Talk:Skylab

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The article seems to mention that Skylab reentered on both 11 July and 16 July 1979. NASA's resources [1] all seem to indicate that the correct date is 11 July, but I can't find anything to confirm or refute the time or other information in the paragraph regarding debris field, etc. Perhaps someone with a better idea of where to look could fact-check that. Chris 13:25, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

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[edit] Littering?

Is it true that the Australian authorities sent NASA a fine for littering when Skylab crashed down?

Yeah, I've got a book somewhere mentioning that. When I find which one it is, I'll add that to the article and cite it. —User:ACupOfCoffee@ 17:51, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
It wasn't so much a fine for littering as a bill for the clean-up, although someone may have phrased it that way to the media. Remember, this was a year or so after the Cosmos 954 incident in Canada. Governments were getting PO'd at having to pay for this kind of thing and the Canadians had set a precident. CFLeon 01:57, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
This article specifically mentions a $400 fine "for littering," but it's misleading to say that "the Australian government" issued it. The referenced Space.com story indicates that it was at worst a municipal fine:
At the time of Skylab’s crash to Earth, her husband Mervin also was president of Esperance shire. He issued the Americans a ticket for littering, a fine which to this day remains unpaid. Others who achieved notoriety from Skylab’s fall was 17-year-old local boy Stan Thornton. He scooped a few pieces of Skylab off the roof of his home and caught the first flight to San Francisco, where he collected a $10,000 prize from the San Francisco Examiner.
Stan Thornton is presumably the "Australian farmer" mentioned in our article. The Space.com story also directly contradicts the claim that "three cows were reportedly killed by debris," inasmuch as it says "no injuries were reported, not even of cattle kept outdoors." —Eric S. Smith 13:30, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
I noticed the same contradiction; that's the reason I came to the talk page. I'm deleting the reference to "three killed cows" until someone can provide a source to cite. --TheLimbicOne(talk) 04:07, 16 September 2006 (UTC)


Much of the material in para 2 of section 2 seems redundant to the section on AAP. Is there any benefit in leaving it, so if a reader jumps to section 2 they get the summary? dhollm Dec 24, 2006 11:16pm GMT

[edit] Featured Article

Skylab was "Today's featured article" a while back, but it is not, and appears to have never been, a featured article? Why? --GW_Simulations|User Page | Talk | Contribs | E-mail 23:23, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Link description cannot be right

A new link was recently added: http://www.maniacworld.com/skylab.htm According to it, the video was taken as Skylab 2 was approaching the station. But this can't be correct. Skylab 2 was the first manned mission. If it was approaching the station for the first time, the solar panel would not be free and the sunshade would not be deployed. Something should be done.

Finally took care of this. Andy120290 (talk) 01:23, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Skylab Mission Numbering

There are comments on the Skylab 2 and Skylab 3 discussion pages about the discrepancy between the patch numbering and mission numbering systems. Per NASA here [2], Skylab 1 is the unmanned launch, and Skylab 2, 3 & 4 are the manned missions (not called 'expeditions' in that era) to the station. But the patch for Skylab 2 clearly shows "Skylab I", and likewise with -3/II and -4/"3". I'd like to insert clarifying text at the start of each article (and in the table at the bottom of this page), but I would really like to see a transcript of a mission to know for sure how the manned missions referred to themselves. Anybody got a transcript? Thanks! Srain 17:15, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I got some good information/links from an historian at NASA, so I've done a first edit on the Skylab articles to try and remove the confusion. See [3] for the story. Srain 05:21, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
That page of Bill Pogue's is an excellent find! That clears it up. --EarthPerson 04:32, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Improper identification of corporate descendents as their corporate ancestors..

This is general complaint, but since I saw it here first (In the Skylab article)... In the article, one of the defense contractors is referred to as "Lockheed Martin", but during an era (1960's) when these two companies were not one (that happened in the 1990's consolidation of the defense sector in the US). My gripe is that I think it is improper to refer to the ancestors by the name of their descendent entities... Anybody know how to highlight this to more than the moderator for this article? Assume that the correct name for the contractor should have been Martin (I'm not sure, it may also have been Lockheed that had the contract), then the fact that Martin and Lockheed merged in the 90's is irrelevant to a discussion about NASA operations in the 1960's... if the reader needs to, or cares to, find out what happened to the Glenn L Martin Company, they can click the hyperlink and find out what happened to it... Regards.

The usual fix for this problem on Wikipedia is to use a piped link: [[Lockheed Martin|Glenn L. Martin Company]]. This will display only the text after the pipe character, but take the reader to the article with the corporate history. In some cases defunct companies retain a separate article, but mostly only those that have merged since Wikipedia began. --Dhartung | Talk 10:02, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia tag

I removed the trivia tag as I don't feel a short section of popular culture references constitutes trivia. If I'm misguided, add it back and take away my library card, heh.... StanislavJ 14:59, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Other Space Stations

The first sentence states that SkyLab is the the second space station ever launched which is in contradiction with the Salyut article. According to the Salyut article, apart from the obvious Salyut 1, there were : DOS-2 (launched but never reached orbit), Salyut 2 (not functionnal but stayed more than 50 days in orbit) and Cosmos 557 (Problems forced a reentry after about a week of orbits). Maybe the phrasing 'second successful' station would be better ? JoanCharmant 13:12, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Fixed.-- Andy120290 (talk) 20:06, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Second Skylab?

"Two flight-quality Skylabs were built. The first one was that which de-orbited and crashed in Western Australia in 1979; the second, a backup, is on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC."

Why wasn't the second Skylab used? It could have been launched by the Shuttle years before the ISS was built.

Launched by the Shuttle?? Do you have any idea how big Skylab was? There is no way it could have fit in the Space Shuttle's payload bay. Andy120290 (talk) 19:40, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
Okay, why didn't they use one of many Saturn 5's that were built and left to rot at the end of the Apollo program? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.67.35.112 (talk) 18:39, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
There was no need. It was built as a back-up. Besides, there needs to be funding for such an undertaking. The launch pads had to be modified for the Shuttle; They could no longer support Saturn V launches. Andy120290 (talk) 19:51, 22 January 2008 (UTC)