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247world t1_ja09lg6 wrote

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

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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