

Subject: Medical Operations Requirements

DA memo of5-15-70 (on file) presents instrumentation requirements and guide­lines for Skylab…. Wearing of bio-harness during sleep is a new requirement, is not feasible or useful, and should be discouraged!

At about this time, the question of dental treatment on Skylab surfaced. The astronauts’ dentist, Dr. Bill Frome, recommended putting a dental kit onboard and training two men on each crew to use it, in light of his experience with astronaut patients. He argued that palliative treatment, even up to extracting an abscessed and painful tooth, was preferable to terminating a mission. Deke asked Kerwin to review it.

A one percent chance ofa serious dental problem on a 28-day mission is not sur­prising. That’s (28x 3 =) 84 man-days, which is onepercent of 8,400 man-days or 23 man-years. If we have 46 astronauts, one ofthem will need emergency den­tal care every six months — which matches Dr. Frome’s experience.

I have asked Dr. Frome to set up his proposed 1.5-day training program and run me through it as a guinea pig….

I believe that the right thing to do is to let them put the hardware on board, agree to train one of three crewmen (which cuts the risk but does not eliminate it) and reevaluate after the first mission.

“Management decided to go ahead and train two members of each crew, and we had a ball,” Kerwin said. “We traveled with Dr. Frome to San Anto­nio, to the U. S. Air Force Dental Clinic at Brooks afb. Bill and the den­tal staff had recruited a number of volunteers who needed to have a tooth extracted. (One of the first lessons was that you didn’t pull teeth, you extract­ed them.) So there we were, six of us, wielding syringes filled with xylocaine and wicked-looking dental forceps (and much more nervous than the patients were), getting those jaws numb and those molars out under the watchful eye of our dentist instructors.

“Paul Weitz drew a retired Air Force general. My patient’s molar broke in two during the procedure and had to come out in pieces. We were very glad when it was over. But I believe we could have done the deed in flight had we needed to. (We didn’t, and no dental emergencies arose during any mission.)

The dental kit became part of a medical kit for taking care of illness and injury aboard the Skylab space station. It was called the In-Flight Medical Support System. In retrospect, it looks like supplies for a pretty modest doc­tor’s office, but at the time it was quite a leap forward. It contained minor surgical instruments, a laryngoscope and tracheostomy kit, intravenous fluids, and lots of medications including injectables. Diagnostic equipment included equipment to make and examine blood smears and do cultures and antibiotic sensitivity tests on various body fluids. Kerwin, the doctor of the group who was quite familiar with the tools, was very much in favor of car­rying the equipment to Skylab. Some of the others, familiar with medical equipment primarily from being on the receiving end, were less so.

To: CA/Donald K. Slayton

From: CB/Joseph P. Kerwin

Subject: In-Flight Medical Support System (imss)

It’s clear from glancing through the list that this is mostly a doctor’s bag, not a first-aid kit. The document doesn’t say that, and it even proposes to train pilots to use all the equipment, which I find unrealistic. (Medschool was easy, but not that easy!) It’s also apparent that to justify the more elaborate equipment opera­tionally —from the standpoint of mission success— is darn near impossible. Major medical catastrophes just aren’t that much more likely to happen in eight weeks than they were in two. Minor illnesses are, but not heart attacks, etc… .

But that’s not the only point of view. Let me give, from my point of view, some reasons for carrying a doctor’s bag:

1. Up to now, the medical program has been unbalanced in the direction of pure research instead of treating illness and injury in space. This is a capa­bility we don’t need today, but we certainly will need it in space station times —for economic reasons at the least. It seems prudent to start using Skylab to develop equipment andprocedures to meet this need, just as we used Gemini to develop a rendezvous capability.

2. It’s true that a doctor isn’t mandatory on any Skylab flight. But if you do happen to have one along, you ought to allow him to do a little goodfor the program in his spare time by providing him with some of the tools of his trade. He could do an occasional physical exam on his buddies, and try out the simple laboratory tests on himself, by way of proving that they work. It would sure beat looking out the window.

In retrospect Kerwin found that last statement to be really dumb — noth­ing in Skylab beat looking out the window. But the In-Flight Medical Sup­port System was approved, and the same two crewmen who wielded the dental forceps were taught to use an otoscope and an ophthalmoscope, pal­pate and percuss, and report their findings to a doctor in Mission Control. “It was a wild experience for the pilots and a valuable refresher for me,” Ker­win said. “We were even taken to the trauma unit at Ben Taub Hospital in

Houston on a Friday night, where under the skilled tutelage of Dr. Pedro Rubio, the chief resident, we watched one of the best emergency medicine teams in America deal with life-threatening trauma and illness.”

Trauma training at Ben Taub Hospital proved a memorable experience for the astronauts. It was always scheduled on a Friday or Saturday evening when the probability of gunshot or knife wounds was apparently the high­est. Sure enough the crew saw their share but usually kept their distance from the emergency team engaged in what was a life-or-death procedure for some incoming patients. More relevant to their Skylab situation, they also had personal discussion and training with the experts in ear, nose, and throat; gastrointestinal tract; and eye and other specialties about how to handle in-flight emergencies. Even in these early days, they could expect to have experts in prompt voice contact and even with TV downlink to pro­vide images to the ground. So they ended up with reasonable confidence that most emergencies could be handled if they should arise.

The astronauts were also introduced to a fine team of consultants from the Houston medical community—specialists who would be on call dur­ing all the Skylab missions to advise the NASA flight surgeons should trou­ble arise in flight. Drs. Page Nelson, Hiram Warshaw, Everett Price, Kamal Sheena, and Jules Borger gave freely of their time and talent. Knowing they were there provided the crew with a feeling of security.

One of the best things to come out of the In-Flight Medical Support System, Kerwin said, was the checklist. Stimulated by the need to explain medical equipment and procedures to a bunch of pilots, the medical team linked up with the training team to produce a fine, very graphic, and explic­it manual showing with simple line drawings what everything looked like and what to do.

“We had one more treat in store,” Kerwin said. “Drunk with enthusiasm by the opportunity to experiment in space, the medical research team pushed for one final capability—to take and return blood samples. Not a big deal, you say; but it was, first because it had never been done before and second because it posed some hardware challenges in weightlessness.”

It was done. The crews agreed to give blood weekly; one member of each crew was trained to be the “vampire”; and an assortment of air-evacuat­ed tubes, a centrifuge to separate cells from plasma, and arrangements to freeze and return the samples were designed and flown. It all worked quite well. “I drew my own blood, not wanting to put Pete or Paul to the trouble of learning (and perhaps forgetting) how,” Kerwin said. “Pete hated being stuck and on the ground tended to become light-headed. But the blood couldn’t rush from your head in zero-G, so Pete was fine. He just looked away from the needle.”

The first crew, by benefit of being first and of having the physician of the group among its number, bore much of the hard work in planning for crew participation in the medical experiments (with a lot of help from Bill Thorn­ton, also a medical doctor and a Skylab guinea pig himself during simula­tions) . Therefore the training activity for the second and third crews fol­lowed much the same protocol as developed for the first flight team.

“Of course there were always some personal differences in practice,” Gar – riott said. “Whereas the first mission would have a doctor on board who knew the medical objectives and protocol in detail, as he had helped devise them, plus the fact that some of his other crewmembers were apparently not too enthusiastic about some of the procedures (e. g., blood draws), the sec­ond flight team all started substantially at the same level in terms of med­ical experience.”

Garriott described his crew with respect to the medical procedures as being all novices but with a keen interest in the protocol and personal results. No deference was provided to the scientist astronaut in this area, he said; everyone wanted to know about and participate in all that they could. They were all trained to draw blood and planned to do it in flight. They started with practice puncturing the skins of oranges or grapefruit with a hypoder­mic needle to simulate that of a human arm. Next came human volunteers, usually from life-science workers in the msc laboratories. As it turns out, there were more female than male volunteers (“Perhaps tougher constitu­tion, or more highly motivated?” Garriott remarked), and this often made the task more difficult—perhaps having less visible and accessible veins to attack. But all three of the crewmen successfully accomplished the blood draws a number of times, finally even drawing their fellow crewmen’s blood at least once. “It was good practice and we actually enjoyed the training,” Garriott said.

During flight all three crewmembers put their training into practice. Gar­riott routinely drew the blood of Bean and Lousma, while one or the oth­er would draw his blood on the desired schedule, every week or so. On one occasion in the middle of the crew’s two-month stay, the ground asked to have a video of the actual procedure. Lousma was scheduled to draw Gar – riott’s blood.

“We got all the cameras placed properly and the video recorder running for later dump to the ground,” Garriott said. “With all the paraphernalia in place, I bared my left arm, got the tourniquet tight, Jack made an excellent ‘stick,’ and the blood flowed freely just as desired. When finished, we with­drew the needle and blood promptly squirted all over the place! I had for­gotten to remove the tourniquet first and all the blood pressure trapped in the lower part of the arm took the path of least resistance into space. So we cleaned up the mess I had made, rewound the tape recorder and did it all over again using my right arm. The physicians on the ground seemed hap­py with the demonstration.”

The book that follows is a riveting, insightful account of the Skylab mis­sions flown by the United States in 1973 and 1974. It is also simply a great yarn. Skylab began as an underdog, was nearly knocked out several times, staggered back to its feet, and fought on against overwhelming odds until it became a champion. In a lot of ways, it was the Rocky of space, and just like the story in that great film, it is an inspiration for all who know it. The difference is the remarkable saga of Skylab is all true.

For those of us who are old hands at NASA and in the space business, it is sometimes easy to forget what a great adventure it was and still is. Ulti­mately when all the layered explanations of why we go into space are peeled away, adventure remains at its core. But adventure aside, there are many quite practical reasons to go off our home planet. For one, the solar system is awash in energy resources such as microwaves and solar energy, and even the helium-3 isotopes that cover our moon seem perfect for futuristic fusion reactors. For another, the absence of gravity might ultimately produce won­derful new products, even life-saving medicines. And where else but space can we go to get above our light and radio-wave-polluted Earth and gain unobstructed views of our sun, the solar system, and the universe? Space is a scientific gold mine, and I believe some day it will be an economic one as well. But to be successful in the cosmos, we have to first figure out how to get there and stay. In other words, we have to learn to homestead space. This book tells how we first began to understand how to do that, through the program known as Skylab. Although often neglected by spaceflight historians, Skylab provided the key to all human space activities that fol­lowed. Quite simply, it was the series of flights that proved to the world that humans could live and work for long periods in space.

I grew up in the golden era of science fiction where all the spacemen (and spacewomen, though often scantily clad) were stalwart and brave. They were sort of ingenious, techno-savvy Davy and Polly Crocketts conquer­ing the wild frontier while riding rockets. The robots in those tales were usually built only to help their humans through some difficulty (“Danger, Will Robinson!”), and the mightiest computer was the one every human had between his ears. If people were to explore space, they’d just have to go there themselves and have a look around. There was no other way. Not many of my favorite old-time writers guessed that by the time we were actu­ally able to go into space, there would be a revolution in robotics combined with minimizing the size and maximizing the capabilities of computers. The reality of early spaceflight (and that’s where we are now—very, very early) is that it is far easier, cheaper, and faster to send a robot than a human into space to explore and send back information on anything we please. But does that satisfy us? No indeed, and it shouldn’t. For instance, we are also perfectly capable of purchasing a video travelogue of Paris. From the com­fort of our living rooms, we can see the traffic passing beneath the Arc de Triomphe and the strollers along the Champs Elysees. But can we experi­ence Paris with a video? No. We can only get a sense of what it is like. We can’t look around a corner to see where some interesting alley might lead, or sit on a park bench and smell the aroma of fresh bread, or discover a new artist in the Louvre. It is the same for space. Ultimately to experience it, to gain from it all the riches it holds, the old sci-fi writers were correct. We humans must climb into pressurized containers and boldly rocket into the cosmic vacuum and there wrest from it with our own two hands all that it holds. In other words we still need spacefaring Meriwether Lewises and William Clarks off on bold adventures while accomplishing important sci­entific and economic work for the nation. The men and women who built and operated Skylab understood this and were determined to make such space accomplishments possible.

Skylab was designed to gain scientific knowledge in Earth orbit by utiliz­ing equipment originally designed to carry men to the moon and back. It could be fairly said that Skylab was built from the spare parts of the Apollo program. Accordingly it was often neglected while the moon shots got all the energy and money, but eventually its time in the sun came, and what a grand time it was! Looking back now it’s astonishing what we learned

from it. During its three crewed missions, a trove of scientific knowledge was harvested that is yet unmatched by any other space facility, including the International Space Station. Skylab’s huge volume, its well-constructed and considered scientific packages, its ability to generate more than ade­quate electrical power (after some emergency repairs!), and its focused crews made it, in my opinion, the finest comprehensive science and technological platform any country has ever sent into space. But I have to confess what I really, really like about Skylab is this: When it got into trouble, spacemen armed with wrenches, screwdrivers, and tin snips were sent up to fix it. No robots, no computers, no remotely controlled manipulating arms, just guys in suits carrying tools. The old sci-fi writers would have loved it!

Of course, with any space mission there is far more to the story than the spacecraft itself, or the crews. There must first be the visionaries who conceive the mission, then the politicians who must back it, followed by the armies of engineers, managers, accountants, and myriad other profes­sionals who make it all work on the ground before the first rocket engine is lit on the pad. As this book informs us, one of Skylab’s visionaries was a favorite of mine, none other than Dr. Wernher von Braun. In my mem­oir, Rocket Boys/October Sky, I told how when I was a teenager, more than anything in the world, I wanted to work for Dr. von Braun. In fact his bril­liance was the distant, flickering flame for all the rocket boys and girls of that era and the reason a lot of us became engineers and scientists. Part of the fun of this book is reading how Dr. von Braun just went ahead and did things, including building the giant Neutral Buoyancy Simulator (nbs) at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The nbs was a big tank of water that allowed astronauts and engineers to simulate the weight­less conditions of space. I am very appreciative that Dr. von Braun cut a few bureaucratic corners and built the nbs. Not only did his tank ultimately save Skylab, it also saved me when I suffered a bout of decompression sick­ness and had to be treated in its chamber. It was a great facility, although now sadly abandoned and fallen into disrepair. People ask me these days if I miss working for NASA. I do, sometimes, but mostly because I can’t dive in the grand old nbs.

Although Skylab was accomplished before I became a NASA engineer, I did work on similar space missions, including training astronauts to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. That was an intricate, difficult mission but we

knew we could do it because we had the example of Skylab’s repair. I also worked on Spacelab, which was a science laboratory carried in the Space Shuttle’s cargo bay. The Spacelab program, which proved to be a wonderful set of science missions, was profoundly affected by Skylab. Many times while working on a Spacelab situation, I heard, “Well, when I worked on Skylab, something like this happened and we. . .” Invariably the information given solved the problem we were working. One might suspect we Spacelabbers resented help from the old Skylab hands but not so. When there’s work to be done in the space business, listening to veterans who’ve already done it is a smart thing to do. I’m proud to say that’s what we did, at least on Spacelab and the Hubble Space Telescope repair missions.

I count as a good friend one of the authors of this book, astronaut Owen Garriott. With our friends and family, he and I have explored the Galapa­gos Islands and also hunted in Montana for dinosaur bones. It is fascinat­ing to read this book and see a somewhat younger Owen aboard Skylab. Actually, from this account, he hasn’t changed much. He’s still a detailed observer of his surroundings and an amazing fount of scientific knowledge. He is also quite competitive and intensely focused. In other words he’s chal­lenging to be around and, therefore, the kind of friend we should all culti­vate. Over the years I’ve also met all the other astronauts who flew on Sky­lab, plus backup Rusty Schweickart and Capcom (and future first Shuttle pilot) Bob Crippen. When October Sky the movie came out, I invited Pete Conrad to attend. I was gratified when he showed up for the premiere, and it didn’t take long before we were deep in conversation, mostly about Sky – lab and our mutual experiences in the nbs. While my agent kept tugging at my elbow (“Homer, Steven Spielberg wants to say hello!”), I kept fending him off. Finally, I turned and barked, “Look, don’t you understand? I’m talking to Pete Conrad!" My agent slunk off, and Pete and I finished our talk, one I still savor. I also once had Dr. Joe Kerwin turn up in one of my book-signing lines. I was astonished, though supremely pleased to see him there. I knew then I’d written a pretty good book.

The scientific and technological brilliance and love of adventure of all the Skylab astronauts were remarkable. This was also true of nearly all the people who worked on Skylab, such as Chuck Lewis, my former (and great, not to mention indulgent) boss at NASA, and Bob Schwinghamer who let me work in the nbs. Perhaps it was luck, or good fortune, but somehow the program got the people it needed and deserved. As a result, nearly every American-crewed mission since Skylab has been profoundly affected by the experiences gained by its nine crewmembers and the thousands of men and women who conceived, promoted, designed, constructed, rescued, and then made operational that magnificent facility. Just as the title of this book indi­cates, Skylab ultimately taught us how to make space our home. For a facil­ity partially built from spare parts, I think that’s prodigious!

The astronauts assigned to the flight crews were not the only ones having to train for the mission. In February 1972, over a year before the launch of the Skylab station, the Mission Control Center team began running their first simulations for the missions.

The long-duration aspect of the Skylab program presented new chal­lenges for the mcc team that would require advance preparation. On the ground every moment that the crews were in space, a team of people would be supporting them around the clock in Mission Control. In fact the control team would be operating Skylab even when the astronauts were not aboard it. And for the Mission Control team as much as for the astronauts, Skylab was a new spacecraft, completely unlike anything flown before, with its own unique parameters and requirements. In addition, the work the crews would be doing on Skylab would be unlike anything done in space before, so new procedures would have to be learned in order to support them.

According to Phil Shaffer, the lead flight director, operations control for Skylab was a mixture of old and new for the flight directors, with some elements being very similar to those in Apollo, and others being different from anything flown before. “The part that is similar to prior programs is that there was a trajectory function and there were the systems functions,” Shaffer said. “There was an electrical guy, a communications guy, there was an environmental guy, you know, each with their support staff and in that sense was all very similar. The manning level or the expertise requirement was the same as if we were doing a lunar mission.

“The teams, if you stood away a little ways, looked like Apollo teams or Gemini teams in the way they were structured because there was a flight director who literally was responsible for everything, there was a capsule communicator for air-to-ground voice, there was a surgeon, and there was a networks guy,” Shaffer said. “And all of those positions, you know some of them had slightly different names. Like gnc [guidance, navigation, and con­trol] for the csm was called gns [guidance navigation system] for the Sky – lab to distinguish different positions. Different names were required when both the csm and Skylab were up and active at the same time. There was a limited on-orbit team for when the csm was powered down. There were five on-orbit teams that did planning, preparation, and support execution for the experiments, evas, maintenance and repair, or whatever else was going on. These teams were led by [Phil] Shaffer, Don Puddy, Neil Hutchinson, Chuck Lewis, and Milt Windler. There was also a trajectory team led by Shaffer that was decidedly different from the on-orbit teams. It supported launch and rendezvous, and deorbit and entry, and maintaining orbital life­time by raising the vehicle orbital altitude. They did all those calculations. So, there were six teams: five on-orbit teams and one trajectory team, basi­cally, for the year of the program.”

Differences began with the launch. The crews flew into space on one space­craft that was essentially a taxi carrying them to another spacecraft where they would spend the bulk of their mission. “Another thing that was dif­ferent was having two very dissimilar vehicles, with some of the time both being active, so that you had two com guys and two environmental guys and two electrical guys on occasion,” Shaffer said. “Certainly until you got the Skylab powered-down for leaving or the Command Service Module pow­ered-down for the habitation period. The situation on Apollo was similar during the lunar-landing sequence with the Lunar Module and csm being involved. It was a bit of a zoo keeping all of that business straight.”

The attitude control systems for the massive Skylab space station were also very different from both a conceptual and an operational standpoint than any of their predecessors. “The new for Skylab was not new in name but new in type and that was an attitude control system with Control Moment Gyros [cmgs] ,” he said. “That was a whole new business in place of small rock­ets, reaction control thrusters, to control the attitude. You had these giant cmgs that were wonderful. The cmg system was assisted by a cold gas sys­tem called TACS [Thruster Attitude Control System].”

Attitude control—which basically amounts to which way the spacecraft is pointing—on Apollo was pretty straightforward, a basic application of Newton’s law that states for every action there is an equal and opposite reac­tion. That law is what allows rockets to travel through space, even though there is nothing there to push against. A rocket engine burns fuel to gener­ate thrust, and the action of the engine spewing flame backwards leads to the opposite reaction of the rocket moving forward. The same principle that pushes a large rocket through space also, on a much smaller scale, allowed the Apollo spacecraft to control its attitude. Rocket engines burned fuel, and the spacecraft turned in the opposite direction. The Skylab Thruster Attitude Control System took that simple concept and applied it in an even simpler way. Rather than burning fuel, the TACS simply vented cold gas into space. The action of the gas being vented produced the opposite reaction needed to control attitude.

The cmgs worked on a more arcane principle of physics—angular momen­tum. Tilting the spinning rotor of a Control Moment Gyroscope resulted in a torque that would rotate the entire station. Attitude control via cmg had the additional benefit for a long-duration mission of requiring no fuel, rely­ing instead on the power produced by Skylab’s solar panels.

In addition to the new attitude-control techniques, Shaffer said, new Mis­sion Control responsibilities were added to provide support for the science operations on Skylab. “And then there were the experiments,” he said. “We had a control function for Earth sensing. We had a control function for the celestial viewing. One looked up, the other one looked down. We had a con­trol function—a control position—for all the biomedical activity, a control function for materials science.”

While Mission Control had been involved in science support before, nota­bly during the lunar research during Apollo, Shaffer said that the support needed to coordinate the Skylab research was substantially more complex. For example, both Skylab and Apollo missions included making surface observations from orbit. Skylab had its Earth resources observation pack­age and Apollo carried equipment in the Service Module’s sim [Scientific Instrument Module] Bay that imaged the lunar surface. Although there was a general similarity in function, they were very different in operation. “The

Earth resources guy [in Mission Control], for instance, had a huge coordi­nation activity he did with the aircraft overflight, and with the ground truth people, and with the weather service going on with his planning. This was dramatically different from the equivalent function on Apollo. The guy in the Command Service Module was not running the sim Bay.”

Another change for Skylab that was worked out before flight was the real­time mission planning that would have to take place while the crews were in orbit. On prior missions extremely detailed plans were laid out ahead of time. On Skylab more activities were scheduled on a day-to-day basis dur­ing the mission. Every day the flight control teams would plan out what the crew would do the next day. “The evening shift did the detail preparation for the next workday’s activities,” Shaffer said. “The midnight shift did the overall plan for two days hence. And in part I think that was done to provide shelf life for both the support data that was going to go to the crew for the upcoming day and to give negotiation and preparation time for the struc­ture of the plan two days hence.”

That’s not to say no planning was done further ahead. Rough outlines of activities were put together for a week in advance, structured around such things as astronomical or Earth resources observations that were to be made. Since those had to take place at a very precise particular time, they were placed on the schedule first, and other activities that were more flexi­ble were filled in around them.

“All of that was all done by the time we entered the upcoming twenty – four-hour thing; then the remaining pieces were put in,” he said. “The sur­geons would have to get their requirements in. Life sciences was a really big deal, so significant effort was needed to get all of their activities in within their constraints. Vehicle maintenance had to be done, including servicing the atm and the associated eva activity. All of that got dropped into the plan. All of that happened on the evening shift. And that was new. The nearest thing to it may have been the lunar excursion planning activity while crews were on the lunar surface for two or three days. It evolved, and we all got really comfortable with it.”

There was some concern about why there had to be so many levels of advanced planning, but the system proved effective. Among its strengths was that getting a good bit of the planning done early freed up more time to react to any unexpected situations or to finish any previous scheduling that needed adjustment. “If we needed more time to get the detail flight plan support stuff ready for the crew, you had it,” Shaffer said. “There was basi­cally another whole shift available to finish up that work. And if something was wrong with your big plan for the day, then you had time to renegotiate whatever problems that created.”

Of course, no matter how much planning was done in advance, there were always times the plan had to be changed as new circumstances arose. “The classic case, to me, happened on one of my watches,” said Shaffer, “and it comes up under my title of‘surgeon’s rigidity and the bologna sandwich.’ A volcano in Central America decided serendipitously to start a major erup­tion while we were on orbit with all of our wonderful erep equipment. Of course the geologists and geophysicists were going nuts because it was an opportunity to use much of the erep sensor equipment we had to really get new and significant information about an erupting volcano that they had never had the opportunity to get before. It would be like looking ‘down the gun barrel’ right through clouds. They really wanted to do this.

“The conflict was that the orbit track that was going to go over the vol­cano happened during an already scheduled meal. The surgeon, because of his dietary scheduling requirements rigor declared that they were critical, and he couldn’t change the mealtime. That might change the digestive pro­cesses results, and there was no compromise for it. And I had a lot of sym­pathy for both parties, but here was a one-time event and we were going to be up there for many, many meals.

“Finally after much debate, I resurrected mission rule one dash whatev­er it is that says the flight director is in charge in real time. It means he can do whatever he needs to. So I decided to do it, and I told the surgeon on the loop that we are going to do the data take over the volcano, that his dietary concerns are not equal in terms of return. Plus, everybody knows ya’ll have the wrong diet. Everybody knows the best diet for in-flight work is a bolo­gna sandwich.

“The surgeon kind of imploded. I think he thought I had impugned him, and so he stopped objecting. We did the data take, and it was wonder­ful. Lunch was about a half-hour late. It was no big deal. I believed that. I believed it didn’t make any difference. We got all of that done.

“A curious thing happened the next day. When I came on shift there on my console was a bologna sandwich, which honest to goodness was a foot and a half long and six inches wide and had at least an inch of bologna in it. Nobody ever ’fessed up to where it came from. So I don’t know whether the surgeons did it or somebody who had heard the conversations. I always hoped that the surgeon did it. But it changed the dynamic. We got along better after that. Not a lot, but. . .”

During flight, this issue was greatly alleviated by the addition of another level of coordination within the science community. The initial structure in which the various disciplines each advocated their own concerns to Mis­sion Control was putting substantial strain on the flight directors, who had to weigh and balance those concerns. “So what we did was invent a tsar—a ‘science tsar,’” Shaffer explained. The first science tsar was Robert Park­er, a member of the second group of scientist astronauts. “At that point we refused to listen to all those people any more; we only listened to Robert. He brought the finished product into the planning shift, which we then imple­mented. That all worked well in the planning cycle, though it didn’t help a lot if you ran into something happening in a real-time conflict, because Robert wasn’t always available to us.”

At one point during Skylab mission preparations, Shaffer said, the ulti­mate authority of the flight director for dealing with real-time situations as they occurred was challenged by a visitor from NASA headquarters. “This is another one of those stories people don’t know anything about,” he said. “During the Skylab 2 sims [simulations], this guy showed up, badged and everything, and walked into the control center. Because I was launch flight director, I was running the sims.

“And he said, ‘Where’s my console?’” Shaffer said. “And I said, ‘Who are you?’ He said ‘I’m the mission management representative from Washing­ton.’ I said, ‘What do you do?’ And he says, ‘I am from NASA headquarters, and I have the final say in all of the decisions we’ll make in this program.’ And I said, ‘Well, I find that pretty interesting. I’ve never heard of you before, and there’s really no place in my flight control team for you to do that, par­ticularly during a dynamic phase. Frankly, you’ll be a lot more trouble than you’re worth no matter how good you are.’ And he says, ‘Be that as it may, I am here to stay.’ And I said, ‘Very well.’”

Shaffer said that he considered calling director for flight operations—and NASA’s first flight director—Chris Kraft to come deal with the situation, con­fident that the original “Flight” would back him up. However, he decided to try and handle the problem himself before resorting to calling for help. “I went back to my console and got on one of my secondary voice loops to the simulations supervisor, and said ‘I want you to give me the “Apollo tape case,”’” Shaffer said. “So Sim Sup says, ‘Why am I doing that?’ I said, ‘Because I’m asking you to.’ And he said, ‘I got it.’

“So he gave us that case and things really went to hell in a hand basket. The tape was the source for all the csm systems failure descriptions and data used for training simulations for the flight controllers and flight crews. We couldn’t tell where we were in orbit after the launch phase, communi­cation was really ratty, and there were electrical problems, computer prob­lems, etc. I unplugged and ran up to his console and said, ‘Tell me quick. . . what do I do now?’

“The guy looked at me, reached up, unplugged his communications set, got up, and walked out. We never saw him again during a dynamic flight phase.” On orbit however, his group was very active via an ad hoc organiza­tion called the Mission Management Team.

If mankind is to travel from Earth to explore our universe, we will have to learn to live without the familiar experience of weight that is almost always with us on our home planet.

In the void between worlds, explorers will experience virtually total weight­lessness. It’s a strange environment without up or down, new to the body and with hidden threats, as big a step for us as was the classic emergence of life from the oceans onto dry land. They sputtered, we threw up, but apparently it won’t take us as long to adapt. The point is that the process of really understanding “weightlessness” and really adapting to it was started by nine men in 1973. This is the story of that adventure.

Skylab was America’s first step toward making space something other than a nice place to visit. Developed in the shadow of the Apollo moon missions and using hardware originally created for Apollo, the Skylab space station took the nation’s astronauts from being space explorers to being space res­idents. The program proved that human beings can successfully live and work in space.

For many members of the public, Skylab is perhaps best known for two things—its beginning and its end. During the May 1973 launch of the Sky­lab workshop, an unanticipated problem damaged the station on its way to orbit. And of course, Skylab captured the world’s attention with its fiery re-entry over the Indian Ocean and Australia in 1979.

But between those bookends lies a fantastic story of a pivotal period in spaceflight history. Skylab’s three crews lived there for a total of six months, setting — and breaking — a series of spaceflight duration records. While pre­vious U. S. spaceflights were focused on going places, Skylab was about being somewhere, not just passing through the phenomenal space environment, but mastering it. Everything that was to come afterward in U. S. spaceflight was made possible by this foundation—from scientific research in micro­

gravity on the space shuttle to the on-orbit assembly of the International Space Station.

Even the unanticipated challenges that arose during the Skylab program turned into opportunities. The damage that crippled the spacecraft during launch became a rallying point for NASA and led to a repair effort that was unplanned and unprecedented—and perhaps still unparalleled.

This book is the story not only of the nine men who lived aboard Skylab but of all those who made the program a reality. And, like Skylab itself, this book depended on the contributions of a variety of people who shared their stories.

One of the pleasant surprises encountered in writing our story came in late 2005 when we showed Alan Bean (commander of the second manned mis­sion) our draft of the second mission chapter. We had relied on the chron­ological account from Garriott’s in-flight diary to tie together the events and to develop the story of that mission.

Much to our surprise, Alan said that he, too, had kept an in-flight diary and offered it to us for inclusion in this book! Naturally we took him up on that offer and were then absolutely amazed to find the extent of his hand­written account—more than one hundred pages of carefully written—albeit very difficult to decipher—print and script.

It covered not only events on board but also interpersonal relationships, his thinking and action to promote team spirit and optimum performance, his thoughts of home and family, and even more. We then incorporated as much of the “Bean Diary” in the story of the second mission as we thought appropriate and then added his full diary as an appendix to assure that all of Alan’s thinking will be available to others.

Alan had kept the existence of the diary to himself for over three decades. Neither of his crewmates was aware that it had even been written. We are pleased and feel fortunate to include it here where others can better under­stand the thinking of arguably the most highly personally motivated crew­man to fly in space.

Each of the eight living members of the Skylab crews has shared their stories with us, providing fresh perspectives of this unique experience. We deeply regret that the program’s “Sky King”—first crew commander Pete Conrad—was not able to participate personally in this project. But his voice lives on in this book through previously recorded material.

You will also find portions of numerous interviews with Skylab engineers, scientists, managers, flight controllers, and other astronauts. We were struck by their unanimous view that Skylab was one of the most significant events in their professional careers—if not the most significant. Perhaps more to be expected, that is also true for all of the Skylab astronauts as well.

Yet, there has been very little written about the three missions themselves. Again almost all of our interviewees were most pleased to find that some of the crew were finally undertaking to report on these events from the per­spective of those involved and, hopefully, that the contributions coming from all of the Skylab team would not be lost. Unfortunately we will cer­tainly fall short of reaching the goal of recognizing even a modest part of their enormous contribution, but we do want to acknowledge their prime role in making the Skylab program the success we believe it came to be.

We hope that the dedication of this book reflects a little of that debt owed to the thousands of team members who really made it happen.

For all three of us, this book has been a true labor of love, and it is a story that we are very proud to be able to tell.

To start with, I was out in California
in Huntington Beach. And I got this call,
and it was the good Robert Crippen who was calling.

He said, “We had a drawing, and your name was drawn to be
a crewmember on smeat.” And I said, “What the hell is smeat?”

Bo Bobko

smeat, the Skylab Medical Experiment Altitude Test, was a full-length sim­ulation of a Skylab mission. The crew selected for the test would spend fif­ty-six days in a spacecraft mock-up without the benefits of actually being in space. Selection for the mission might seem a dubious honor, but for the commander of the chosen crew, things had been much, much worse.

“June io, 1969, was probably one of the low points in my life,” remem­bered astronaut Bob Crippen. On that date the future pilot of the first Space Shuttle flight learned that the project to which he had dedicated the past three years of his life was over. The U. S. Air Force had canceled its Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, leaving Crippen and his fellow members of the Air Force’s astronaut corps uncertain as to what the future held. Begin­ning almost four years earlier, a total of seventeen astronauts had been select­ed by the Air Force from the ranks of military pilots. During that time they had completed training on the NASA-developed Gemini spacecraft, which was to have been used in the Air Force program. They had also undergone training on the tasks they were to perform on the space-based laboratory.

At the time the program was canceled, the members of the corps were excited about the prospect of spaceflight, but now the Air Force would no longer have need for astronauts. The nation’s civilian space program, on the other hand, still had an astronaut corps, but that group had become overly

crowded as well. The last class of astronauts NASA had selected, a second group of scientist astronauts brought into the corps two years earlier in 1967, had dubbed themselves the “Excess Eleven” (or, in test-pilot terminology, xs-ii) when they realized just how low their odds were of being assigned to a spaceflight anytime in the near future.

Crippen said that after the program was canceled, “We sat around, and it seems like for a month afterward, we’d go to the bar every night at prob­ably about 2 o’clock in the afternoon and have a wake. One day, I remem­ber a crew meeting, and we were trying to figure out what we were going to do, and Bo [Bobko] said, ‘Why don’t we ask NASA if they could use any of us?’ And we said, ‘Bo, that’s the dumbest damn idea I ever heard. They’re canceling Apollo flights, and they’ve got more astronauts than they know what to do with.’

“But long story short, somebody asked. In fact, in some of my talks, especially with kids, I always remember Bo asked me that question, which I thought was dumb. It doesn’t hurt to ask, even if you think you know the answer. It really doesn’t.”

And, seemingly against the odds, the answer was “Yes.” The request for the mol astronauts to be accepted into NASA’s astronaut corps made its way to Office of Manned Space Flight associate administrator George Mueller, who was near the end of his tenure with the agency. The cancellation of the Manned Orbiting Laboratory marked the end of a period during which Con­gress had essentially forced NASA and the Air Force to compete with each other. Now NASA was beginning to make plans for its next crewed space­craft, the Space Shuttle. Mueller hoped to enlist the Air Force as an ally as it lobbied to make the Space Shuttle a reality. Although NASA already had more astronauts than it needed, Mueller believed it would be in the agen­cy’s best interest to try to curry favor with the Air Force by accepting its erst­while future spacemen into the NASA corps.

Director of Flight Crew Operations Deke Slayton, however, was unwilling to accept the entire group of Air Force astronauts into his already crowded corps. He invoked NASA’s requirement at the time that only candidates under the age of thirty-six be accepted, cutting the applicant field roughly in half. Seven mol astronauts were accepted into NASA’s corps as the seventh group of astronauts on 14 August 1969: Maj. Karol “Bo” Bobko, Lt. Cdr. Robert Crippen, Maj. C. Gordon Fullerton, Maj. Henry “Hank” Hartsfield Jr., Maj. Robert Overmyer, Maj. Donald Peterson, and Lt. Cdr. Richard Truly.

Even after NASA hired them, things weren’t settled for the former Manned Orbiting Laboratory corps. “We were fired twice the first year we were here,” Bobko explained. “They came and said, ‘You guys are fired. You’re going to have to leave.’ It wasn’t any joke; they were really serious. I don’t know if they called us in all at once or one at a time, but they told us we were fired. Twice.” However, each time the astronauts’ superiors in Houston gave the orders for the Group 7 astronauts to leave, their superiors’ superiors at NASA headquarters gave the orders for them to stay.

“At the time, I think, both Deke and Al were worried about the cancel­lation of flights,” Crippen said. “In fact, Deke was honest when he finally hired us the first time before the firings. He said, ‘I don’t have any flights for you until the Space Shuttle flies, and it’s not even an approved program.’ He said that’ll probably be around 1980 at the earliest, but he added, ‘I’ve got lots of work you can do.’”

Even though they were allowed to stay, the newest members of the corps sometimes felt like they were second-class additions. “I mean, we were not particularly loved and watered,” Bobko said. “When I got here, I was the last guy to ever study the Apollo. I’d go and say, ‘Can I get some manuals?’ And they’d say, ‘Yeah, but they’re all out of date.’ ‘What about classes?’ ‘No, those have been all canceled.’ Now it wasn’t that bad, because I’d go over to the simulator, and nobody cared about the simulator. So I’d be over there myself, and they’d let me stay almost as long as I wanted.

“There was a time I felt like I was a cosine wave in a sine-wave world,” he said. “We got on board, and they canceled [flights] before we got here; but after we got here, they canceled a lot more. There was supposed to be more than one Skylab, and I don’t think it was until after we were told we were coming that they canceled the last two Apollos. And then the Shuttle was supposed to be ready a lot faster.”

The ongoing cancellations were already having an effect on the corps when the mol astronauts arrived. “People were bailing out,” Bobko said. “Every crew meeting we went to, they talked about, ‘Well, they’ve canceled anoth­er thing.’ So the first year was pretty dismal, it really was.”

If Crippen and Bobko felt underutilized during their first years at NASA, that was to change in June 1971, when they were selected for a mission—of a sort. “[Pete] Conrad called me into his office, and said ‘ok, Crip, we’ve got this test that we want to run, and we want you and Bobko and [Bill]

io. (From left) Bo Bobko, Bill Thornton, and Bob Crippen.

Thornton working with it.’ So I said, ‘I learned never to volunteer, but it sounds like the best job available.’”

The third member of the group, Bill Thornton, had been selected to the corps on ii August 1967 as part of the second group of scientist astronauts. Though his path to NASA differed from that of his two colleagues, he had much in common with them. Like Crippen and Bobko, Thornton had come to NASA from the Air Force, where he had been a flight surgeon, among other things. Also like the other two, Thornton had been involved in the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program before coming to NASA, though in a very different capacity. At the Aerospace Medical Division at Brooks Air Force Base, Thornton had been involved in research and development for projects for NASA and decided to submit an application during the second round of scientist astronaut selections.

His qualifications were very good. He didn’t have the flight time Bo and Crip had, but he had over a thousand hours of testing (including flight test­ing) war weapons and missiles (during his first hitch in the usaf as a physi­cist) and then testing instruments designed for mol as a flight surgeon. He was awarded a Legion of Merit for this work and accumulated over twen­ty patents. (Today, his total of over thirty-five patents includes everything from military weapons systems to the first real-time computer electrocar­diogram analysis.)

The Skylab missions were intended to pave the way for the sort of long – duration spaceflights that would be needed to send humans beyond the moon and onward to other planets. For a trip to Mars to be possible, NASA would need experience with mission lengths far beyond the fourteen-day record that had been set during the Gemini program. Skylab would be the bridge between the two weeks that NASA had experience with to the months or years that would be needed to go to Mars. The plan was, with the first three Skylab flights, to quadruple the previous record, doubling it once with the twenty-eight-day first manned mission and then doubling that again with a fifty-six-day second mission. The plans called for the third crew to fur­ther demonstrate that a crew could successfully complete a mission of that length, rather than increasing the duration any more. (That plan changed, however, when the first two crews demonstrated just how well astronauts could function on long-duration missions, and the better part of month was added to the third crew’s stay on Skylab.)

However, the unprecedented length of the missions would mean that unprecedented preparations would need to be made. Attention was focused in two areas of concern: whether human physiology could withstand such long-term exposure to microgravity and whether everything developed and planned would actually work as intended.

Regarding the former concern, in 1967 the President’s Science Advisory Committee recommended an expansion of the Biosatellite program, which used animals to baseline the biomedical effects of spaceflight before longer- duration human missions were undertaken. The Biosatellite ill mission was carried out in the summer of 1969, sending a monkey, Bonnie, into orbit in a small capsule for what was intended to be a thirty-day mission.

On the ninth day of the mission, controllers were forced to abort the mis­sion and deorbit the capsule because of concerns about the monkey’s health. The recovery team successfully recovered it, but Bonnie died hours later. Fortunately any negative side effects of Biosatellite ill were minimal for Sky – lab. There was plenty of evidence that the monkey’s death was not directly due to microgravity exposure.

The experiment had at least one positive result for Skylab. Due to the con­cerns about Bonnie’s body mass loss, the microgravity mass-measurement device Bill Thornton had designed while with the Air Force became a high –

priority payload for the workshop so that any body mass loss by the Skylab crews could be tracked in flight lest they suffer similar problems.

Crippen, Bobko, and Thornton were selected to participate in a more down – to-Earth and ultimately more meaningful preparation for the Skylab mis­sions: the Skylab Medical Experiment Altitude Test, or smeat.

Rather than have the flight crews break away from their busy training schedule for full-length simulations, a surrogate crew was selected to com­plete a full-duration dry run of a Skylab mission. This smeat crew would test out various elements of the Skylab equipment and procedures in a series of trials, culminating in a full-scale simulation that was set at fifty-six days, at the time the longest planned duration of the Skylab missions and the length for which the second and third missions were scheduled.

The first part of the name came from the fact that trying out the medical experiments would be a major focus of the simulation, and the “altitude” referred to the fact it was conducted at the lower atmospheric pressure that would be used on Skylab.

In addition to the qualifying of the medical experiments, many other ele­ments of the Skylab program were to be tried out during the program. The crew was to eat a diet according to the guidelines that had been planned for the Skylab astronauts. Even the interpersonal relationships of the crew sealed in the chamber for almost two months, both with one other and with those they dealt with on the outside, would be a learning tool for the upcoming orbital missions.

Thornton, in particular, was excited about the possibilities smeat present­ed to do some hands-on testing of the Skylab equipment. He had already volunteered his services to the Marshall Space Flight Center in 1967 to help with the design and testing of Skylab equipment. He was determined that it should work on orbit and had expressed dissatisfaction with several of the designs. To him smeat was an opportunity to complete development and to test the flight gear as only he could test it—as he put it, “with a forced injection of operational reality.” His largest concerns going into the test were the urine collection and measuring system, the food system, and the bicycle ergometer.

The fifty-six days spent inside the altitude chamber would be only a frac­tion of the time that the three smeat crewmembers would devote to the test.

“It was about a year from the time we first started with all the planning and the engineering, and then the training and the preflight stuff, and then the actual test itself, and the writing reports,” Bobko said.

The training for smeat was an intensive endeavor in and of itself. For example, though they were to be safely on Earth the whole time just a short distance from help, the smeat crew went through the same medical train­ing as the Skylab members. Crippen said that the dental training, during which the astronauts learned to extract teeth, was a rather memorable expe­rience. “We’d each done a tooth and done the deadening with the Novo­cain and all that kind of stuff,” he said. “And they had this one kid that had a horrible looking mouth come in, and he needed to have a tooth out. They left Bo and I in there. The doctor said, ‘You guys pull teeth.’ We said, ‘We’ve pulled one.’ He said, ‘Go.’ He left, and I think I did the deadening, and Bo did the extraction.”

Bobko said that the youth was nervous about having the extraction done and was anxious about having to have a shot before the tooth was pulled. “And so ‘bedside manner Crippen’ here whips around with this needle that’s about that long,” he said, holding his fingers several inches apart. “But we went through with it,” Crippen said, “and he told us, ‘You’re the best den­tists I’ve ever had.’”

In another memorable incident during the medical training, Crippen broke his hand learning cpr. During training at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, the smeat crewmembers were taught cpr techniques with a “Resuscitation Annie” training dummy. “Back in those days, they always had you whack the person on the chest before you started,” Crip­pen said. “So I whacked the dummy.” When he did, the trainers told him he needed to hit the patient much harder than that. “And I did, and I broke my fifth metacarpal! So don’t have a heart attack around me.”

The smeat crew also spent time before the chamber test participating in the engineering design for the simulation. They played an important role in determining how the facility would be configured for the test. Bill Thornton was a stickler for good engineering in the chamber itself. The fire detection and “deluge system” sprinklers for putting out fires were of particular con­cern to Bill, who had been at Brooks Air Force Base when a serious cham­ber fire had taken place. The deluge system was tested successfully, but he followed up by tracing the power system to its source, supposedly a bank of

specially designed, long-life, high-reliability lead-acid batteries. But these batteries were corroded, and some had been replaced by ordinary automo­bile batteries. “He raised hell, and the batteries were replaced—with other automobile batteries,” Joe Kerwin recalls. “He raised hell again, and even­tually the correct batteries were obtained.”

The tests took place in a vacuum chamber used to simulate atmospher­ic pressure at various altitudes, from ground-level value of 14.7 pounds per square inch (psi) down to a space vacuum. For the full-duration test, the pressure would be held at 5 pounds per square inch, which would replicate the atmosphere that would be present on Skylab (5 psi, with 70 percent of it oxygen). The cylindrical chamber had a twenty-foot diameter and was twen­ty feet high, which allowed for it to be configured with a Skylab-esque two floors. The chamber was outfitted with equipment to replicate the Skylab layout closely enough for a meaningful simulation, though it was far from an exact copy. Bunks in smeat, for example, obviously had to be placed par­allel to the floor rather than perpendicular as on Skylab. The chamber was outfitted with the medical experiments that were to be flown on Skylab, including the vestibular-adaptation-testing rotating chair, the lower body negative pressure device, the bicycle ergometer, and the body mass measure­ment device. The smeat crew was to use the same toilet facilities as were on Skylab (“Except ours wasn’t on the wall,” Bobko noted), and their waste output was to be measured as it would be on orbit.

“We had a second deck on the thing, and then we divided up the first deck into compartments,” Crippen said. “We had the one sleep compart­ment where Bo and I had a bunk, and another compartment for Bill, and we had a head compartment, and we had one where all the medical experi­ments were set up. It was similar but not exactly like the living deck on Sky­lab. It was comfortable living.”

The two bunk rooms were outside the main cylindrical area in a rectan­gular extension that led to the main airlock. The waste-management com­partment was an area partitioned off on the first floor of the cylindrical area. The large open volume of the main area housed the medical experi­ment equipment as well as the smeat equivalent of the Skylab wardroom, a food storage and preparation area with a table. The main room also fea­tured a small access hatch through which items could be passed to or from the outside world. This small airlock was about the only compromise made in smeat that was not available on orbit. The second level featured desks at which the three astronauts could work (an additional desk was located on the first level).

Before the full-length fifty-six-day run, the crew conducted shorter tests in the chamber to work out any problems before committing to being sealed in for the full duration. After a “paper simulation” in which the crewmem­bers went into the chamber and talked through a day’s activities, two run – throughs of two and three days were conducted. As with the full-length test, the shorter runs required that the crew go through the process of preparing to enter the lower-pressure environment in the chamber. “We ran a large number of tests where we’d only go in the chamber for a day or so and run these things to wring it out before we actually got in for the long duration,” Crippen said. “Otherwise we’d never [have been] able to do it.

“I remember one case where there was this one tech that worked in Build­ing 7,” he said. “He was normally one of their chamber guys that were trained to operate the chamber. He and I were doing one run one day. They’d always prebreathe you [require you breathe ioo percent oxygen for three hours to eliminate nitrogen from your tissues and thereby prevent the bends] before the pressure is reduced from sea level to 5 psi in the chamber. We were set­ting up in the prebreathe room, and only he and I were there, and he got up and took off his oxygen mask and made a phone call to his girlfriend. Sure enough, we got in there and he was on the bicycle, and I was oversee­ing him. And he started hurting, and they had to take him out and put him in the hyperbaric chamber, ’cause he almost ‘bent’ himself— well, he did get the bends.”

Just as the actual Skylab crews did, the smeat crew received small tattoos on their bodies to mark where sensors went for the medical tests in order to ensure the sensors were placed consistently and thus increase the accu­racy of the results. According to Bobko, “They came to me, and they said, ‘We’re going to tattoo you so you know where to put the electrodes.’ And I said, ‘OK, only after one of you guys shows us exactly how it’s gonna look.’” He acquiesced after one of the doctors had the tattoos placed on himself. “He said, ‘If I could figure out how to see [behind me], I would have put it on my ass.’” Well over thirty years later, smeat and Skylab crewmembers report that their tattoos are still visible.

As any good crew would, the smeat astronauts came up with an official crew patch for their mission. The patch, reflective of the crew’s plum assign­ment, depicts Snoopy the beagle from Charles Schultz’s Peanuts comic strip (a favorite icon of the astronaut office) with an aviator’s cap, goggles, and scarf and a rope tied around his neck. Their original idea was to use Snoopy and “put a fishhook in his mouth.” The crew contacted Schultz to see if he would be willing to draw Snoopy for their patch. He agreed, but with one change: Crippen said, “[H]e wouldn’t put a fishhook, so he did the little noose-around-the-neck thing for us.”

Another part of the smeat simulation that began before the crew actu­ally entered the chamber for the fifty-six-day test was the premission diet. Just as the actual Skylab crews did, the smeat astronauts ate beforehand a diet similar to what they would eat during the mission in order to establish some baseline information with which the metabolic data collected during the mission would be compared. According to Bobko, the “preflight” and “postflight” diets the crew ate were not exactly the same as what they ate in the chamber during the test but were carefully selected to have the same mineral count and nutritional value. The crewmembers had two refriger­ators brought to their homes before the chamber simulation: one stocked with the premission food that was all they were allowed to eat, the second was used for storage of waste output, which would be taken back to msc for analysis. As things worked out, the astronauts got plenty of opportunity to enjoy the preflight diet; the planned twenty-one-day period during which they were supposed to eat it stretched to twenty-eight days when the start date for the test slipped by a week.

Crippen said that he’d certainly had his fill of the prescribed diet after eating the twenty-eight-day preflight diet, the fifty-six-day mission diet and then the postflight diet. “That got to be a pretty long time,” he said. “I can remember after we got out that I wanted a hamburger something awful.” (Other astronauts had similar experiences. After weeks of preflight diet and almost sixty days of Skylab meals, Owen Garriott made arrangements to have a chocolate milkshake waiting for him on the recovery aircraft carrier when he landed after his mission.)

“We used to give them a hard time about the food,” Bobko said, “Like I’d ask them, ‘What’s your analysis technique?’ and I never got an answer. We’d have a meeting, and they’d hem and haw around it, but they never gave it.” The smeat crew’s persistence in challenging the experimenters’ dietary planning was to be a vital contribution during the actual test, which led to

її. The smeat mission patch.

an important change in the Skylab flight program. Thanks to Bill Thorn­ton’s persistence, a one-size-fits-all, relatively low approach to caloric intake planning was amended. “We tried very hard,” he said. “I tried to get infor­mation from them; we’d say, ‘How are you going to do this? We’re going to be eating this three months or so; how are you going to do the analysis?’ On the first day, obviously, we have outside influence, when does that wash out? You can’t average it over the fifty-six days, that doesn’t sound reason­able, etc. etc. And I never got an answer.”

“I don’t think they had an answer,” Crippen agreed.

“There were a number of things like that we had questions on that nobody really knew,” Bobko added.

Finally, on 26 July 1972, only ten months before the first crew would launch into space, the time came to enter the vacuum chamber. And so the fifty – six-day stay began, and the astronauts were faced with what seemed at the outset like one of the mission’s biggest challenges—keeping occupied for fifty-six days. Apart from its terrestrial location, one of the main differences between smeat and Skylab was the lack of much of the science package that would make up much of the actual work in orbit. While the smeat crew conducted most of the Skylab biomedical experiments, they were obviously unable to conduct the astronomy experiments and Earth resources observa­tions, which depended on Skylab’s location in Earth orbit, or the materials science research and microgravity experimentation, which depended on its constant state of free fall. Thus, they were given the full duration of a Sky­lab mission, without all of the Skylab activities that would fill that duration in orbit. In addition they were unable to share some of the favorite free-time activities of the orbital crews — viewing the Earth and enjoying the won­ders of weightlessness.

However, despite not having those Skylab activities to fill their time, the smeat crews managed to find ways to avoid becoming bored by their extend­ed isolation. “I think we all worried about that ahead of time,” Crippen said, “because it wouldn’t be like the guys flying where you had the atm and all that to do. We worked on trying to find stuff to do. They let us take things in. We built a model, or tried to build a model. We took Russian. We found enough activities where I think we were reasonably busy.” (Notes Kerwin: “I have a memo from Crip, April 1971, to ‘Skykingdom’ [Conrad, et al] ask­ing for things to do. We suggested bridge and ping-pong.”)

“We kept up the pretense: ‘ok, this is like a spaceflight,’ and we com­municated through Capcoms, and all that,” Crippen said (Capcoms being short for “capsule communicators,” the people in Mission Control assigned to talk to the astronauts on a flight). “They said ‘We’d like to make it as much like Skylab as possible,’ and we did that. We did things like only com­municating during aos schedule.” In orbit, a spacecraft could only contact the ground when it was within range of a relay station on Earth, periods known as acquisition of signal (aos). Using that schedule for smeat meant the crew had only the same limited opportunities to talk to Mission Con­trol as the orbital Skylab crews would. A closed-circuit television was used for training classes, and each of the crewmembers was able to use it for two videoconferences with their families during the test.

As would be the case during the orbital program, the smeat crew took on some extra work to fill some of the time. Crippen set up regular debrief­ing sessions during the weekend to help organize the crew’s efforts. Just as

would be the case on Skylab, housekeeping also filled some of the crew’s time. “They [once told] us that things coming out of there were stinking,” Crippen said. “And we were very sensitive because it didn’t smell bad to us. I can remember, especially after we got the complaint about things kind of smelling that were coming out of there, we’d take Neutrogena soap and rub it down and scrub things around, so we worked hard at trying to keep the place clean.”

And then there were the phone calls. As another way to pass the time, Crippen insisted before entering the chamber to begin the test that it be out­fitted to make phone calls to anywhere in the country. Bobko recalled the line being a wonderful luxury as his wife used the time that her husband was away to take a vacation through California, and he was able to keep in touch with her as she traveled.

Crippen had a slightly different experience when friend and fellow astro­naut Dick Truly arranged a little joke to remind the confined commander just what he was missing out on in the real world. “I remember somewhere around Day 40-something, I got this call from Dick Truly,” he said. “I got on the line, and there were two young ladies on the line, and it was the biggest sexy phone call I can remember. I almost came out the door right then.”

As it worked out, the premission concern about staying occupied proved to be unfounded. Between their primary smeat tasks and the supplemen­tal activities they had scheduled for themselves, the crew not only had no problems keeping occupied but found their schedule so full that they some­times had to skip some of the supplementary activities they had planned. Work days, six days a week, began at 7:00 a. m. and continued until 9:00 p. m. with breaks for meals.

In addition to managing to keep occupied, the crew also maintained good relationships with one other despite being confined together in a lim­ited space for almost two months. Bobko, though, noted that the question of how they got along after being “shut up” together is really somewhat mis­leading. “It wasn’t something that was a shut-up thing,” he said, “because we had worked with each other for damn near a year, for probably eight or nine months or something, before we ever got in there. So any of the crew dynamic had already been worked out. My feeling was that we each had our own little peculiarities, but we understood each other, and we knew what they were, and we accepted them, and we got along.”

The same, he said, was true of all of the spaceflight crews of which he was

и. The smeat altitude chamber.

a member. By the time the beginning of the actual mission arrived, the crew had worked together in training for so long that the various personalities had already meshed into a team, and any initial problems had been overcome. “I had a woman on one of my flights, Rhea Seddon,” Bobko said. “People would say, ‘What do you think about taking a woman on your flight?’ Well, hell, we’d trained with her for six or nine months. That had all been worked out; the dynamic had been established already.”

Despite the eventual monotony that set in by the end of the “postflight” diet period after months of restricted choices, the astronauts said that the Skylab food provided during the fifty-six-day chamber run was not bad at all. “After we got the menus, I don’t remember being unhappy with the food,” Crippen said.

Bobko, who later went on to command Space Shuttle missions, said that the unique hardware specifications of Skylab were a boon to the program’s

menu options. Unlike later spacecraft, Skylab had facilities to store frozen food, and unlike previous NASA spacecraft and the Space Shuttle, Skylab did not use fuel cells for power generation.

“Compared to Shuttle, I think Skylab menus were a lot better,” Bobko said. “They had the frozen steaks; they had ice cream; they had other fro­zen things. And, unfortunately, the Apollo having fuel cells, which made water, and the Shuttle having fuel cells, which made water, has kept their food all on a narrow track; they wanted it to be dehydrated to save weight on the Shuttle.” Skylab had plenty of lift capability to launch nondehydrat­ed food.

The biggest challenge was setting up the menus in such a way as to make sure that the demanding nutritional guidelines were all met. “The food sys­tem was a bit of a problem,” Bobko said, “because they wanted us to balance our intake of proteins and minerals every day, which just made selection and consumption and everything else more difficult. That was the difficul­ty with the minerals and [calories]. Because if you took peanuts, if I remem­ber right, it excluded a whole bunch of other selections because [they] had enough other things in [them] that it really restricted your choices.”

As would be the case with Skylab, the crews set up menus for six days, and then cycled through those selections for the duration of the menu, eating the same meals every six days. “The six-day cycle, at least for me, was interest­ing,” Bobko said. “The way certain activities repeated led to some unusual associations.” For example, he said, part of his exercise schedule was on the same six-day cycle as the meals; so the same meal—spaghetti—was being prepared every time he did the exercise. “So, it’s like, if you’re exercising, you know you’re going to have the spaghetti smell in the background.”

A few of the food items developed for the program, however, were less appealing than some of the others. “I can still remember finding out that Silly Putty and the little pudding that they gave us were in cans that were exactly the same size and looked exactly the same,” Bobko said. “So we tried to feed it to one of the experimenters before the test, but he didn’t show up to the meeting.”

Despite being designed to replicate the Skylab menu as closely as possible, the smeat menu did feature one perk that the orbital version did not. Once in every six-day cycle, the smeat astronauts were allowed to imbibe a serv­ing of sherry. The original plan had been for the Skylab menus to include a wine selection in each rotation, and a tasting had even been held for the crews to select what they wanted to carry into orbit with them. Medical

objections had been overcome, but serving wine on a government “ship” was too much of a break with precedent for the political sensitivities of 1972, and it was removed from the flight diet.

Fortunately for the smeat crew, however, by the time the decision was made to remove the sherry from the Skylab menus, the smeat menus had already been made out, and it was too late to go back through the process of completely rebalancing the various nutritional factors that would have to be changed if the sherry were removed. “We had it,” Crippen said, “and we really looked forward to it.”

A more significant disagreement over the menus, however, proved to be of great importance to the Skylab program. The intense scrutiny on diets was not just to make sure that the crews stayed healthy, it was also one of the major biomedical experiments. Since the crews would be setting new spaceflight duration records, scientists wanted to learn all they could about how the microgravity exposure affected their metabolisms. Their dietary intake would be closely monitored, as would their waste output and their body mass, in order to make sure there were no unknown issues that would be a limiting factor for future long-duration spaceflight.

In order to facilitate the close scrutiny of the astronauts’ intake, the deci­sion had been made to standardize the intake for all Skylab (and smeat) crewmembers so that all crewmembers would consume the same num­ber of nutritional calories each day. One set of dietary guidelines would be established, and all of the astronauts would adhere to it, making it easier to keep up with exactly how much everyone was eating. The astronauts and the investigators had been negotiating the diet since 1969, and when smeat took place it had changed from a standard 2,400 calories apiece to a base of 2,000 calories worth of real food (containing all the protein, calcium, and phosphorous allowed) plus up to 800 additional “snack” calories.

Bill Thornton, however, no stranger to medical concerns himself, dis­agreed with the decision and took it upon himself to prove that the standard­ized diet was a bad idea before it could be implemented on orbit, where there would be no way to change it. The tall and muscular Thornton, one of the corps’ most physically imposing members, believed that setting a uniform standard for all the crewmembers would be unhealthy, that each needed a nutritional plan custom tailored for his own body type and metabolism.

Bill decided to demonstrate the inadequacy of this diet (“2,000 calories

plus sugar for a 207-pound man with less than ten-percent body fat”) by con­suming it as directed. Pretest he maintained his usual extensive exercise reg­imen. In the chamber he estimated the difference between his usual routine and his chamber activities and made up the difference with cycle ergome – try. He gorged on sugar cookies and lemon drops to stay alive.

“Bill like to drove me nuts,” Crippen said. “He didn’t think the calor­ic intake they had assigned for the flights was adequate, and he was deter­mined to try to prove that so that they would up it. Bill was exercising on the ergometer. And he exercised on the ergometer, and he exercised. It’d be in the middle of the night and he’d be in there peddling on the thing.

“He finally got to be almost like a skeleton. He got to where I was wor­ried about him. I didn’t know how much weight he lost, but it was signifi­cant. Somewhere around the thirty-day point, I finally called outside and said either he’s coming out or you’ve got to send some food in. They boost­ed up what we ended up flying, and I thought it was around 2,500 calories a day. I got irritated at Bill a few times simply because I couldn’t get him off the damn bicycle. I thought he was going to starve himself to death. He’s a bulldog; but you know, he’s a great guy, and that was the only thing that he and I had an issue on—he wouldn’t get off that damn bicycle.”

And, indeed, the diet was insufficient for Thornton to maintain his body mass. “I was under the impression that a loss of twenty-eight pounds, most of it upper-body muscle, would be enough to convince anyone,” Thornton said. As it turned out, it wasn’t enough to convince the principal investiga­tor for the mineral balance experiment. Dr. Donald Whedon thought “He overexercised,” and his coinvestigator, Dr. Leo Lutwak felt “He only lost body fat.” But a lot of discussion resulted in extra food being stowed aboard Skylab for the flight crews. Specifically, the eight hundred calories of “snack” food was now allowed to contain significant amounts of protein, which put many more food items onto the snack list.

Just as the intake monitoring had issues that had to be worked out, so too did the output monitoring. A similar problem occurred in planning the urine-collection system as had with the nutrition-standard guidelines: the designers had taken a one-size-fits-all approach that while wonderful in the­ory proved to be less wonderful in practice.

The urine system was Thornton’s biggest hardware concern. It had to collect and measure twenty-four hours of output efficiently and reliably

with very small error, in weightlessness. The contractor had designed a two – chambered bag separated by a “hydrophilic” membrane to transfer the urine into the measurement chamber under enough pressure to activate a com­plex mechanical displacement indicator. It failed as soon as urine was used to test it instead of water.

“The urine collection burst on us,” Bobko said. “They had gone, I guess, into hospitals and figured out what the urine output would be, and it was too low. So two things happened, and one is that if you got up to take a leak at night, you may fill this thing up, so halfway through your evacuation, you had to cross your legs, and you had to [change] the bag.” The other thing that happened was that the bags occasionally became overfilled and burst.

Emergency meetings were held. A centrifuge was designed whose centrifu­gal force would generate enough pressure to transfer urine into new, filterless bags. Thornton was skeptical. He campaigned hard to get the system into smeat for test and was the only one of the three crewmen who used it.

There were multiple failures. Seven times the bag broke, usually near the end of a twenty-four hour cycle when it was nearly full. Thornton recalls, “I had only my dirty discarded underwear and a very limited amount of water and soap to sop up a couple of liters of urine into discarded bags and clean up the floor. Then I had to thrust my big hands into a maze of machined parts with sharp edges to dry them, lest they corrode and seize up. My hands looked like I had taken on a bobcat.” Crip and Bo joined Bill in tell­ing management it wouldn’t fly. A meeting was scheduled, and the three of them collaborated in preparing a rather blunt demonstration of the seri­ousness of the problem.

“They had the overcans for food, the big cans,” Crippen said. “I think it was Bill that was doing this, but we were all complicit. We took one of the big food cans and took a spring out of the tissue dispensers, turned one of the small food cans over and put it down in on the spring, and then took a urine-soaked rag and put it down in there, and sent it out there. So when they opened up, it popped out, to demonstrate that we had a problem in there.” The result was a complete system redesign with Dick Truly in charge. Bill suspects to this day that the food can was never opened; Truly just believed his fellow astronauts.

In addition to urine, stool was also sent out to be measured and analyzed. According to Bo Bobko: “We didn’t freeze-dry the feces; we didn’t have the vacuum as was available in space. We put them in little cans and sent them out. We sent the urine out, but we did the sample first; I think it was thir­ty milliliters per day.

“Then there was Thornton. I can remember them going to Thornton, and saying, ‘Bill, it’s Friday noon, and you haven’t given us a fecal sam­ple, and we’d like to let all the people go home for the weekend.’ And Bill would say, ‘Just a minute.’ So he turned around, and said, ‘You were talk­ing to the wrong end.’

“I can remember them giving us these little cups. I said, ‘These little cups, you know—how about something like four times larger?’ So they gave us something that looked like a mailing tube. I said, ‘You dummies, give us something that looks like an ice cream half-gallon container or something, that we don’t have a hard time hitting.’ So they did. But there were probably a lot of little things like that flight crews never knew about or cared about.

“They were complaining to us that we weren’t sending everything out. Like, they said we weren’t sending out all the feces. We said, ‘What are we doing with it? Storing it under the boards of the floor?’ I remember that time Bill got on the phone with our surgeon, kind of an excitable guy. Bill asked for a private consultation. He got on the phone, and he was saying, ‘I’ve been noticing some strange behavior.’ The flight surgeon said, ‘Oh, oh, tell us about it.’ He said ‘Well, you know, these people seem to be paranoid. It looks like we have some paranoid things,’ and we have this and that. The flight surgeon was assuming it was us, and he was getting more and more excited. The flight surgeon finally said ‘Who is this? Who is this?’ And Bill said, ‘It’s the management.’ You don’t think of him as a funny person. But when you have things like talking to the flight surgeon about this deviant behavior, you thought about it and laughed about it for days.”

In a similar vein, the crew noticed an unanticipated side effect of the low­er atmospheric pressure in the altitude chamber: “There was a lot of flatu­lence,” Crippen noted. “We tried to think maybe it was the diet, but I think it was just strictly the 5 psi. It was significant.” Common sense supports the latter theory: At the 5 psi of the smeat chamber, any given mass of a gas would have three times the volume that it would under sea-level atmospher­ic pressure. (Skylab crewmembers confirmed that the same phenomenon occurred during orbital operations as well.) Recalls Bobko: “We had a tim­er, and we were counting. I don’t remember how many times it was in a day, but it was a significant number.”

The 5 psi atmosphere had more mundane effects as well. The lower pres­sure reduced the transmission of sound so that during the first few days the crewmembers frequently found themselves shouting, and became hoarse as a result. (On Skylab, an intercom system addressed this problem.) They also found that they were unable to whistle in the lower pressure atmosphere and that sneezes were milder.

The most important part of smeat, of course, was the work the crew did in testing out the equipment and procedures designed for Skylab, making sure that everything would function as planned by the time the first crew arrived in orbit. While the problems the smeat crew had with the urine collection system were inconvenient for them, to say the least, their incon­venience served a greater good—the consequences of the urine collection problems would have been much greater had they first been discovered in the microgravity environment of Skylab.

One of the most immediate tasks for the smeat crew was to begin tak­ing the roughly delineated guidelines that had been developed for Skylab operations and turn them into the finely detailed procedures that would be needed for the astronauts in space. The efforts to refine the checklist were an ongoing process for the smeat crew, beginning long before the chamber test and continuing through the simulation.

“We did quite a bit of development on the checklist, because a lot of that was almost nonexistent when we started,” Bobko said. “It was in bad shape. So we had to do something; we had to make it operational. A lot of this stuff just wasn’t in an operational format.” Much of the early checklist, he said, was too short and vague for use in spaceflight. “It was ‘Don’t do this.’ It was all right for training, but it wasn’t really good enough to use. So we really worked on that quite a bit. That was part of the engineering and training that took place at the beginning.”

Working with the principal investigators for the medical experiments in developing the procedures, Bobko said, had an additional beneficial side effect. The opportunity to witness the smeat crew performing the experi­ments gave the investigators some idea of what they could expect in work­ing with the Skylab crews during orbital operations.

As was the case with the urine collection system, the smeat astronauts’ use of the Skylab hardware revealed problems with equipment destined for the orbital workshop. Their discoveries meant that the problems could be

addressed before the equipment was launched into orbit, where the sort of flaws uncovered during smeat would have been devastating for the program.

Bill Thornton’s dedicated use of the wheel-less bicycle ergometer, for exam­ple, did more than just reveal problems with the dietary guidelines imposed on the crew; it also contributed to breaking—and then fixing—the bicycle. (Though that problem was corrected, the ergometer would present other challenges during its use on orbit, though fortunately all of the crews were able to deal with it in situ.)

Thornton used the ergometer primarily to maintain his normal exercise level. But because he questioned its ruggedness and thought it had not been tested thoroughly, he wanted to put it to that test. He recalled, “After a rea­sonable break-in period I planned to take it to its 300 watt rating for an hour, but starvation was taking its toll, and I was relieved when it screeched to a stop at about forty-eight minutes. The airlock was used to exchange it for an old, indestructible model. A considerable time later the bike was returned, ‘fixed’ by restricting it to thirty minutes at 300 watts, now an ordeal with my continued malnutrition. But this time it took only twenty-nine min­utes and thirty seconds to destroy the bearings. I shall never forget the look of disgust on Crip’s face.”

This time, after independent engineering analysis, a different shaft and bearings were installed. The flight unit, however, was further restricted to 250 watts. Fortunately, this proved enough for the mere mortals who flew. Bill still remembers feeling hurt by the subsequent efforts of msec man­agement to separate him from his testing role. And he insists that he nev­er actually used it when Crip and Bo were asleep — “maybe when they were watching TV, but not after lights out.”

Here are some of the hardware redesigns accomplished as a result of the smeat tests:

In the lower body negative pressure device, a seal that was necessary for depressurizing the lower extremities developed a leak and had to be redesigned. In addition, the decision was made to car­ry a spare seal during the flight program.

The equipment used for measuring blood pressure was discovered to have been miscalibrated, causing it to produce inaccurate­ly high results.

Several problems were discovered in the metabolic analyzer unit. Some

ІЗ – Bill Thornton riding the cycle ergometer.

of the measurements it took were found to be substantially high­er than they should have been, and the oxygen consumption measurement of the device was discovered to be significantly greater in the 5 psi atmosphere in the chamber than at sea-level pressure. The unit was redesigned to provide accurate and con­sistent data for Skylab.

The electrode cement used for the vectorcardiogram test was found to cause skin irritation, and action was taken to prevent the sit­uation from recurring on Skylab.

Coagulation problems in samples were discovered to result from the blood sampling techniques used in smeat, and additional anti­coagulants were added.

The centrifuge used for blood separation was found to be prone to excessive vibration and had to be redesigned prior to the flight program.

Of course, not all the problems the crew experienced were the fault of the hardware. One of the less-coveted tasks for the smeat crew was wearing the electroencephalogram (eeg) cap that monitored sleep levels. Crippen initially had agreed to be the one to wear the cap but before the beginning of the chamber test discovered that the salve or jelly that had to be applied to wear the cap caused his head to break out in welts. When Crippen real­ized that he was going to have to pass on the eeg duties, Thornton volun­teered to take it over. But he too was unable to wear the cap. The task was then passed on to Bobko, who with no one left to pass it on to was stuck with it. Though no longer the one who would be wearing the cap, Crippen was still the one trained in its operation and thus had the responsibility of changing the tapes on which the device’s data was recorded. Unfortunate­ly due to an error in changing the tape, the data wasn’t recorded. No one realized, however, that there was a problem until after the test was over, and the experimenters went back to review the data. “So Bo went through [the test], and there was no damned data,” Crippen said. “I guess we got some from the first tape.” Even that experience presented new ideas for the Sky – lab program—for the orbital operations, some of the data was sent down in real time to prevent just that sort of problem.

The smeat experiences proved to be invaluable to the Skylab orbital pro­gram, and the three men were proud of their contributions to the success of Skylab. “The first mission would have been a lot more difficult for the med­ical experiments” without the lessons of smeat, Bobko said.

Crippen agreed that the breaking-in the smeat crew put the medical experiment equipment through on the ground was a key to how well things went when the equipment was used in orbit. “If we’d flown those without running them in some sort of operational situation, I think there would have been a problem,” he said.

Thornton praised Richard Johnston, then director of Life Sciences, for initiating a daily logging and review system for medical data which result­ed in good status monitoring during the flights—and eventually in a fine document capturing Skylab’s medical achievements, “Biomedical Results of Skylab.”

Finally, though, the time came to bring the test to a close. Crippen said he was never entirely sure if the test was going to run exactly the full fifty – six days for which the second two Skylab missions were planned. First, he said, he believed that the simulation might be brought to an early close and the crew released from the chamber. But then as the test drew nearer to its conclusion, he wasn’t sure if the mission planners might not decide to extend it to continue the experiments.

Bobko said he also wondered whether the crew might have to spend addi­tional time in the chamber. “Near the end, I can remember thinking we may not get everything done, because we just have a lot to do,” he said. “Fifty- six days was the target, and they said, ‘If anything goes wrong, we can take you out.’ But there was a feeling of, we had a purpose, and we had to get to it done. I can remember having some concerns that we weren’t going to get all the results that we really wanted to get. And it all turned out; I think that we did. And like I said, I’m not sure that if anybody said, ‘You want to go for another fifty-six days,’ I would have been ready for that.”

Crippen agreed: “I know I wouldn’t have. If it were one or two more days to get some stuff done we would have been able to do that.”

The smeat crew would eventually get their chance to move up from sim­ulated space missions to the real thing. As Slayton had predicted when the mol astronauts were brought into the NASA corps, their chance to fly did not come until the Shuttle was ready to launch, twelve years after they were brought in. Even before that happened, though, after almost a decade of being on the lower rungs of the astronaut corps ladder, the mol astronauts saw their situation change in 1978 with the selection of the eighth class of candidates, chosen specifically for the Shuttle program. “We were start­ing to get into Shuttle before I felt like I wasn’t a new guy,” Crippen said. By that time, many of the veteran astronauts from the earlier groups had left the corps, and the mol class played a vital role in the early Shuttle pro­gram. Crippen said that he was told that some of the same managers who had opposed bringing in the Air Force astronauts originally went on to feel lucky to have them when the Shuttle began flying.

Ironically, and sadly, though each did get to fly and command Shut­tle missions, Crippen and Bobko’s careers as flight-status astronauts ended much as they began: waiting on a space launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base that was never to come.

The Air Force had modified Space Launch Complex 6 (slc-6, pronounced “Slick Six”) at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, once destined to serve as the launch pad for the mol program, for use with the Space Shuttle. Missions were planned for launch from the “new” Shuttle pad, and crew­members were selected for those missions, including Crippen and Bobko.

“One of the sad things was, [in mol] we were supposed to fly from Van­denberg on Slick Six, Space Launch Complex Number 6,” Crippen said. “And sure enough, I was up to command 62-A, which was going to launch out of Vandenberg out of Slick Six.”

Bobko recalled: “I can remember going out there during mol and stay­ing in the crew quarters. And then they redid the crew quarters out there to make them a command center. And then they changed it back to crew quarters. I can remember being out there the second time, same place, I don’t know how many years later, when they were getting ready to do the Shuttle flights.”

The 62-A mission that Crippen was assigned to command was to be the first Shuttle launch from the Vandenberg complex and would have been the first launch of a manned spaceflight into a polar orbit. The flight was sched­uled for mid-1986, but it was never to be. On 28 January 1986, the Space Shut­tle Challenger was lost during launch from Florida, destroying the vehicle and killing the seven members of its crew. As a result of that tragedy, the decision was made not to launch the Shuttle from Slick Six.

Just as it took a team of thousands working together to make the Skylab program, telling its tale would not have been possible without the gener­ous contributions of many people. While the three of us struggled over the past several years to put everything in place and to make this story of Sky – lab both accurate and interesting for all readers, we have found that abso­lutely key elements required the personal contribution of additional mem­bers of the Skylab team.

Alan Bean’s substantial contribution to this book, for which we are im­mensely grateful, was discussed in the preface.

And then there is Ed Gibson, the scientist pilot of mission three, who makes clear the major contributions made on the longest Skylab mission of all and who sets the record straight about some of the common misconcep­tions surrounding the mission. He is the principal author of most of chap­ter io, “Sprinting a Marathon.” He attacked the challenge passionately and went above and beyond our expectations.

Gibson’s insight can also be found elsewhere in the book, particularly in his in-depth explanation of solar astronomy on Skylab. Gibson’s knowl­edge of our sun, and observation thereof, is vast, and his expertise made for an invaluable addition to the book.

In addition, we would like to give particular thanks to the following people.

Vance Brand and Bo Bobko, who shared not only their personal ex­periences but also a wealth of resources they had saved over the years.

Chris Kraft, who provided us with unpublished Skylab material he had written for his memoir, Flight: My Life in Mission Control.

Lee Belew, Jerry Carr, Phil Chapman, Bob Crippen, George Hardy,

Charlie Harlan, Hans Kennel, Jack Kinzier, Don Lind, Gratia Lousma, Jack Lousma, Bob MacQueen, Joe McMann, George Mueller, Bill Pogue, Chuck Ross, Bob Schwinghamer, Phil Shaf­fer, Ed Smylie, Jim Splawn, J. R. Thompson, Bill Thornton, Stan Thornton, Jack Waite, and Paul Weitz, all of whom shared their experiences with us, either during in-person interviews or through written correspondence. (Some of these also extended and enhanced material from their interviews with the jsc Oral History Project for this book, particularly in chapter io.)

Colin Burgess, our series editor, who got us started on this adventure and shepherded us along the way. Colin also contributed the story about Stan Thornton’s experience finding a piece of Sky – lab; and he occasionally provided feedback on our manuscript when not too busy working on countless of his own.

The jsc Oral History Project, an incredible historical archive. Inter­views from the project served as the foundation for the crew bios and the Skylab III chapter of this book and added additional in­sight to other areas.

Francis French, Gregg Maryniak, and Rob Pearlman, who looked through our in-progress manuscript and provided expert feedback.

Gary Dunham, who supported us graciously during this process.

Homer Hickam, who captured what we were trying to do in his ex­cellent foreword.

Richard Allen of Space Center Houston, for letting us in at odd hours to review the Skylab trainer.

Genie Bopp; Sandra Brooks; Susanna Brooks; Eve Garriott; Bill and Leah Hitt; Lain Hughes; and Lee and Sharon Kerwin, who were kind enough to read through our developing book and point us in the right direction.

Many, many others who answered questions for us as they arose.

David Hitt would also like to thank his father, Bill Hitt, for setting his first­born in front of the television on 12 April 1981 and fanning the flames ever since; Jim Abbott, for being the best mentor a young reporter could have hoped for; Nicole, for going along on an amazing experience; Jesse Hol­land; and last, but certainly not least, the good Drs. Garriott and Kerwin, for giving me the greatest adventure of my life by letting me share in one of the greatest of theirs, for being my patrons through Olympus, and, most of all, for their friendship.

Joe Kerwin would like to thank his wife, Lee; his daughters, Sharon, Joanna, and Kristina, for letting him be a part-time dad before the flight and for providing his main motive for coming back to Earth; and his grandsons, Christopher, Joel, Anthony, Brendan, and Joshua, for giving him a reason to help write this book—that they might be encouraged to go on adven­tures of their own.

Owen Garriott is most appreciative of the support provided by his family and children in his life both as a “flyer” and as a writer as he prepared this book. It is not an insignificant source of personal satisfaction to find that some of his enthusiasm for space adventure has carried over to his children.

Perhaps the best way to begin a tour of Skylab is to begin where its crews did—on the outside, with a look at the station’s exterior.

If a crew in an Apollo Command Module were to approach Skylab with its docking port before them, the nearest module would be the Multiple Dock­ing Adapter (mda) . From the exterior, the mda was basically a nondescript cylinder, marked primarily by its two docking ports. One of the docking ports, the one used by the crews docking with Skylab, was located on the end of the cylinder. The second, the radial docking port, was at a ninety – degree angle from the first, on the circumference of the mda.

The other notable feature of the Multiple Docking Adapter was the truss structure that surrounded it and connected it to the Apollo Telescope Mount (atm), on the side of Skylab opposite the radial docking port. The atm is easily recognized by its four solar arrays, which had a very distinctive wind­mill appearance. Between the four rectangular arrays was a cylinder that housed the atm’s eight solar astronomy instruments. Covers over the instru­ment apertures rotated back and forth, revealing the instruments when they were in use and protecting them from possible contamination when they were not.

Continuing from mda, the crew would next come to the Airlock Mod­ule (am), a smaller cylinder partially tucked into the end of the exterior hull of the larger workshop cylinder. The Airlock Module was most nota­ble, as the name suggests, for its airlock featuring an exterior door allow­ing the crew to egress to conduct spacewalks outside the station. While the program that spawned Skylab had been dubbed “Apollo Applications” for its extensive use of Apollo hardware and technology, the Airlock Module was actually a “Gemini Application” — the door used for evas was a Gem­ini spacecraft hatch.

The airlock and all the spacewalk equipment on Skylab were designed for one purpose — to allow the crew to retrieve and replace film from the solar

telescope cameras on the Apollo Telescope Mount. “There was no thought of the crews doing repairs or maintenance on other things,” Kerwin said. “Little did we know!”

The airlock was partly covered by the Fixed Airlock Shroud, a stout alu­minum cylinder that was a forward extension of the skin of the workshop. The aft struts from which the Apollo Telescope Mount was suspended were mounted here. The truss structure included a path, complete with handholds that spacewalking astronauts could use to move from the airlock hatch to the atm so that they could change out the film.

Finally moving farther past the Airlock Module, the crew would reach the largest segment of Skylab, the cylindrical Orbital Workshop. This was the portion that consisted of the modified s-ivb stage. As it was originally con­structed, the most distinctive features of the station were the two solar array wings, which stretched out to either side and which were to be the primary source of electrical power for the workshop. Prior to launch the photovolta­ic cells that made up the arrays folded up flat against the beam that would hold them out from the sides of the workshop. These beams, in turn, fold­ed down against the outside of the s-ivb stage in its launch configuration, making the wings much more aerodynamic for the flight into orbit.

After completing their fly around, a crew would return to the top of the Multiple Docking Adapter and dock their spacecraft to the station. A com­plete tour of the interior of Skylab should begin right there on their cap­sule. After docking, the Command and Service Module became a part of the cluster. While there were occasions when things needed to be done in the Command Module, they were few. Perhaps its primary use while docked with Skylab was essentially as a telephone booth; crewmembers could float up to the Command Module to find a little privacy for conducting space – to-ground communications with their loved ones at home on a back-up fre­quency that was not available in the workshop.

Upon opening the hatch and entering Skylab, the crew would first find themselves inside the mda. Originally planned to have a total of four dock­ing ports around its circumference, the mda lost three as a result of the switch from the wet workshop to the dry. When the wet workshop cluster, which had to be assembled individually on orbit, was replaced with a facil­ity launched all at once as a dry workshop, the additional ports at which to dock separately launched modules were not needed. Eliminating the three

14- A cutaway view of the Skylab space station.

extra docking ports freed up a large amount of wall space around the mda’s circumference, space that was utilized to turn the module into essentially an additional science annex.

The design of the interior of the Multiple Docking Adapter was itself one of Skylab’s experiments. The argument had been made that in the micro­gravity environment in orbit there was no need to follow the same design paradigms that were unavoidable on the ground. There was no need to leave a floor empty to walk on. The ceilings were no more out of reach than walls, and equipment could be placed on them just as easily as on a wall. The mda was an experiment in designing for that environment, with no up or down. Equipment was located all the way around the wall of the cylin­der, allowing more complete use of the available space than would be prac­tical on Earth.

Foremost among the scientific equipment located in the module was the operator’s station for the Apollo Telescope Mount, a large flat panel featur­ing the controls and displays for the atm with a narrow table in front of it.

The atm console was arguably evidence of the extent to which the module’s designers were influenced by Earthbound thinking. Though care was tak­en to design the mda as an ideal microgravity work environment, the atm console was furnished with a chair for the astronauts to sit in while oper­ating the controls. “We called it the ‘Commander’s Chair,’ because it was Pete’s idea,” notes first crew science pilot Joe Kerwin. “It didn’t survive lon­ger than about the first two weeks of our mission; we then put it away some­where, and I don’t think anyone retrieved it.”

Also located in the mda was the Materials Processing Facility. Included in this experiment was a furnace used to study flammability and melting of solid materials in microgravity. The adapter also housed the Earth resourc­es experiment equipment.

Leaving the Multiple Docking Adapter and heading farther down into Skylab, one would next come into the Airlock Module, the function of which was very aptly described by its name. Joining the mda and the Air­lock Module together was the Structural Transition Section, which con­nected the larger diameter of the Docking Adapter on one end to that of the smaller Airlock Module on the other. The Structural Transition Sec­tion housed extensive systems operation equipment. The Airlock Module provided a way for astronauts to egress the station for spacewalks. Before they could go outside, the Airlock Module would have to be shut off from the rest of the station and then depressurized. Once the atmosphere had been removed, the airlock hatch could be opened, and the eva crewmem­bers could go outside.

To prepare for an eva, all three crewmembers would put on their space- suits in the larger open area of the Orbital Workshop, where the equipment was stored. The astronaut who would be staying inside stopped short of don­ning his helmet and gloves but suited up the rest of the way in case a prob­lem occurred. The eva umbilicals were stored in the Airlock Module, and the ends of these were pulled down into the workshop during this time and connected to the suits of the two eva crewmen. These provided oxygen, cooling, and communications for the two astronauts who would be going outside as well as tethering them to the station.

Once all three were suited up, the non-EVA crewman would precede the others, move through the airlock and into the MDA/Structural Transition Section. There he would attach himself to a shorter umbilical. With his

helmet off, he would be breathing the atmosphere in the mda, but in the bulky spacesuit, he needed the umbilical for cooling as well as for communi­cations. The eva crewmen would move to the airlock and close both hatches (helped on the mda side by the third crewmember). Once the hatches were closed, the Airlock Module would be depressurized by venting its atmo­sphere into space. The outside hatch would be opened, and the two space – walkers could venture outside.

Once the eva was completed, the two astronauts would return to the Airlock Module and close the outside hatch. The am would be repressur­ized, and they would open equalization valves in both end hatches to assure equal pressure with the rest of the station. Finally, they’d open both hatch­es, return to the workshop and doff their suits. The normal pressure regu­lation system would add gas to the workshop as needed.

The Airlock Module’s location in the middle of Skylab meant that a prob­lem with repressurization could mean the end of the mission. If for some reason the module were unable to hold an atmosphere, the third crewman would put on his helmet and gloves and depressurize the Multiple Docking Adapter. The other two would disconnect their umbilicals from the Air­lock Module and rely on a reserve oxygen supply in their suits while they opened the hatch between the two modules, and moved into the docking adapter. Once there, they would reconnect their umbilicals in the mda, and then seal it off from the Airlock Module and repressurize it. If they and the ground were then unable to figure out a way to fix the problem with the Air­lock Module, the mission would be aborted. They would leave the mda for the Command Module and return home.

Continuing deeper into the station, one would next reach the large Orbit­al Workshop volume. This section was divided into two “stories,” with a hole in the middle of the floor of the top story that allowed the crew to move between them.

Like the Multiple Docking Adapter, the workshop was part of the exper­iment in designing for microgravity. Whereas the mda was designed with­out consideration for the direction of gravitational force on the ground, the approach to the workshop design had been to keep in mind that it would be used by men whose brains had long been wired for the one-G environment in which they had lived their entire lives. The “bottom” story of the work­shop was arranged with a very definite up and down. Furnishings and large

equipment sat on the floor like they would on Earth (with a few exceptions), and the walls functioned more or less the way walls normally do. The upper compartment was more of a hybrid, with variations from the one-G—based design of the lower section.

The area at the top of the workshop was very unusual by spacecraft stan­dards. Traditionally spacecraft design is a field in which mass, and by exten­sion volume, are at a premium, reflecting the challenge of moving anything from the surface of the Earth into orbit. As a result spacecraft tend to be rel­atively cramped with every inch utilized as much as possible. While mod­ern spacecraft like the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station are roomy compared to early vehicles like the Mercury and Gemini cap­sules, their designs still reflect the basic limitations in putting any mass into orbit. Skylab had a couple of advantages that made it exceptional in that respect. The availability of the Saturn v as the launch vehicle and the deci­sion to use an s-ivb for the Orbital Workshop meant that it was much less constrained by the traditional mass and volume limitations. Nowhere was that more apparent than at the top of the workshop, which featured an open volume that by spacecraft standards was incredibly large. While the low­er floor was divided into separate “rooms,” the upper floor, the larger of the two, was not divided. An astronaut could float freely in the middle of this volume without bumping into the walls.

In fact Skylab’s designers were concerned that this could present a real problem. They feared that an astronaut could get stranded in the middle of this open volume; without anything nearby to push off, he would have to rely on air currents or his crewmates to push him back toward a solid sur­face. To eliminate this danger and to provide for easier movement through Skylab, they provided a “fireman’s pole” in the middle of the workshop, running from one end to the other. The idea was that the astronauts would hold on to the pole to move “up” and “down” the workshop. The pole, how­ever, proved unnecessary, and the crews found that it just got in the way. It turned out to be quite easy to push off from a surface and glide to one’s des­tination —no pole required. The first crew took it down for the duration of their stay, but at the end, politely restored Skylab to factory specs, reinstall­ing the pole for the second crew. They in turn did the same—promptly tak­ing it out of their way but putting it back before they left so that the third crew could remove it one last time.

The upper portion of the workshop dome volume was left almost vacant for experiments requiring a lot of volume for checkout, like a Manned Maneu­vering Unit prototype. Just below this was a ring of white storage lock­ers, which the first crew found provided an excellent “track” to enable easy shirt-sleeve jogging and tumbling around the inside circumference of the workshop. Also located in the upper deck were storage of food supplies for all three missions, a refrigerator and a very heavy (on Earth, at least) steel vault for film storage.

A few experiments were also located in this area, including Skylab’s equiv­alent of bathroom scales, the body mass measurement device, which the astronauts used to keep track of how much “weight” they had lost or gained. The upper dome volume was also where the two astronaut maneuvering units were kept. One was a backpack device that was the forerunner of the Manned Maneuvering Unit later used on some Space Shuttle missions and of safer, the Simplified Aid for eva Rescue, used on the Internation­al Space Station. (Ironically, a member of the one Skylab crew that did not get to test the maneuvering unit, Joe Kerwin, was a co-inventor of the saf­er unit, while working at Lockheed Martin years later.) The other device was a maneuvering aid that astronauts operated with their feet, rather than their hands.

The upper story of the workshop also featured a pair of airlocks. Too small for a person to go through—only about ten inches square—the two Scientific Airlocks (sals) were designed for solar physics, astronomy, Earth photography, and space exposure experiments, allowing astronauts to pass materials samples through to see how they weathered the harsh environs outside. The two airlocks were on opposite sides of the compartment from each other; a solar airlock pointed in the same direction as the Apollo Tele­scope Mount, while the antisolar sal faced in the opposite direction. (This solar-looking airlock would be an important part of addressing problems that occurred during launch.)

Also located at the top of the dome was Skylab’s unofficial “Lost and Found.” “Most of us have enough trouble keeping up with our pencils, notes, paper clips, and other small items here on Earth in a largely ‘two dimension­al’ world,” Garriott explained. “By two dimensions, we mean that an object may get pushed around horizontally, but it seldom floats away vertically in a third dimension, like a feather might do. But space is different—everything floats away unless it is tethered or tied down. But our eyes and our minds

have been trained for years to look only on the tops of surfaces to find lost articles. We may not ‘see’ a small floating object in space, or may not look in all the more obscure places a lost article may have become lodged.

“But serendipity came to the rescue here,” he said. “The very slow air cir­culation from the lower decks up to the single air intake duct in the top of the dome volume slowly urged all drifting objects to come to it. We found that each morning when we arose, we could find many of our small, lost articles on the screen on the intake duct!”

At the bottom of each of the workshop’s two “stories” were floors with an open-grid construction that was a fortunate relic of Skylab’s development. During the wet-workshop phase of Skylab’s history, engineers looked at whether any of the station’s infrastructure could be included in the s-ivb stage while it was being used as a fuel tank up to, and during, the launch. Anything that could be built into the tank would mean mass that would not have to be carried up later, and installation work that the crew would be spared. The catch of course was that it would also have to be something that could withstand the environment of an s-ivb filled with cryogenic pro­pellants, that it could not pose a risk of igniting the propellants, and that it must not interfere with the function of the rocket stage. One item that the engineers decided they could include was the floors of the workshop. How­ever, solid floors could not be used, since they would impede the flow of fuel through the tank. As a result, special floors were designed with a grid pattern that would allow fuel to flow through them.

When the switch was made from the wet workshop to the dry, the grid – pattern floors were no longer needed for their original purpose. However, the design was kept for the dry workshop because it was realized that the grid could serve another purpose as well, solving one of the challenges of life in microgravity. The Skylab astronauts were given special sneakers that had triangular fittings attached to their soles. These pieces would fit into the tri­angles that made up the floor’s grid pattern and lock in place with a small rotation of one’s foot. This allowed the crewmembers to stand in place on the floor without the help of gravity.

Finally, one would reach the farthest point from the Command Module, the bottom “story” of the Orbital Workshop. This was the primary living area of the space station and included its bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, and gym. This area was divided into four major areas: the sleep compartments, the waste-management compartment, the wardroom, and the experiment volume.

Skylab had three sleep compartments, one for each of the astronauts aboard at any time. To make the most of the available space, the beds were arranged vertically in the quarters. Without gravity to keep a sleeper in place, the beds were essentially sleeping bags with extra slits and a vent to make them more comfortable. These were mounted on an aluminum frame with a firm sheet of plastic stretched within it to serve as a “mattress.” A privacy curtain took the place of a door at the entrance to each “bedroom.” Also in each sleep compartment were storage lockers, in which crewmembers could keep their personal items, and an intercom for communications.

The intercoms in the sleep quarters were among several located around the station, which served a dual purpose—they allowed communication both with the ground and throughout the station. Because of the low air pressure on Skylab, sound did not carry far, which could make it difficult to be heard in other parts of the station.

Voice communications with the ground were carried out in two major ways. The primary means of communication was the A Channel, which was used for real-time conversations with Mission Control. The other was в Channel, which was recorded on an onboard tape recorder and periodi­cally “dumped” to the ground and transcribed. This allowed the astronauts to pass along their thoughts about such things as habitability issues on Sky­lab, things that were not urgent but were needed for future reference. The crews were given questionnaires about aspects of life aboard the station and would dictate their answers into the intercom on в Channel.

For Project Mercury, NASA had to quickly develop a worldwide satellite­tracking network so that voice communications, data from spacecraft sys­tems, and commands from the ground could be sent and received. Stations were placed in exotic locations such as Zanzibar and Kano, Nigeria — often with help from the State Department — and were staffed by small teams of NASA employees and contractors. There was no real-time communication between Mission Control and most of these stations; data was relayed via leased commercial phone lines, undersea cables, and radios.

Capability of the system was continuously upgraded during the Gemini program. By the time Apollo 7 flew in late 1968, satellite relay of voice and data permitted Houston to communicate directly with the spacecraft; the remote-site teams were called home, and a unique travel experience disap­peared. But communication was still only via the transmitters and receiv­ers at the tracking stations.

The system inherited by Skylab was called the “Spacecraft Tracking and Data System.” It consisted of twelve stations: Bermuda, Grand Canary island, Ascension Island, St. Johns (Newfoundland), Madrid, Carnarvon and Hon­eysuckle Creek (Australia), Guam, Hawaii, Goldstone (California), Cor­pus Christi (Texas), Merritt Island (Florida), plus the ship Vanguard off the east coast of South America, and sometimes an aircraft (call sign aria) used to fill gaps during launch and reentry. As a result, communication between Skylab and Houston took place only in the brief passes over these stations, often interspersed by an hour or more of silence. The crew could tell where they were around the world by Houston’s calls — “Skylab, Houston, with you at Guam for eight minutes.”

To the left of the sleep compartments was the waste-management com­partment. This room featured a water dispenser that was the microgravity equivalent of a sink, a mirror for personal hygiene, and, of course, the space toilet. The Skylab mission required a level of innovation in this area not achieved in previous spaceflights. While the bag-based system used on pre­vious spaceflights for defecation had not been particularly pleasant, there was not really room on the smaller vehicles for a better means of dealing with the issue. For the comparatively short durations of those missions, it was something that astronauts simply had to bear.

Skylab, however, involved both a long-enough duration to merit finding a better solution as well as the space needed to provide one. For urination, the crewman stood in front of the collection facility with his feet beneath straps to hold himself in place. He urinated directly into a funnel with modest air­flow drawing urine into individual collection bags, one for each crewman. For defecation, he rotated about 180 degrees and seated himself on a small chair on the wall, rather like a child’s potty chair. But here a plastic bag had been placed beneath the seat for each use, which maintained a simple and hygienic “interface” with the astronaut. A lap belt and handholds were pro­vided to allow the user to stay in one place. As with the urine system, air­flow took on some of the role that gravity would play on Earth. An innova­tive feature of the fecal collection system allowed these bags to be placed in a heating unit after mass measurement, then exposed to the vacuum, which dried their contents completely. It was then much lighter and quite hygienic. The dried feces and samples of the urine were saved and returned to Earth for post-mission analysis.

To the left of the waste-management compartment was the wardroom, the station’s combination kitchen, dining, and meeting room. (Explained Kerwin: “Why was it called the wardroom? Because the first crew was all­Navy, and they got to name stuff. The wardroom is the officers’ dining and meeting room in a Navy ship.”) In the center of the room was Skylab’s high-tech kitchen table. Its round center was surrounded by three leaves, one for each crewmember. The flat surface of each of the leaves was actu­ally a lid, which could be released with the push of a button. Underneath the lids were six holes in which food containers could be placed, three of which could be heated to warm food. The trays had magnets for holding utensils in place. The table also featured water dispensers, which could pro­vide diners with both hot and cold water. Both thigh constraints and foot loops on the deck provided means for the astronauts to keep themselves in place while eating.

The walls of the wardroom were lined with stowage lockers and with a small refrigerator-freezer for food storage. The wardroom was one of the most popular places on Skylab for spending time—partially because it had the largest window on Skylab, which could be used for Earth – or star-gazing.

The largest portion of the bottom floor was the experiment area, which was home to several of the major medical experiments. The Lower Body Negative Pressure experiment was a cylindrical device, which an astronaut would enter, legs first, until the lower half of his body was inside. After a pressure seal was made around his waist, suction would then decrease the pressure against his lower body relative to the atmospheric pressure around his upper torso. The pressure difference would cause more blood to pool in his lower extremities, simulating the conditions he would experience when he returned to Earth and gravity caused a similar effect.

Also in the experiment volume was the ergometer, essentially a wheelless exercise bicycle modified for use in microgravity. Like its Earthbound equiv­alents, the ergometer featured pedals, a seat, and handlebars, but it was also equipped with electronics equipment for biomedical monitoring.

The Metabolic Analyzer was used with the ergometer to monitor the crew’s respiration. The device itself was a rectangular box with a hose connected to a mouthpiece. The user would put on a nose clip and then breathe in and out through the mouthpiece. The analyzer could not only measure respira­tion rate and breath volume but also, via a mass spectrometer, the composi­tion of the air he exhaled and thus oxygen consumption and carbon diox­ide production.

Another experiment in that area of the workshop was the Human Vestib­ular Function device, which was basically a rotating chair. With an astro­naut sitting in it, the chair could be rotated about the axis of the subject’s spine at speeds up to thirty revolutions per minute, either clockwise or coun­terclockwise. The purpose of the experiment was to test how their vestibu­lar systems (responsible for balance and detection of rotation and gravity) adapted to the microgravity environment. The experiment had been per­formed with the astronauts on the ground to provide a baseline and was per­formed again in orbit for comparative results.

Another major item located in the experiment room was only an experi­ment in the broadest sense—that life on Skylab was all part of research into long-duration spaceflight habitability factors. Because of the way the low­er deck was divided and because the shower was a later addition to the sta­tion’s equipment, the shower was instead located in the larger, open experi­ment area instead of being located in the waste-management facility, which in other respects was Skylab’s bathroom.

Water posed a potential hazard in Skylab. In weightlessness water would coalesce into spheres, which could float around the spacecraft. If they weren’t collected, they presented the risk that they could get into electronic devic­es or other equipment and cause damage. Small amounts of water could be easily managed, but large amounts were generally avoided in spaceflight. To wash their hands, for example, astronauts would squirt water into a cloth and then clean their hands with it rather than putting the water directly on their hands.

The shower provided means for a true spaceflight luxury. In it, astronauts could clean themselves in a manner that, while not quite the same as the way they would shower on Earth, was much closer. They would pull a cylindri­cal curtain up around themselves and then squirt warm water directly on their bodies using a handheld spray nozzle. Confined within the curtain, the water posed no risk to the spacecraft and after the shower could be cleaned up with towels or a suction device. The crews found the suction it provided inadequate for drying off completely and so used lots of towels. Nevertheless,

15- Lousma demonstrates Skylab’s shower.

at least one crewmember thought this “luxury” was both unnecessary and a gross waste of time.

At the center of this lowest floor of Skylab, the very opposite point from where the tour began, was the Trash Airlock. The s-ivb stage from which Skylab was modified had two tanks that originally would have been used to store the propellant: a larger tank for the fuel, liquid hydrogen, and a small­er tank for the oxidizer, liquid oxygen. The entire manned volume of the workshop was inside the stage’s liquid hydrogen tank. The liquid oxygen tank, which was exposed to vacuum, was used for trash storage. Between the two was an airlock that was used to transfer trash into the storage area. The oxygen tank was vented to space, creating a vacuum that helped pull the trash through, but it had a screen to prevent any trash from escaping. The arrangement meant that the waste generated on Skylab was stored safe­ly instead of becoming orbital debris.