It helps the human body understand how it’s oriented and maintain balance. The human inner ear works much like the accelerometer in a smartphone. While the previous Skylab crews had all been experienced astronauts, Skylab 4’s team had to quickly learn how to function in a microgravity environment, but that wasn’t the only snag they hit right away. Gibson, science pilot and Astronaut William R. Carr, commander Scientist-Astronaut Edward G. Pictured in their flight suits with a globe and a model of the Skylab space station are, left to right, Astronaut Gerald P. The schedule was put together well in advance, and allowed no time for deviation – arguably a foolish decision considering the three men aboard the station had never been in space before. How daunting? The entire 84 day rotation was scheduled to the minute for each of the three crew members: 16 hours of itemized tasks micromanaged by Mission Control each day, followed by exactly 8 hours of recuperation before starting the process over again. Pogue arrived at the space station aware that they had a daunting schedule ahead of them. As a result, Skylab 4’s rookie astronaut crew of Commander Gerald P. Skylab 4 was the last mission to take place aboard the Skylab before it was slated to reenter the earth’s atmosphere and burn up, so with budget in mind, NASA placed an emphasis on wringing every last bit of scientific data that they could out of the space station during its last 84 days of operation. While the early space station offered NASA a chance to see how many of their systems held up to prolonged space flight, perhaps the most important development to come out of the six-year Skylab mission was the way it forced America’s space agency to approach working with astronauts out in the cold expanses of space. That rocket happened to be the most powerful platform mankind has ever produced, the Saturn V, which also ferried astronauts to and from the moon on the Apollo missions - and it’s a good thing too, because all told, the Skylab itself accounted for a 170,000 pound payload. Unlike space stations like Mir or the ISS, Skylab was all one section that was launched into space on a single rocket. Small in comparison to the ISS as a whole, Skylab was huge for what it was. In many ways, Skylab served as a test bed for systems that would come to be deployed on the International Space Station, and in a number of others, it was completely unique when compared to the array of other space stations that have been launched since. Members of previous generations, however, likely remember a time before the International Space Station - and if they were paying attention to the headlines in the early 1970s, they might also remember its predecessor: Skylab. That timeline offers an interesting bit of perspective - as you come to realize that America’s latest generation of enlisted warfighters, joining the service within the past two years, belong to the first generation of human beings in history to live their entire lives with a human presence in orbit. The International Space Station has been in orbit around our planet since 1998, providing the human race with a (semi) permanent habitable space at the front door of the great beyond.
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