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Skylab controversy

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Gerald P. Carr, Edward G. Gibson, and William R. Pogue, August 1973

Communications failure

A communications failure occurred during the Skylab 4 mission when its crew - astronauts Gerald P. Carr, Edward G. Gibson, and William R. Pogue - were not in communications with National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s mission control during a planned communitions periods.[1] While the lack of communications were due to the crew inadvertently forgetting to be present for a briefing with ground control due to fatigue from the aggressive schedule they had been assigned, this was taken as a possible work slowdown by the media. Stories arose that, around December 28, 1973, about halfway through the mission, the crew had purposely turned off communications to ground control and spend the time relaxing.[2] Once communications were reestablished, the crew and mission control discussed a more relaxed schedule, and productivity for the remaining mission significantly increased, surpassing that of the prior Skylab 3 mission.

The event, which the involved astronauts have joked about,[3] has been extensively studied as a case study in various fields of endeavor including space medicine, team management, and psychology. Man-hours in space were, and continued to be into the 21st century, a profoundly expensive undertaking; a single day on Skylab was worth about $22.4 million in 2017 dollars, and thus any work stoppage was considered inappropriate due to the expense.[4] According to Space Safety Magazine, the incident affected the planning of future space missions, especially long-term missions.[5]

Around the midpoint of the mission, the Skylab-4 crew started to become fatigued and behind on the work, so as to catch up, they decided that only one crew member needed to be present for the daily briefing instead of all three, allowing the other two to complete the existing tasks.[6] At one point, the crew had forgotten to have their radios on for the daily briefing, leading to a lack of communications between the crew and ground control during one period of communications while in line of sight with a tracking station. By the next planned period, the crew had reaffirmed radio contact with ground control.[6]

The "strike" myth

The communications failure was treated by the media as a deliberate act and became known as the Skylab strike or Skylab mutiny.

One of the first accounts reporting this period as a strike was published in The New Yorker on August 22, 1976, nearly two years after the mission, by Henry S. F. Cooper, who claimed that the crew were alleged to have stopped working on December 28, 1973. According to Cooper, Gibson spent his day on Skylab's solar console, while Carr and Pogue spent their time in the wardroom looking out the window.[7][8] Cooper also published similar claims in his book A House in Space that same year.[8] The Harvard Business School published a 1980 report, "Strike in Space", also claiming that the astronauts had gone on strike, but without any cited claims.[8] Subsequently, enough media gave weight to support the urban legend that there was a Skylab strike on December 28, 1973.[8]

NASA, the astronauts involved, and spaceflight historians have argued against this urban legend to demonstrate that no strike occurred. NASA stated that all flight communications had been made public after the mission was complete, where there is no evidence of the crew speaking of striking or holding a mutiny. NASA believes that the events on December 28 may have been confused with a day off that was given to the crew on December 26 after a long spacewalk by Carr and Pogue the day before. After being told of being given the day off, Carr jokingly had stated "We'll have our answering service up tomorrow," but there was no indication from NASA or Gibson that this was meant intentionally.[6][8] NASA also stated that there may have been confusion with a known ground equipment failure on December 25 that left them unable to track Skylab for one orbit, but the crew had been notified of this issue ahead of time.[8] Gibson gave his own account of the event in a 2021 interview with the BBC, affirming it was a series of misjudgments and nothing intentional on the crew's end that caused them to miss the briefing.[6] Spaceflight history author David Hitt disputed that the crew deliberately ended contact with mission control in a book written with former astronauts Owen K. Garriott and Joseph P. Kerwin.[9]

Despite these reports, the urban legend has persisted in the media for decades.[8][3][2]

Effects

Figure 3-2. Performance lapses for time in bed (TIB) over 14 days of sleep restriction.[10]

While the lack of communications was unintentional, NASA still spent time to study its causes and effects as to avoid its replication in future missions.[11]

At the time, only the crew of Skylab 3 had spent six weeks in space. It was unknown what had happened psychologically. NASA carefully worked with crew's requests, reducing their workload for the next six weeks. The incident took NASA into an unknown realm of concern in the selection of astronauts, still a question as humanity considers human missions to Mars or returning to the Moon.[12] Among the complicating factors was the interplay between management and subordinates (see also Apollo 1 fire and Challenger disaster). On Skylab 4, one problem was that the crew was pushed even harder as they fell behind on their workload, creating an increasing level of stress.[13] Even though none of the astronauts returned to space, there was only one more NASA spaceflight in the decade and Skylab was the first and last American space station.[14] NASA was planning larger space stations but its budget shrank considerably after the Moon landings, and the Skylab orbital workshop was the only major execution of Apollo Applications projects.[14]

Though the final Skylab mission became known for the incident, it was also known for the large amount of work that was accomplished in the long mission.[5] Skylab orbited for six more years before its orbit decayed in 1979 due to higher-than-anticipated solar activity.[11] The next U.S. spaceflight was the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project conducted in July 1975, and after a human spaceflight gap, the first Space Shuttle orbital flight STS-1 in April 1981.

The described events were considered a significant example of "us" versus "them" syndrome in space medicine.[15] Crew psychology has been a point of study for Mars analog missions such as Mars-500, with a particular focus on crew behavior triggering a mission failure or other issues.[15] One of the impacts of the incident is the requirement that at least one member of the International Space Station crew be a space veteran (not be on a first flight).[16]

The 84-day stay of the Skylab 4 mission was a human spaceflight record that was not exceeded for over two decades by a NASA astronaut.[17] The 96-day Soviet Salyut 6 EO-1 mission broke Skylab 4's record in 1978.[18][19]

See also

References

  1. ^ Broad, William J. (July 16, 1997). "On Edge in Outer Space? It Has Happened Before". The New York Times. Retrieved January 29, 2017.
  2. ^ a b Hiltzik, Michael. "The day when three NASA astronauts staged a strike in space". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2017-01-29.
  3. ^ a b Vitello, Paul (March 10, 2014). "William Pogue, Astronaut Who Staged a Strike in Space, Dies at 84". The New York Times. Retrieved January 30, 2017.
  4. ^ Lafleur, Claude (March 8, 2010). "Costs of US Piloted Programs". The Space Review. Retrieved February 18, 2012. See author's correction in comments section.
  5. ^ a b "All the King's Horses: The Final Mission to Skylab (Part 3)". Space Safety Magazine. 2013-12-05. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
  6. ^ a b c d Brewer, Kirstie (March 20, 2021). "Skylab: The myth of the mutiny in space". BBC. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
  7. ^ Cooper, Henry S. F. (August 30, 1976). "Life in a Space Station". The New Yorker. Retrieved January 30, 2017.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g Uri, John (November 16, 2020). "The Real Story of the Skylab 4 "Strike" in Space". NASA. Retrieved March 22, 2021.
  9. ^ Hitt, David (2008). Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0803219014. Retrieved January 29, 2017.
  10. ^ Van Dongen, HP; Maislin, G; Mullington, JM; Dinges, DF (2003). "The cumulative cost of additional wakefulness: Dose-response effects on neurobehavioral functions and sleep physiology from chronic sleep restriction and total sleep deprivation". Sleep. 26 (2): 117–26. doi:10.1093/sleep/26.2.117. PMID 12683469.
  11. ^ a b "Skylab: First U.S. Space Station". Space.com. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
  12. ^ DNews (2012-04-16). "Why 'Space Madness' Fears Haunted NASA's Past". Seeker – Science. World. Exploration. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
  13. ^ Staff, Wired Science. "Skylab: America's First Home in Space Launched 40 Years Ago Today". WIRED. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
  14. ^ a b "Skylab: Everything You Need to Know". www.armaghplanet.com. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
  15. ^ a b Clément, Gilles (2011-07-15). Fundamentals of Space Medicine. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978-1-4419-9905-4.
  16. ^ Gilles Clément (2011). Fundamentals of Space Medicine. Springer Science & Business Media. p. 255. ISBN 978-1-4419-9905-4.
  17. ^ Elert, Glenn. "Duration of the Longest Space Flight". hypertextbook.com. Retrieved 2017-01-05.
  18. ^ Pike, John. "Soyuz 26 and Soyuz 27". www.globalsecurity.org. Retrieved 2017-01-05.
  19. ^ Hollingham, Richard (December 21, 2015). "How the most expensive structure in the world was built". BBC.
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