Skylab

[SpaceCowboy]

What do y'all think it would have been like if Skylab had been able to stay in orbit until the shuttle could begin taking crews there. How much further along would spaceflight be?

 

[MJR]

I don't think it is that big of a deal.

 

[SpaceCowboy]

I think it may have made a difference. We would be further along in zero g research and other scientific experiments. Who knows what we would have discovered.

 

[JamesG]

It would have been nice. Skylab could have formed the base node of a international space station 20 years earlier with the shuttles regularly delivering crews, supplies and modules instead of spending a decade having to play both delivery vehicle and laboratory platform.

An even bigger crime/missed opportunity was not designing the EFT from the begining to be carried to orbit and used as pressurized volume.

Much like the shuttle itself, Skylab was a victim of the political and budgetary climate of the time. Oh well no use crying over lost opportunities...

 

[RichWall]

What do y'all think it would have been like if Skylab had been able to stay in orbit until the shuttle could begin taking crews there. How much further along would spaceflight be?

It certainly would have been less expensive.

 

[SpaceCowboy]

Yeah, James G does have a point though, no use worrying over a long dead space station.

 

[Andy44]

http://www.astronautix.com/flights/sts2a.htm

Especially, read this, fascinating: http://www.astronautix.com/articles/skyyfate.htm

It goes through what parts of Skylab the engineers believed would still be servicable, what would have had to be repaired or replaced, what fluids would have to be refilled, etc.

 

[zerofay32]

Especially, read this, fascinating: http://www.astronautix.com/articles/skyyfate.htm


The part about how the energy loss from the high inclination was too great and then having a slightly higher inclination for the ISS was interesting.

Zerofay32

 

[Moonwalker]

To abandon Skylab, and Apollo as well, was a real waste in my humble opinion.

I think that Skylab was a real milestone after the Apollo lunar landings. It's interior size was amazing and it offered the opportunity to do research for manned Mars missions later on. I think it is possible, that if it would have kept in operation, while NASA would have developed the Saturn launch vehicle family and Apollo spacercraft further, we already could be on the way to Mars manned (by around 2000, regarding the vision of Wernher von Braun just before he left NASA disappointed after Apollo was canceled). Related to manned Mars and further manned Moon missions, I think the way even Michael Griffin obviously thinks too, that the Space Shuttle was not the very best choice, although it still is the biggest milestone for now. But I think it is time to go further finally.