Space Shuttle, meet Skylab...

[MacCaulay]

...so this one got me thinking.

There were a lot of cancelled Space Shuttle flights, especially in the early days. Alot of the cancellations were mostly a confluence of NASA spitballing missions it'd like to see the Space Shuttle used for, and the Space Shuttle not being able to do anything.

But in 1979, with the Skylab vacant and the management pretty much ready to let it go, some folks hatched a plan: use the new Shuttle system to send a two-man crew up to Skylab and boost it into a higher orbit.

It got so far up the chain that it was the first seriously pursued Shuttle mission: the plan was to initially elongate the life of the Skylab by five years, then to look at further options after that. There was a stash of water and supplies left on the station by the departing crew, leaving less of a burden on the first crew up.
Further missions were planned, including strapping a booster to the station that could keep it up and allow it to adjust it's orbit autonomously.

But that thought is interesting. And from a storytelling point of view, the crew of the shuttle flight was interesting: the shuttle commander was to be Fred Haise, who was the pilot on Apollo 13.

Just thought I'd throw this out there.

 

[LostCosmonaut]

This definitely would have worked at least once, and it would have been cool if it did, so that the US could have at least an on orbit presence before the ISS. I'm not sure how long Skylab could last though, as I think it was only designed to work for a few years, not to mention the other issues it had.

 

[MacCaulay]

This definitely would have worked at least once, and it would have been cool if it did, so that the US could have at least an on orbit presence before the ISS. I'm not sure how long Skylab could last though, as I think it was only designed to work for a few years, not to mention the other issues it had.

Apparently one of the things they were planning was an upgrade to get more astronauts to be able to stay on it. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

I'll have to look up some more stuff on it tomorrow.

 

[Bureaucromancer]

The big issue would realistically have been that the 30 day stay times they assumed at the time never became practical. Even post Columbia, with thirty years and considerable work keeping a shuttle up more than about two weeks just wasn't practical. Bearing in mind that at least until after Challeger there is precisely zero likelihood of an escape vehicle being available short term the net effect would be a very large man tended but generally free flying facility. Interesting, but not neccessarily all that important or useful.

I'd think the butterflies might actually be the most important part of such a program. Whatever difficulties they have could well be enough to scare them away from some of the more grandiose plans for orbit ally assembled stations and ships. A problematic reactivation could certainly be used as an excuse for a TL where the deep space plans of the Bush and Reagan years are a lot more practical than the ninety day report and it's ilk.

 

[Riain]

IIRC there were a number of compatibility problems including comms gear, atmosphere and docking port size.

Skylab B would have been way better.

 

[MacCaulay]

IIRC there were a number of compatibility problems including comms gear, atmosphere and docking port size.

Skylab B would have been way better.

Good lord! I gave you Skylab! What more do you want!?

 

[Michel Van]

had be a Skylab 5 mission in 1975 with orbit re boost, Thinks would today very differently

NASA would visit Skylab with Space shuttle
repare it and use as US Space station in 1980s again !

they had made in deep studies how to reactivate the station, like refill Skylab gas and Water tanks.
Skylab electronic system are not so obsolete in 1980, as you might think
the Shuttle had similar systems in 1980s on board...

in later phase a power-module woud be dock on Skylab
to help the old solarcells and replace the Skylab old attitude control system.

what look like this in 1984

© Image: Junior Miranda

the Shuttle remain up to 30 day dock on Skylab while astronauts stay 30 to 90 day in station.
as payload the shuttle would dock modified Spacelab modules on Skylab
who get replaced during each shuttle mission

more here
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/07/nasa-marshalls-skylab-reuse-study-1977/#more-121546

 

[sparky42]

Even with the ISS back charging system the Shuttle could never achieve that length on orbit ( IIRC it was about 16 days docked on ISS) so unless the plan involves a new gen shuttle I don't think that it's possible.

 

[Archibald]

That they could repair Skylab A was ultimately bad luck. Rather paradoxically losing Skylab A and launching Skylab B would have been better... in the long term.

Skylab B won't be damaged in orbit(since the problem will be hopefully corrected !) and it will fly a year later.

With a bit of luck it might get through the 1979 solar maximum and wait for the shuttle, in 1981.

Now if the shuttle is provided with a space station (even an "imperfect" Skylab) then EVERYTHING will be different.

Indeed the shuttle returns to its original, 1969 role: crew and cargo ferry to a space station (and not a satellite launcher to compete with Ariane).

There won't be Challenger in 1986, because NASA won't try to launch 15 or 24 times a year to compete with Ariane - and hit a wall.

Instead circa 1983 NASA will say "oh, forget those 60 or 24 flights a year. That was for satellite business, but we no longer need that, since we have a space station as the shuttle destination. Keep the ELVs to launch the satellites, it doesn't matter..."

Freedom will be different, since a piece of it is somewhat already in orbit - Skylab. Building from the old workshop will force a smaller, simpler, cheaper station (unlike the Freedom / Alpha / ISS monstrosity).

Another consequence is the shuttle crew escape system: a Skylab-based station only has a crew of 4.
Now four people is small enough they all seat in the upper deck, and there can be four ejector seats (seven was not feasible, but there's won't be seven people at Skylab).
Ejector seats are not perfect, but they give crews slightly more survival options - and some psychological confort as well.

 

[Pangur]

...so this one got me thinking.

There were a lot of cancelled Space Shuttle flights, especially in the early days. Alot of the cancellations were mostly a confluence of NASA spitballing missions it'd like to see the Space Shuttle used for, and the Space Shuttle not being able to do anything.

But in 1979, with the Skylab vacant and the management pretty much ready to let it go, some folks hatched a plan: use the new Shuttle system to send a two-man crew up to Skylab and boost it into a higher orbit.

It got so far up the chain that it was the first seriously pursued Shuttle mission: the plan was to initially elongate the life of the Skylab by five years, then to look at further options after that. There was a stash of water and supplies left on the station by the departing crew, leaving less of a burden on the first crew up.
Further missions were planned, including strapping a booster to the station that could keep it up and allow it to adjust it's orbit autonomously.

But that thought is interesting. And from a storytelling point of view, the crew of the shuttle flight was interesting: the shuttle commander was to be Fred Haise, who was the pilot on Apollo 13.

Just thought I'd throw this out there.

I very much remember this being discussed. They were looking at launch as late as 1978 with the idea being to stop spacelab's orbit degrading and boost into a higher orbit and the worry about getting a crew back on board. I was not aware that Fred Haise was to be the commander of the mission.However as the Apollo 13 mission shown just how good these guys were. Heck they managed to bring their ship home using a slide rule to work out when to do the burn, insert into lunar orbit, leave lunar orbut, inject into earth orbit and then decent all in the cold and dark and they put the command module down almost on the dime - that sir is skill.

 

[e of pi]

Heck they managed to bring their ship home using a slide rule to work out when to do the burn, insert into lunar orbit, leave lunar orbut, inject into earth orbit and then decent all in the cold and dark and they put the command module down almost on the dime - that sir is skill.

Not to take away from their achievement, but they never entered lunar orbit on 13. And they had tremendous support from the ground--most of the calculations and trouble-shooting was actually done on the ground, and then the results passed up.

 

[MacCaulay]

Well I don't know about everyone else, I but I think this is a very interesting idea for a story. Especially because knowing how the US government is, if we could keep Skylab up then there'd probably be no ISS since we already have a space station in orbit.

Not to take away from their achievement, but they never entered lunar orbit on 13. And they had tremendous support from the ground--most of the calculations and trouble-shooting was actually done on the ground, and then the results passed up.

AH.com: You Give Us A Hair, and We'll Split It.

 

[Michel Van]

here some studies on Skylab reuse
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?N=0&Ntk=All&Ntt=Skylab reuse&Ntx=mode matchall

 

[Bureaucromancer]

There won't be Challenger in 1986, because NASA won't try to launch 15 or 24 times a year to compete with Ariane - and hit a wall.

Instead circa 1983 NASA will say "oh, forget those 60 or 24 flights a year. That was for satellite business, but we no longer need that, since we have a space station as the shuttle destination. Keep the ELVs to launch the satellites, it doesn't matter.

That's pretty well ASB. The shuttle ultimately only got political support after it became THE Space Transportation System. This want about competing with Ariane per se remember, competing with Ariane was part of a hunt for payloads to keep the launch rate up, which was the only way to bring costs anywhere near what was claimed. Any time before Challenger abandoning satellite was tantamount to declaring the system a failure, at least as far as Congress was concerned.

 

[MacCaulay]

I've got to be honest...I'm looking at this from the point of view of someone who believes that the most realistic AH ever written about space travel was Voyage by Stephen Baxter.

And it was realistic because there were always trade-offs. If we want Skylab, we dont get something else. And personally, I think that's the ISS. Maybe Skylab B, if someone can make me a good case for it.

 

[e of pi]

It's worth noting that you probably need some major butteflies in the Shuttle program to make this possible--Skylab will re-enter in late 1979 without a reboost, so if Shuttle isn't there to do it, Skylab's coming down. The plan was only viable when it was hoped Shuttle would be ready in '79, but issues with both the SSME and the TPS caused a two-year delay to 1981. Thus, you either need a different Shuttle development program to have Shuttle ready in time, or you need an earlier reboost mission--perhaps one of the proposed Skylab 4 flights, which were proposed to involve reboosting the station.

 

[MacCaulay]

It's worth noting that you probably need some major butteflies in the Shuttle program to make this possible

I just thought it'd be cool to have the guy who piloted Apollo 13 driving a Space Shuttle to the Skylab.

 

[e of pi]

And it was realistic because there were always trade-offs. If we want Skylab, we dont get something else. And personally, I think that's the ISS. Maybe Skylab B, if someone can make me a good case for it.

Well, Skylab (like Soviet stations of the same period) was essentially expendable--the station was launched with a certain amount of supplies, crews used them up over one or several flights, then the station was to be retired or replaced. Skylab was pretty well used up. IIRC, it was estimated to have something like 30 days usable life left, and the systems were never designed for re-furbishment. You could kludge it, but then you start running into other issues--insufficient power due to missing a panel, that the Skylab atmosphere was the Apollo-era pure-oxygen 4.8 psi, where Shuttle and ISS use a 14.7 psi mixed-gas atmosphere, selected for lower risks of fire. While the pressure hull can probably take the increased stresses--after all, it's a conversion from a fuel tank that was designed to take ~22 psi LH2--you need to qualify that, and you'll need an entire new processing system.

It'd be possible to modify the station on orbit, but it'd be tremendously tricky. If it was me, I'd rather make the same mods to Skylab B on the ground, where I can get to everything more easily, then launch it. You also don't end up dealing with the improvised fixes to the Skylab launch issues, and you start off with a lot more time before you have to have a Shuttle in orbit--say you launch in 1976 or 77 and you might get it to last without reboost until 1983, plenty of margin if Shuttle runs into delays even beyond OTL.

 

[e of pi]

I just thought it'd be cool to have the guy who piloted Apollo 13 driving a Space Shuttle to the Skylab.

It's not impossible, but your PoD probably needs to be fairly early to have it actually be Skylab--probably need a Skylab 5 mission that boosts the station in ~1974. Perhaps NASA realizes the delays that Shuttle might take, or simply has a little more money floating around, so the cost of flying the mission is considered worth it to guarantee Skylab availability (after all, the rockets are already produced, as is the CSM, and the astronauts had trained for it--so it's just a matter of the funding to actually fuel and fly the mission). Alternately, they could decide to outfit Skylab B as a backup if salvaging Skylab fails, then launch it in ~1977/78 when it becomes apparent Shuttle is slipping and Skylab won't last. *shrug* There's options.

 

[Workable Goblin]

You may want to take a look at this. It's an article from Quest about Skylab B (and some other AAP-related things). Another thing to look at is this, which summarizes a Marshall (MSFC built Skylab) report on hos to reuse Skylab in the Shuttle program. It would have been neat, but ultimately there are a lot of problems (which other people have already pointed out) with Skylab A for Shuttle use, while even the general Skylab framework is getting old and obsolete by the early '80s.

Probably more optimal from a technical standpoint was this, or at least the "evolution" stuff from Marshall, which would have used Skylab-derived technology for a relatively small, incremental development program (as opposed to Johnson's big bang). But that fell afoul of NASA internal politics...