Introduction

What could NASA do with an old rocket shell from the Apollo missions? They answered "turn it into the first United States space station!" And they did. In 1973 the first United States space station was launched into orbit. It was named Skylab.

What Is Skylab?

Skylab was made for more reasons than just to get rid of an old rocket shell. That would be silly and a waste of money. It was also made to prove people could live in space for long periods of time, and to do long experiments in space. Over 300 experiments were done on Skylab. In 4 missions to Skylab 3 crews took turns going up to Skylab. Each crew had 3 people on board. All the crews’ total time spent on Skylab was 171 days and 17 hours.

How Big Is Skylab?

Despite its small size, Skylab was actually quite spacious. It had a workroom where the crew spent most of its time. It also had a place to store trash, a bathroom, sleeping area, and food storage. At that time space food was mostly squeezed from a small plastic pouch. Meals were eaten in the workroom. Also Skylab had an air lock, and had solar panels to generate electricity. Skylab can generate its own power even though 2 of its solar panels were lost during take off.

 Sad Ending Of Skylab

Sadly Skylab burned up in the earth’s atmosphere on July 11 1979, over the Indian Ocean and settled parts of West Australia. But luckily we knew this was going to happen, so Skylab was unmanned at the time. If any one found a piece of Skylab, they could be rich, because of its scarcity.