Listen Now

Skylab began its descent earlier than expected, and ended up crashing down to earth over Western Australia. Dwight tells the story of the end of Skylab as a space station, and discusses the general public's reaction to the danger of being struck on the head by Skylab debris. o9zWLgb2WdioZZmO54px

Dwight lists the astronauts who flew on the three manned Skylab missions, and tells some anecdotes about meeting some of them while making the "Searching For Skylab" documentary. In some cases, the interviews with the astronauts were the last time they spoke on the record about Skylab. The astronauts who flew the Skylab missions were: SL-2 ==== Joseph P. Kerwin Pete Conrad (CDR) Paul J. Weitz SL-3 ==== Owen K. Garriott Jack R. Lousma Alan Bean (CDR) SL-4 ==== Gerald P. Carr (CDR) Edward Gibson William R. Pogue

The Skylab launch was pretty textbook...right up until a micrometeroid shield erroneously opened. The shield was damaged, a solar array was ripped off, and another was damaged. Essentially, NASA had just launched a dud into orbit, and they had 11 days to fix it. Writer and director Dwight Steven-Boniecki tells the story of how NASA scrambled to save Skylab. He also gives his opinion on the Skylab mutiny stories. Plus: some news about the Searching For Skylab movie.

Dwight takes us through the origins of the Skylab program, its goals, and what it meant to NASA. We also take a look at the experiments carried out on the space station, which included observing the sun, zero-G effects on humans, and...spiders spinning a web in space. For science!

In the first episode of the Searching For Skylab podcast, meet Dwight Steven-Boniecki, who just released the first full-length documentary about Skylab. We discuss why he made the movie, how he came to be such a Skylab nerd, and why Skylab has largely been forgotten. Visit the movie's Website: www.searchingforskylab.com