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Skylab

Skylab was the United States' first space station, and the second space station visited by a human crew. It was also the only space station NASA launched alone. The 100-ton space station was in Earth's orbit from 1973 to 1979 and it was visited by crews three times in 1973 and 1974.

Background

The exact origin of the project is difficult to pinpoint because a number of different but related proposals were floated by various NASA centers before Skylab itself was launched.

Early studies

A key event took place in 1959, when Wernher von Braun submitted his final Project Horizon plans to the U.S. Army. The overall goal of Horizon was to place a human on the Moon, a mission that would soon be taken over by the rapidly-forming NASA. Although concentrating on the Moon missions, von Braun also detailed an orbiting laboratory built out of a Horizon upper stage, an idea used for Skylab.

A number of NASA centers studied various space station designs in the early 1960s. Studies generally looked at platforms launched by the Saturn V, followed up by crews launched on Saturn IB using an Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM), or a Gemini capsule on a Titan II-C, the latter being much less expensive in the case where cargo was not needed. Proposals ranged from an Apollo-based station with two to three men, or a small "canister" for four men with Gemini capsules resupplying it, to a large, rotating station with 24 men and an operating lifetime of about five years.

Air Force competition

In September 1963, NASA and the Department of Defense (DoD) agreed to cooperate in building a space station. In December, the Air Force nonetheless announced Manned Orbital Laboratory (MOL), a small space station primarily intended for photo reconnaissance using large telescopes directed by a two-man crew. The station was the same diameter as a Titan II upper stage, and would be launched with the crew riding atop in a modified Gemini capsule with a hatch cut into the heat shield on the bottom of the capsule. MOL competed for funding with a NASA station for the next five years, and caused changes to the NASA plans so they would resemble MOL less.