Richard Lawrence - The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disaster

Kerwin recounts, “I had on my suit an extra six foot tether, just a rope, with hooks on both ends. Where we were there was an eyebolt so we hooked one end of the tether to a ring on the front of the suit, snaked it through the eyebolt and back up to the suit, hooked it again, adjusted it to the right length and I could stand up with my two feet planted one either side of that eyebolt and suddenly I was standing there as steady as you could get with a three-point suspension. Once we had accomplished that, it was only a couple of minutes work to get the jaws in place. Pete had to help me a little with depth perception to get it exactly right – he said: ‘No… you passed it… come back, dammit… no… nowback…’

“So it went on and I pulled the rope just hard enough to tighten the jaws against the strap but not hard enough to cut it. That was very important, because Pete was now going to use that twenty five foot pole as a handrail. He went hand over hand down to the solar panel, trying to take care not to cut himself, and attached another rope to the cover of the solar panel.”

Conrad hooked one end of the rope to a vent module relief hole on the beam, and the other end was secured to an antenna support truss on the solar observatory.

Kerwin continued:

“First we tightened the jaws the rest of the way and cut the strap of aluminium. When we did that the panel came out another few inches and stopped.”

Conrad, inspecting the jaws, suddenly found himself tumbling out into space to be brought up with a jerk by his umbilical cord. “That shot me out into the boonies!” he chuckled. He looked back to see the solar panel was only extended about 20°.

Kerwin adds, “We knew that would happen – that’s what they told us at Houston – that the joint is very cold, it’s frozen, you’re going to have to break the friction. That was what the second rope was for, so now we disposed of the twenty five foot pole then the two of us worked our way under the remaining rope and stood up between the rope and the lab. That exerted just enough tension on the solar panel cover to break the friction. Suddenly – I want to say there was a cracking sound but of course there wasn’t because we couldn’t hear it – but there was this sudden release of tension in the rope and we both went flying ass over tea kettle into space. We hand over handed our way down to some structure, turned around to look, and there was the solar panel fully deployed, sticking out ninety degrees, and the panels were already starting to come out.”

At the other end of the radio link the flight controllers heard Conrad say, “Whoops, there she goes!” and within six hours the solar panel was functioning and sending 7,000 watts of power to the workshop, enough to ensure the missions could go ahead as planned.

The Skylab mission, the whole $2.6 billion project, was saved!

The crew agreed that the best form of relaxation, 237 mi. Tles above the earth, was just looking out of the windowheir favourite music to accompany weightless exercise was from the film 2001.

They found sleeping difficult, as astronaut Paul Weitz explained:

‘I tried for a day or two but I was not comfortable sleeping with what I perceived as hanging on a wall, even though it was zero G. I wanted to get a good night’s sleep. I didn’t wander that far. Each night I would take my bunk up into the upper part of the workshop and lay it out so it was towards the Command Module. Also those sleep compartments were small, and I preferred to have more space.”

It wasn’t always easy to get to sleep. As the laboratory swung around the world from day to night each 93 minutes the skin creaked and popped with the change in temperature. If the thrusters fired during the night to keep the laboratory’s attitude, they sounded like bursts of gunfire. If anyone got up he would wake the others.

The Skylab toilet was a hinged, contoured seat mounted on the wall – it was uncomfortable and awkward to use, but did work. The astronaut sat on the seat, fastened a belt across his lap, and used forced air drawn into a plastic bag to collect the faecal matter. The shower was a cylindrical cloth enclosure fed with water from a preheated pressurised portable bottle. With only 2,722 kilograms of water on board, bathing showers were rationed to 2.8 litres of water per shower per week. The liquid soap and water were carefully measured before the mission and rationed out – no luxurious long hot showers if you were feeling a bit seedy! Weitz was first to try the shower. “It took a fair amount longer to use than you might expect – 15 minutes of shower and 45 minutes of cleaning up – but you came out smelling good!” so it wasn’t really a success. They found it was easier to rub down with wash cloths.

Weitz added: “Zero-G is both good and bad. It’s a great environment for moving around, to play in, and to work in, but it’s not so good when it comes to things like going to the bathroom or brushing your teeth and you like to spit the toothpaste out into the sink and watch it go down the tube, instead of having to spit it out into a used towel, or something like that. The bathroom became the barber shop every few weeks, the barbers sucking the cropped hair away with little vacuum cleaners.”

The Skylab 3 mission was from 28 July until 25 September 1973, a duration of 59 days. The crew of Al Bean, Owen Garriott and Jack Lousma had some problems with the thrusters on their Service Module. Houston considered sending a rescue mission with a module modified to fit five astronauts, but the readings improved and the problem was not as serious as it had seemed.

The crew enjoyed sun watching. Their watches at the solar console were the only form of privacy they had, but they could watch the sun any time they wanted. There was constant solar activity – filaments streaking up, flares, enormous bubbles forming and bursting.

When the Skylab 4 mission arrived they found the station was already occupied – the previous mission had left three stuffed flightsuits behind! William Pogue, Edward Gibson and Gerald Carr would stay for 84 days. Gibson:

“It was a shame to read with all that was going on outside. I would read a little when Skylab was over water, but when we reached the shore I would put the book down, and look at the continent below.

“Carr would sneak off to the Command Module, the most private place, turn the speaker off, and get some reading done that way.”

On 21 January 1974 they made the first observation of a solar flare. The crew protested at their heavy workload and refused to work as hard as the crew of Skylab 2. Lindsay:

On February 9, after some experiments such as erasing a computer memory and reloading it, Skylab was put in a vertical attitude with the docking hatch looking away from Earth in the hope this would prolong its life, and at 2 pm the last command was sent to switch the telemetry off. By this time the laboratory was showing signs of wear and tear. The gleaming gold, white, and silver paint on the outside was becoming tarnished, the white paint had browned and the gold had baked and blackened. Despite the initial setbacks, Skylab had met, or exceeded, every requirement placed upon it.

Originally planned for 140 days, Skylab was manned for 171 days, 13 hours, and 14 minutes, taking the crews around the Earth 2,476times, a distance of 113,455,650 kilometres. This was a lot more than all the previous American manned spaceflights put together, which totalled 146 days, 21 hours, 36 minutes, and 8 seconds. 565 hours of Sun observations were planned, 755 were actually spent; 701 hours of medical experiments grew to 822 hours; and instead of only 60 Earth observation passes, they eventually completed 90.