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Chairboy t1_j9zzida wrote

Reply to comment by 247world in NASA's Artemis moon program receives salute from Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin (video) by kevindavis338

> Skylab wasn't really an orbiting space station

It was literally an orbiting space station, just not as sexy a station as you would have perhaps liked. If you wanted to say 'didn't build a rotating Clarke wheel' or something, then say that, but you said space station and that's what that other poster was responding to I think.

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bookers555 t1_ja0ja5k wrote

>It was literally an orbiting space station

No, what he's saying is true. The original plan was much different and was a far more complete station, instead they made the equivalent of making a boat out of pieces of plastic.

All they did was hollow out the second stage of a Saturn V, slap some solar panels on it and call it a day. And it didn't even work well, the Solar panels couldn't extend fully, and parts of it got damaged during launch which lead to it operating way hotter than it should have.

It was an underbudgeted mess held together by ductape, built from the scraps of the cancelled Apollo 18, 19 and 20 missions.

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Chairboy t1_ja0k7rx wrote

Yes, but it was a space station. If you read the full conversation you’ll see the user doesn’t believe anything flown yet qualifies as a space station.

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Ragnar_DanneskjoldSr t1_ja0s6mp wrote

Sometimes, you work with what you got. Speaking of Werner von Braun, nobody would ever have walked on the moon if it wasn't for that man. The Saturn five never failed. In testing or use

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bookers555 t1_ja0skmp wrote

Oh I'm not blaming NASA, I'm blaming Congress for just cutting the flow of money once the Moon landing was achieved.

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Ragnar_DanneskjoldSr t1_ja0tzx1 wrote

Exactly. Thank you pardon my poor communication skills. If miss communication was an Olympic sport, I would be on the Wheaties box!

See when I get there? 😂🙈

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247world t1_ja04b5r wrote

No, it was not a space station it was a converted module of an Apollo launcher. If you want to call that mold infested thing a space station you go right ahead but even the astronauts that were on it wouldn't say that. Look at the plans von Braun had originally drawn up and then tell me how Skylab is a space station, it's basically an orbiting toilet

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Chairboy t1_ja06gf8 wrote

It sounds as if you have your own definition of space station that differs from NASA’s and that’s fine. When I was a NASA contractor I didn’t get to interact with folks like you but everyone I knew who did had their own stories.

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247world t1_ja07qyp wrote

I am going by the things that used to come to me via my grandfather from the Huntsville space flight center, Skylab had absolutely nothing to do with the space station that it was envisioned by von Braun Warner von Braun. Rather than a full-blown space station that could support many people they basically sent up a porta John. I don't know if you were alive at the time but I was and there was great dissatisfaction in those of us who were very interested in the space race. You can paint whatever picture you want but Skylab was sort of an orbiting science station it was not a space station. A space station in my opinion still doesn't exist. The ISS while a noble project, still falls far short of what von Braun had envisioned and I'm guessing could have made happen had they allowed him to do so.

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Chairboy t1_ja08ael wrote

> Skylab had absolutely nothing to do with the space station that it was envisioned by von Braun Warner von Braun

Nobody here said it was, and up above you didn't say that either, you just said 'space station'. Words have meaning, and your opinion on what is and isn't a space station is something to which you're entitled. In the meantime, I think most of the world will probably go with definitions by the people who actually go to space. Russians, Americans, and Chinese currently all have space station hardware on orbit but no doubt there's possibly a contingent of folks who will take an anonymous redditor's definition over theirs. I can't quantify how big of an audience that is because I don't know what kind of relationship you have with your parents and other folks who want to encourage you, but it's totally possible it exists.

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247world t1_ja09lg6 wrote

Well I hate to break it to you but I and many other people like me don't consider Skylab to have been a space station, it was an orbital Porta John. Many of the astronauts that were in it didn't have very good things to say about it afterward. It was the we give up move by the United States space agency and here we are 50 years later and we barely have launched systems when we should have established bases on the moon

My parents? Did you not understand me saying I was alive when they landed on the moon? I was really into this stuff and I'm here to tell you that no one considered Skylab a space station at the time. We were actually told it was a stopgap measure until they could put up a real space station and once again based on what von Braun wanted to do there is still nothing in orbit resembling that, there's nothing up there that's even close.

Now maybe it's not feasible, it's not my area of expertise, but von Braun believed it was doable in the 60s so I'm going to go with him. America had the best Nazis you know

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Chairboy t1_ja0a6xj wrote

> Well I hate to break it to you but I and many other people like me don't consider Skylab to have been a space station

At NASA we considered it a space station, but it's exciting to see folks out in the community with their own takes because even if their conclusions don't match that of the nations flying stuff to space, they're still engaged.

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Xaqv t1_ja0b982 wrote

Have about zero knowledge of what either of you are debating about, but enjoy the discourse and thank both for not using profanity to defame each other!

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247world t1_ja0bhet wrote

We at NASA... Oh I didn't realize I was speaking to someone so exalted

Once again, von Braun, the man who was behind the program and envisioned the real space station didn't envision orbiting Porta John. You can call it whatever you want to that doesn't make it that. Although a child at the time I was highly interested in the space program and had everything I could get my hands on about it. We dropped the ball. Now you can pretend we didn't but I'm here to tell you that we did and we still haven't really picked it up again.

I'm going to say that in the end the science fiction guys from the 40s and 50s got it right, it's going to take private individuals with more money than they ought to have to get it going again. Although in the case of science fiction they were the ones that got it going in the first place. Eventually someone is either going to mind something on the moon or figure out how to mine an asteroid and then it's going to blow up. At that point in time you will see real space stations.

Calling Skylab a space station is like calling Plymouth Massachusetts in 1621 a metropolis. I get it you work for NASA and you're butt hurt that somebody out in the general public doesn't think that that joke of a project was a real space station, I don't even think they called it that at the time. They obviously didn't value it because they could have kept it in orbit much longer rather than letting it crash back into the Earth, Australia if my memory serves

I followed the Skylab missions, I even had a copy of the orbiter. That's the word it was an orbiter. I knew if I ran my mouth long enough the words would find me. You're not going to get me to change my mind and I'm sorry your feelings are hurt however calling Skylab a space station would be like calling Scott's expedition to Antarctica a success, he wasn't even first, nor did anyone live from his party.

You can defend Skylab all you want it was viewed as a failure of initiative by those of us in the public who were firmly behind the program. I don't even think the space station was occupied for a full 6 months total, that's hardly a space station, you couldn't even call it an outpost.

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Chairboy t1_ja0dnhu wrote

I’m not gonna tell you what to think, just letting you know that your own personal definition of what constitutes a space station is not matched by anyone in the industry. Well, to be specific, your definition here that Skylab, the Salyut stations including Mir, ISS, and the current Chinese station are not space stations. That opinion is not shared by people in the industry, but you are absolutely welcome to your own fan theory/head canon. 

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247world t1_ja0kjfl wrote

It wasn't accepted by a lot of people at NASA. I keep telling you my grandfather brought me all that stuff from the Huntsville rocket center, why do you think he had all that stuff?

It's not what von Braun envisioned it was an orbiter it was not a space station

You know anything about the dry centaur project? That was an alternative floated during the space shuttle years and also never got off of the ground.

Do you have money on getting me to change your mind is somehow your life goal to convince me and everyone else that Skylab was some sort of space station when it was nothing more than an orbiter. An aircraft carrier could be called a city on the ocean but it's not.

NASA for whatever reason be it public opinion, or political apathy lost its vision Skylab was not a space station it was an orbiter, not much better than a porta John

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dern_the_hermit t1_ja0a53m wrote

Why can't an Apollo module be converted into a space station?

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247world t1_ja0c4sg wrote

It very well could have been, there was a plan for that 0,to convert the modules into a complete space station not simply a one-off orbiter. During the space shuttle program several former astronauts put forward a program called dry centaur, the idea was it would be possible to boost the large tank into orbit and convert them slowly into a larger space station, more like something von Braun had envisioned.

I think the real problem was that the public after the moon landing simply lost interest in the space program. Von Braun had envisioned an orbiting space station, we would launch from Earth to the space station then transfer to a lunar transfer module which would launch to the Moon and then a landern would go to and from the Moon and then that lunar transfer vehicle would come back to the space station.

I had everything that you used to come out of the Huntsville rocket Center about this unfortunately when I left for college my mother threw it all out as junk. I'm sure it's still available somewhere and it was fascinating they put a lot of thought into what they wanted to do. I don't know if it's true or not but I was told the whole purpose of the Germans who were building rockets for Hitler was really to launch rockets to the Moon. I often wonder what would have happened had the United States in the Soviet Union collaborated since we split up the German scientists involved

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