The Skylab program is presented to show the construction of the space vehicle and the facilities provided. The projects to be conducted during Skylab missions are described. The cost of the program is discussed and plans for future Skylab vehicles and missions are analyzed. Photographs of the interior of Skylab simulators are included to clarify the report

Butler, G. V.

English

NASA Technical Reports Server

PRECEDING PAGE BLANK NOT FKMD 
SKYLAB 
By George V. Butler 
Program Manager, Skylab Advanced Systems 
McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Company 
In t roduc t ion  
In the next few days you a r e  going to be over- 
whelmed with statistics on the myriad of past,pres- 
ent, and future benefits that mankind can expect 
from operations outside the earth's atmosphere. 
These benefits a re  real and offer, in my opinion, 
the only hope mankind has to perpetuate a habitable 
earth environment. 
The previous speaker described unmanned data- 
gathering orbital systems and, I am sure, im- 
pressed you with the results to date and the poten- 
tial yet to be exploited. 
In my portion of this program I will describe 
how Skylab will operate, collecting data and using 
man's indispensable capability to observe, evaluate, 
make judgments, and adapt to changing situations. 
I used the term exploitation a moment ago and 
want to emphasize that the space program is rapidly 
being transformed from basic experiments and 
explorations to useful operational exploitation. A 
major factor in achieving the necessary knowledge 
to solve mankind's problems will be the addition of 
trained scientists, doctors, ahd engineers a s  future 
orbiting working astronauts. 
Skylab will be our country's first step in pro- 
viding a long-term manned orbital capability. 
What Exactly I s  Skylab? 
Skylab i s  an experimental space station, de- 
signed to provide a comfortable shirtsleeve environ- 
ment for a three-man crew for periods of up to 56 
days in earth orbit. Figure 1 shows the Skylab 
"Cluster" as it will appear circling the earth. I 
will give you a brief description of the various ele- 
ments that make up the cluster. Total design life 
of the cluster is  8 months, encompassing three 
separate manned visits. 
Figure 2 shows the Command and Service Mod- 
de.  It is the ferry vehicle or  "taxi," if you will, 
that takes the crew to and from the workshop. The 
astronauts will dock their spaceship to the Skylab 
in much the same manner a s  on the Apollo program 
where they docked and undocked with the lunar 
landing vehicle. 
The Multiple Adapter (Fig. 3) provides - as  
its name implies - the docking port for the Command 
and Service Module. In addition, it houses the con- 
trol and display panels for the solar and earth re- 
sources experiments, which I will discuss later. 
The windmill-like apparatus on top of the cluster 
is one of the main experiments on Skylab. This tele- 
scope mount with its solar array panels is a solar 
observatory that will give solar physicists a look at 
the sun's activity free from the distortion caused by 
the earth's atmosphere. Figure 4 shows a more 
detailed view. While Skylab is  photographing the sun 
from space, scientists here on earth will use ground- 
based telescopes to photograph the same areas of 
the sun for comparison of data. 
The Airlock Module (Fig. 5) is the "nerve 
center" of the cluster. It serves as the Control and 
Distribution Center for all the electricity, the oxy- 
gen and nitrogen that the astronauts breathe, and 
the equipment for two-way voice communications 
between the Skylab and the ground control stations. 
The Airlock Module is equipped with a window or  
hatch from which the astronauts can exit the space- 
craft and walk along a ladder to load and retrieve 
film used in the solar telescope cameras. 
The largest section of the Skylab cluster is the 
Orbital Workshop (Fig. 6) with space equivalent to 
a small three-bedroom house. This 10  000 ft3 two- 
story laboratory has been converted from the hydro- 
gen tank of the third stage of the Saturn V rocket. 
It will serve a s  the primary living quarters and ex- 
periment operations area. The old cramped quarters 
and physical constraints associated with Gemini, 
Mercury, and Apollo wil l  be a thing of the past. In- 
dividual rooms are  provided for recreation, eating, 
bathroom-lavatory facilities, and sleeping. A home- 
type toilet will be particularly appreciated by the 
astronauts and will remove what has been one of the 
most irritating aspects of space travel. A shower 
that can be used in weightless space has been devel- 
oped to be used onboard Shylab. A special interest 
to the ladies in the audience is  the large amount of 
41 
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19730005104 2020-03-17T07:55:44+00:00Z
closet space available for storing food, water, cloth- 
ing, trash bags, personal items, and various ex- 
periment equipment. The goal has been to create 
a very pleasant environment with many of the com- 
forts of home. 
There are some aspects of living in space that 
are  unique and quite unusual to any that we find here 
on earth. For instance, in the weightlessness of 
space, there is  no up or down - one may float 
around freely - s o  freely that: 
0 The astronauts will have to use flholddownsff 
to stay in position while eating at the dining room 
table, using the bathroom, and cven while sleeping 
(Fig. 7 ) .  
0 The normal commode found on the floor in 
most bathrooms will be located, as shown in Figure 
8, on the side of the wall in Skylab for better utiliza- 
tion of available space. 
0 The bunks o r  sleeping restraints (Fig. 9) 
have also been placed on the wall, with the astro- 
nauts sleeping in a vertical position. These bag-type 
restraints merely keep the men from floating around 
while sleeping. 
0 Food wi l l  come prepackaged and placed on 
trays which are plugged into electrical outlets on the 
dining table for heating (Fig. 10). Menus will be 
very earthlike. 
0 The trash and waste material will be collected 
and placed into a large tank below the first floor by 
means of a special trap door located in the middle of 
the floor, as shown in Figure 11. 
0 The shower mentioned earlier is shown in 
Figure 12. It works on a suction principle drawing 
water over the body and into a tank. 
The main work area is  located on the second 
floor above the astronaut's living compartment 
(Fig. 13) .  To get to it, the weighlless aslronauts 
simply will float upstairs, using a fireman's pole 
for a guide rail. 
When W i l l  Skylab Be Put in Orbit? 
The Skylab i s  scheduled to be launched into a 
270-mile orbit above the earth in 1973. A program 
mission profile is  shown in Figure 14. The Skylab 
will be launched unmanned on a two-stage Saturn V 
rocket the same as used on the Apollo Program. 
The spacecraft will contain all the food. water, and 
42 
oxygen needed for the entire mission. On the follow- 
ing day, after key systems have been turned on and 
working, the first three-man crew will ride into 
space aboard an Apollo Command and Service Module 
launched by the smaller Saturn IB vehicle. They 
will rendezvous with the Skylab cluster, transfer 
inside, and complete activation of all the systems. 
This first crew will spend 28 days in the workshop 
area conducting a wide range of medical, scientific, 
and technical experiments. At the end of the mis- 
sion, the crew wil l  return to the earth with an ocean 
landing and recovery, just like the Apollo lunar mis- 
sions. Some 2 months later the three-man 
crew will  visit the workshop for a 56-day period. 
After their return, and about a month later, the 
third three-man crew will visit the Skylab for an 
additional 56-day period. In all there wi l l  be a total 
of 140 manned days during the 8-month period. 
What Is  the Skylab fo r?  
I have briefly told you what the Skylab is and 
how we plan to place it into orbit. Now we get to 
the real heart of the program - what the Skylab is  
for. 
Although the Skylab program has several ob- 
jectives, they fall into two major categories. The 
f i rs t  is centered around man's spaceflight capa- 
bilities over extended periods of time, so we will 
study and carefully monitor the astronauts. This 
will involve an assessment of man's operational 
capabilities as well as extensive biomedical experi- 
ments to determine the effect of long-term space 
activities on the human body (Fig. 15). The second 
major category is to conduct scientific experiments 
in which we will monitor and study the sun, the 
earth, and celestial space. 
In all, there a re  more than 50 experiments on- 
board to accomplish the many and various objec- 
tives, with about one-third of them devoted to study- 
ing the biological effects of prolonged weightlessness 
on man. The astronauts will  exercise regularly on 
a stationary bicycle as their physiological changes 
a re  carefully monitored. A reclining chair will 
whirl them around to determine their sensitivity to 
motion sickness. Urine samples will be collected 
and frozen daily for la ter  analysis on earth to de- 
termine possible mineral losses from the bones. A 
device will be used to check out the cardiovascular 
system with measurements of the heart rate, tem- 
perature, and blood pressure being taken. 
The important experiments for producing near- 
term benefits for man here on earth a re  the earth 
resources experiments (Fig. 16). Skylab has a 
number of sensors that a re  designed to record 
detailed information about our earth - not just from 
a scientific standpoint, but from a very practical 
standpoint. These sensors, for example, were 
chosen to detect specific information on types of 
soil and vegetation, crop vigor, and surface water 
conditions. From these data, inventories can be 
made of our natural and cultural resources. Skylab 
will collect and return more of this information 
than any other space program to date, adding great- 
ly to the data expected from the unmanned Earth 
Resources Satellite (ERTS-A) to be launched by 
NASA in 1972. 
NASA recently put out an announcement to sev- 
eral thousand potential users of the data that will 
be collected by Skylab. Thtxe w e r e  701 proposals 
received from scientists, engineers, city planners, 
etc. They wanted information to solve practical, 
everyday problems such as  city-growth planning, or 
estimating the snowfall during a winter season over 
the Rocky Mountains. The National Geological Sur- 
vey Water Resources Division says that if they can 
tell the amount of snow 1 percent better than they 
are  now able to - which is by tramping through 
the woods and pounding a rod in the snow and saying, 
"it's six feet deep" - If they can do this from Skylab 
1 percent better, then the information is worth $10 
million a year to them in managing water and elec- 
trical power operations. This is just one of many 
interesting and useful things that will be done with 
Skylab (Fig. 17). 
A s  you might expect, in the 701 responses there 
were a few that turned out to be a little silly. One 
man, for  example, requested a census of all of the 
black pepper in the world. He had a theory that 
black pepper was the source of all evil. Since he 
was from California, as  I am, I have been intending 
to look him up to get a few more details on his 
theory - since I always thought it was women and 
booze. 
What may turn out to have the greatest long-term 
benefits on Skylab a r e  the solar experiments. Eight 
major solar instruments will constantly measure the 
sun in the extreme ultraviolet and X-ray portions of 
the electromagnetic spectrum and will record data 
a s  to the sun's activities (Fig. 18). We study the 
sun because it is the main source of energy that we 
have on earth, and we h o w  very little about it. It 
is a complex thermonuclear reactor that we can 
observe and treat  as a laboratory to unlock the real 
secrets of nuclear processes: so that those proc- 
esses can be applied here on earth for development 
of future power systems. The astronauts will be 
able to select targets of scientific interest and 
actually point the telescopes. They w i l l  control 
and monitor the experiment operations in acquiring 
the data, including retrieval of the film (Fig. 19). 
There are a number of other interesting experi- 
ments on Skylab: 
0 A small experimental space "manufacturing" 
facility is provided where the astronauts will do 
some casting and welding of dissimilar metals (Fig. 
20). The absence of gravity and the high vacuum of 
space may provide a boon to certain manufacturing 
processes. Also, some technical or engineering 
tests wil l  be made on various protective coatings, 
effects of contamination on parts of the Skylab from 
its GKE dischargcs, and spaco ropair tochniqucs. 
Small semiconductor crystals used today in 
electronics will be carried aloft (Fig. 21) to see if 
they grow better in space. If we can grow large 
crystals without built-in thermal or mechanical 
stresses, we will be able to build more reliable 
electronic equipment. This could result in better 
color television sets for you and me. 
0 We are also looking at the possibility of 
developing methods for producing vaccines for the 
medical community as  one of the things that can be 
done more effectively in the zero gravity of space 
than we can do here on earth. 
0 A general objective of our Government's 
space program is to provide a platform for greater 
international cooperation and we do have, on Skylab, 
a French experiment containing an ultraviolet cam- 
era that will scan the heavens for new scientific 
information on the s tars  (Fig. 22). A second sky- 
lab, if authorized, would be expected to have great- 
e r  participation by many more foreign countries. 
0 Special interest to the younger generation i s  
the plan NASA has set up to stimulate interest in 
science and technology by directly involving high 
school students in space research (Fig. 23). Infor- 
mation on Skylab has been sent to high schools 
throughout the country. A selection and awards proc- 
ess has been devised to reduce the total potential 
proposals to the final six which will actually be 
flown on Skylab (Fig. 24). Certain specifications 
(Fig. 25) have been established regarding size, 
weight, and astronaut time requirements, as  well 
as criteria that will assure that the student's experi- 
ment is compatible with Skylab and will not affect 
the launch schedule. Money has been authorized 
43 
to complete the selection process and to finance the 
development and integration of the six selected ex- 
periments into the Skylab spacecraft. 
This concludes the basic overview of Skylab. 
I might emphasize that while Skylab is experimental 
in nature, it is expected to lead to operational sys- 
tems that will provide a better understanding of the 
distribution and abundance of earth resources, the 
solar processes which will affect terrestrial  weather 
and climate, and control of our environment. We 
can dl expect to benefit from improved long-term 
management of the crucial earth resources required 
to keep the environment here on earth viable for 
mankind - now and in the future. 
What Wi l l  Skylab Cost? 
Even though Skylab will cost about $2 .5  billion, 
it will  be spent over a 7-year period. Comparisons 
are dangerous and can be misleading, but I might 
compare this to a recent announcement in the agri- 
cultural area that the U. S. is prepared to spend 
$2.0 billion in 1972 alone to reduce the output 
of livestock feed grain. I would submit that the 
thousands of jobs created by the Skylab program 
over a 7-year period, plus the environmental and 
other direct research benefits we will obtain from its 
operations, make a very positive argument for the 
dollars expended. Placed in perspective the $2.5  
billion does not seem so large. Even Snoopy bene- 
fits (Fig. 26). 
A last closing thought about costs: our Federal 
Government is now spending 42 cents out of every 
tax dollar on human resources and about 1 cent for the 
Space Program - I am confident that by the end of 
this conference you will be as  positive as  I am that 
the taxpayer is getting more than his money's worth 
from the 1 cent spent on space programs such a s  
Skylab. 
W i l l  There Be a Second Skylab? 
This depends on many things - timing, Cost, 
solid requirements for data, and the capability of 
our astronauts to perform meaningful tasks over 
extended periods of time. If past experience is any 
guide, we can be sure that information gained from 
Skylab-A will produce a deluge of requests for addi- 
tional information and new experiments. 
You will be interested to know that the present 
Skylab program does contain a complete backup set 
of hardware. This backup Skylab will  be shipped to 
the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and readied 
for final acceptance and launch while Skylab-A is 
performing its  mission. 
Yes, there could be a second Skylab using the 
backup hardware and which would produce at least 
as  much meaningful information as  Skylab-A - and 
for roughly 25 percent of the cost of the first  Skylab. 
44 
Figure 1. Skylab cluster. 
Figure 2. Command and Service Module. 
c 
a 
Figure 3. Multiple adapter. 
Figure 4. Detailed view of telescope mount. 
Figure 5. Airlock module. 
46 
Figure 6 .  Orbital workshop. 
- - - - -  
Figure 7.  Astronauts positioned in dining area. 
47 
c 
Figure 8. Bathroom. 
I 
I 
I 
1 
! 
I 
I 
1 
t 
I 
I 
‘ e  
Figure 9. Bunks or sleeping restraints. 
-L 
m 
-- 
I -  
1 
Figure 10. Dining area. 
i 
Figure 11. Disposal of trash. 
I 
Figure 12. Shower. 
49 
Figure 13. Main work area. 
\ \ a 
' RENDEZVOUS 1 0 RENOEZVOUS 1 8 h ACTIVATION 
OEACTlVATlON 4 f 
I 
6 REENTRY 0 
f SKYLAB1&2 t SKYLAB3 
1'1 
I I RLNOEZVOUS I 6 h ACTIVATION 
OEACTlVATlON 
L REENTRV n 
DEACTIVATION 
h REENTRY 0 
I , SKYUB4 
h 
I MANNEO 140 DAYS U N M A N N E O I S  DAYS 
Figure 14. Program mission profile. 
ESS 
t 
171 
Figure 15. Experiment support system. 
MVLTlSPEcfluL SCANHER RAD SCAT AWD ALTIMETER RADIOMETER 
Figure 16. Skylab - Earth Resources Experiment Package (EREP) . 
E DOCKING ADAPTfR 
51 
52 
/- 
Figure 17. One of Skylab's many uses. 
Figure 18. Sun's surface. 
I 
Figure 19. Film retrieval. 
ACCESSORIES CONTAI 
INTROL 
4NEL 
'VACUUM / WORK \ 
CHAMBER 
I IOTHERMIC ELECT 
4 r A T i N G  PGCKAGE BEAM ( 
'COMPOSITE 
CASTING 
FURNACE 
RRN 
;UN . 
E 
LE fmwcfs FOR 
MR P. GORDON PARKS, 
MSFC 
Figure 20. Materials processing in space facility 
(Skylab experiment M512). 
YSTALS 01: GAUl 
LlTY OF W l N G  Sf 
E ENVIRONIHEHT AND 
RETRIEVAL OF PRODUCTS FOR USE ON EAR 
PR I NC lPA1 I N E S T  I GATOR: 
MR. R. SILOENSTICKER 
WEST I NGHOU SE 
Figure 21. Materials processing in space - single crystals growth task 
(Skylab experiment M512). 
Figure 22. Ultraviolet panorama camera. 
54 
P R O G R A M  O B J E C T I V E  
STIMULATE INTEREST IN SCIENCE AND 
TECHNOLOGY BY DIRECTLY I NVOLVI NG 
STUDENTS IN  SPACE RESEARCH 
Figure 23. Program objectives. 
FL0';I DIAGRAM 
;ELI. 4 ,  1972 
-  
REGION I I2-N- 
REGION 2 
REGIONAL 
SELECTEES 
(lO%OF 
ENTRIES) 
REGION 3 
STUDENT 
PROPOSALS 
brv- REGION I2 
NATIONAL 
BOAR0 
(NSTA 8 NASA- 
OMSF, OSSA1 
MARCH 24 APRIL 
NATIONAL FLIGHT 
SELECTEES EXPERIMENTS 
SELECTEE B TEACHERfSWNSOR ATTEND 
SKVLAE STUDENT EDUCATIONAL 
CONFERENCE 8 AIAROS PRESENTATION 
AT KSC CERTIFICATE TO SCHOOL 
PLAQUE FOR SCHOOL 
Figure 24. Skylab student program sequence of major events. 
(Approved by Administrator) 
S I X  EXPERIMENTS 
TOTAL LAUNCH STOWAGE SPACE 1 CUBIC FOOT 
TOTAL WEIGHT 35 LBS 
TOTAL CREW TIME 1-112 MAN-HOURS 
PER WEEK 
CRITERIA FOR EXPERIMENT EQUl PMENl ESTABLISHED 
COMPATIBILITY 
PROGRAM IMPACT 
COST ESTABLISHED 
SELECTION PHASE - 65K 
DEVELOPMENT & INTEGRATION - 200K 
Figure 25. Major features. 
Figure 26. One of Skylab's benefits. 
56 


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