The Myth of the Mutiny in Space (bbc.com) 9
It's been almost half a century since the three astronauts on board the Skylab 4 space mission famously fell out with mission control. Soon afterwards, reports began to circulate that they went on strike. But Ed Gibson, the only one of the crew still alive, says the idea that they stopped work is a myth. From a report: Bill Pogue got sick soon after the three astronauts arrived at the space station. It came as a surprise because Bill had been nicknamed "Iron Belly" during training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. He could endlessly tolerate sitting in a rapidly rotating chair while moving his head backwards and forwards and side to side, without being sick. But this was the first time the three men had been in space and evidently resistance to motion sickness back on Earth didn't mean much up there.
Commander Jerry Carr suggested Bill eat a can of tomatoes to settle his stomach. Ed Gibson was sitting between the two men, and remembers the can floating past from left to right before his eyes. "Then I remember some bad noises coming from Bill, and a barf bag floating back from right to left," he says. "We felt discouraged because we knew we had so much work to do -- that's when we made our first mistake." Ed is 84 now and the Skylab 4 mission began in November 1973 but time hasn't dulled his most vivid memories -- the Earth from space, the blazing corona of the sun and the silence of a spacewalk. He's the last one of the astronauts able to share the story, because Jerry Carr and Bill Pogue have both died -- Carr last summer and Pogue in 2014. The Skylab space station was a research platform in orbit where astronauts helped scientists to study the human body's response to space flight, carried out experiments and made observations of the Sun and Earth. Skylab 4 was the final mission and as a result it had a long list of tasks to fulfil. The 84-day mission -- the longest ever at that point -- was on a tight schedule. Nasa was very concerned about someone getting sick, which would have meant losing precious time.
Nasa accepts that mission planners had not given the crew the typical period of adjustment to acclimatise to working weightlessly in orbit and had packed their schedules with large amounts of work. The number of spacewalks was also doubled, to four, to observe a newly discovered comet, Kohoutek. So the astronauts were already under pressure when they made their first bad decision. "We wanted to get organised before starting a big flurry with the ground so we decided to delay telling them about Bill being sick," says Ed. But they had forgotten that everything they said on board was being recorded, and that mission control was listening in. It wasn't long before the voice of Astronaut Office chief Alan Shepard came crackling over the radio from down in mission control, an exchange also broadcast to the public. "He got on the line and read us the riot act for not telling them immediately," says Ed. "Al was OK, we just didn't like being chewed out in front of the whole world."
Commander Jerry Carr suggested Bill eat a can of tomatoes to settle his stomach. Ed Gibson was sitting between the two men, and remembers the can floating past from left to right before his eyes. "Then I remember some bad noises coming from Bill, and a barf bag floating back from right to left," he says. "We felt discouraged because we knew we had so much work to do -- that's when we made our first mistake." Ed is 84 now and the Skylab 4 mission began in November 1973 but time hasn't dulled his most vivid memories -- the Earth from space, the blazing corona of the sun and the silence of a spacewalk. He's the last one of the astronauts able to share the story, because Jerry Carr and Bill Pogue have both died -- Carr last summer and Pogue in 2014. The Skylab space station was a research platform in orbit where astronauts helped scientists to study the human body's response to space flight, carried out experiments and made observations of the Sun and Earth. Skylab 4 was the final mission and as a result it had a long list of tasks to fulfil. The 84-day mission -- the longest ever at that point -- was on a tight schedule. Nasa was very concerned about someone getting sick, which would have meant losing precious time.
Nasa accepts that mission planners had not given the crew the typical period of adjustment to acclimatise to working weightlessly in orbit and had packed their schedules with large amounts of work. The number of spacewalks was also doubled, to four, to observe a newly discovered comet, Kohoutek. So the astronauts were already under pressure when they made their first bad decision. "We wanted to get organised before starting a big flurry with the ground so we decided to delay telling them about Bill being sick," says Ed. But they had forgotten that everything they said on board was being recorded, and that mission control was listening in. It wasn't long before the voice of Astronaut Office chief Alan Shepard came crackling over the radio from down in mission control, an exchange also broadcast to the public. "He got on the line and read us the riot act for not telling them immediately," says Ed. "Al was OK, we just didn't like being chewed out in front of the whole world."
Doonsbury and Some Context (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm old enough to remember the Skylab flights and when I RFTA I feel like the context of what was happening on Earth at the time is missing in the article.
Skylab was not well received at the time. It was seen as an expensive boondoggle without a mission other than to use up some left over Apollo hardware. Skylab was damaged when it was launched with the message being that it would never fulfill its potential which lead to people thinking it was an expensive failure.
This Doonsbury cartoon from the time: https://www.gocomics.com/doone... [gocomics.com] sums up the cynicism/antipathy of the time towards Skylab. You can see more in the previous days' cartoons.
I'm not surprised that Alan Sheppard tore a strip off the astronauts without understanding the reason for the delay in getting down to work. There was a lot of pressure to make Skylab appear to be a productive success.
Cartoonist fallacy (Score:4, Insightful)
Fascinating article along with book, panel discuss (Score:3)
Two other items that stand out for me about Skylab are Henry SF Cooper's book "A House in Space" and a panel discussion couple (or few) years ago that included Owen Garriott and his son Richard. It's been awhile since I've read the book, Owen summed up the issue about micromanagement of Skylab where stuff like routine and housekeeping chores were detailed checklists. Later they just allocated certain amount of time for routine day to day stuff, so Skylab really paid off on how to do long duration missions. And it was mentioned Skylab had huge amount of free space compared to Spacelab and ISS. Cooper's book discussed the need for vertical reference, there is no up or down but compartments need a vertical up/down reference. Most of Skylab was like that except the science module (multiple docking adapter) where everything was jutting out in all directions and can "be a mess." Other stuff like sleeping one can get awaken with attitude control thrusters fire sounding like machine guns. And because air is third pressure (pure O2) astronauts had to talk louder or yell in the large main section, "we're getting hoarse up here."
Sy Liebergot (EECOM) said Skylab was the worst for those working mission control. Everyone was on rotating shifts which led to many divorces, there was tons of paperwork and flight and procedures were constantly being re-written. He said they threw several binders of MOCR documents which years later could have got some good money on ebay. But at the time there was too much of it.
Re: (Score:3)
Skylab was just repurposed rocket shells I believe - it was done on the cheap.
But the big problem was the overscheduling - the astronauts were micromanaged to the minute and if things took longer, well too bad - it ate into mission time and you had less "off" time.
These days the schedules are hectic but not as packed - NASA learned a lot - learned to book in "buffer time" to have time for unexpected things. Even learned to book in unstructured time - time to get used to the new living conditions, time to ju
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, Skylab was a converted Saturn V third stage.
The missions were rather longer than a week: 28, 59 and 84 days.
Re: (Score:3)
Skylab sucked, but it provided a lot of valuable insight into the human condition.
I think Jerry Carr was also on that panel discussion and he said most of what learned of human conditions on space stations came from Skylab. Or maybe that was Chris Kraft in some other interview who said most what we learned of humans on space stations came from Skylab. Henry SF Cooper's book talked about mission controllers were concerned with those "revolutionary looking" beards Carr and Gibson were growing in later days of that 84 day mission.
Jerry Carr (Score:2)
I'm sorry to hear Jerry Carr passed away. I got to work with him in the early days of the Space Station program. Boeing hired him as a consultant because of his unique experience with long-duration human missions. Basically his job was to review our design and give us advice on what changes to make. One of his big contributions was "handholds everywhere". They have turned out to not only be useful for people to grab onto, but as mounting points for all manner of equipment and soft goods.