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skylab starts

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in the dreams of the people who wanted

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to go into space for a long time early

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in the 20th century we saw people who

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were thinking about how do we get

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humanity off the planet earth and into

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space there was a vision a long-term

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vision humans had of exploring and going

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beyond higher farther faster there was a

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technical challenge there was the

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scientific interest there was the

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adventure

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and there was just simply the

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demonstration of managerial and

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organizational and industrial

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economic competence

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in a world that was contested

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so that was skyla

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throughout the 1960s they looked at a

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number of different ways in which you

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could take the apollo materials

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particularly saturn v and the apollo

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spacecraft and do

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space station like things with them so

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by the end of 1960s 1969 right after the

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successes on the landing moon attention

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turns to

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the space station program and sky lab is

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really born there being the program for

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human space flight uh during the early

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1970s and to build our bases for

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experience

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and to address those important questions

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that we had which were could humans

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physiologically adapt to long periods of

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space early 1973

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we already launched skylab

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the skylab saturn 5 is sitting on one

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launch pad the two launch pads we had

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for the apollo program uh skylab is

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sitting on one launch pad just a little

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ways away on the other launch pad

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is this saturn one vehicle with the

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command and service module because

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scotland launches one day and the

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vehicle with the first crew was supposed

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unfortunately

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when skyline the laboratory goes up

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the micro meteoroid shield that was on

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it that also provided heat protection

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for the vehicle rolls back jams into the

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solar arrays that they're two big five

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kilowatt each solar rays that we're

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supposed to deploy skylight gets in

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orbit it's crippled and and we're in big

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trouble because uh scott needs that

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energy from those big solar arrays to

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operate and for the mission to be

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successful

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and in 10 days they quickly come up with

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a plan

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we had people sew together

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parasol sunshade that they could

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erect outside the station they came up

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with some equipment that the crews could

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use to try and unstick the giant solar

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array that was stuck

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and pete conrad and his crew the first

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skylab crew launched 10 days later

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and save the entire program you know two

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and a half billion dollar program

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would have gone down the drain if the

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crew hadn't gone up there and saved the

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mission

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okay we're free

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we got four tenths of a foot per second

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story of the launch of the skylab

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orbital workshop is one of those great

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triumphs of things going bad

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and engineers and humans and astronauts

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working together to fix them they have a

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very successful almost month-long

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mission

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and

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prove that in fact first the skylab will

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work that humans are really important to

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those things and they get a lot of good

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scientific data

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and of course we had two more crews that

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launched later in the year

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the second skylight crew goes up for a

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longer period

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and you know does lots of earth science

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experiments lots of solar observations

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and then the third crew finally launches

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at the end of 1973 and early into 74

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they're up for almost three months

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observe do solar observations do more

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earth observations we do experiments

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with students

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there's the first nasa student

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experiments go on during skylab

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the last crew leaves skylab in early

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1974 so a very successful program

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overall

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despite the fact that it almost on the

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first minute of operations almost went

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in the drink one of the real triumphs of

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skylab is that it basically took a

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situation

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gathering both the limits of what was

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possible and the possibilities

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presented by incredible technological

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developments and put them together in a

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program that produced

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tremendous benefits and science

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education what space flight is all about

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so it's a stepping stone it was the

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stepping stone between

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the apollo program and then later

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definitions of what space flight would

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mean for the united states skylab is the

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first step

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we learn how to operate in space

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we build on that with the iss

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we now go on further beyond low earth

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orbit to visit an asteroid and then onto

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mars