The Stars My Destination: Skylab

I'm working out in real time how to explore the fiftieth anniversaries of the three manned Skylab missions through "The Explorers' Club." The Apollo missions are our template—each of the eleven "Destination Moon" missions was chronicled across three episodes, roughly equating to launch, lunar activity, & splashdown—yet the Skylab flights will differ in two key aspects: timescale & sex appeal.

Timescale: The longest Apollo Moon missions (Apollo 15 & Apollo 17, 1971 & 1972) lasted twelve days; the shortest Apollo Skylab mission (Skylab 2, 1973) lasted twenty-eight days. Prior to Skylab 2, the longest duration American spaceflight was Gemini VII (1965), at just under fourteen days. The subsequent Skylab missions were even longer: Skylab 3 (1973) lasted fifty-nine days while Skylab 4 (1973-1974) lasted eighty-four days!

Sex appeal: I'm going to dedicate multiple episodes of "The Explorers' Club" to each Skylab mission, & I'm fascinated by America's first space station, but the simple fact is that low Earth orbit (L.E.O.) missions just aren't as exciting as Moon landings. Between Apollo 17 in December 1972 & Artemis I in November 2022, no human-rated spacecraft ventured beyond L.E.O. Skylab was the beginning of those fifty years of L.E.O. only spaceflight. We had seen the lights of gay Paris; how could we be satisfied going back to the farm?

The immediately visible effect of these two factors is that I will not be posting a Bonus! Space Race Song of the Day for each day of the Skylab flights, as I did for the Gemini & Apollo flights. This is consistent with how we are exploring the fortieth anniversary of the Space Shuttle missions.