Next day's crew launch was scrubbed and attention turned to ways to save the station. Ground controllers had to keep using the station's thrusters to re-orient it. The solar panels for the solar telescope section had unfolded, but orienting them for maximum power caused excessive internal heating.
A fabulous weekend event. hear all about it from our team on the scene...
Making matters worse, because this caused one main solar panel to partially unfold, the exhaust from the retro rockets on the second stage that helped separate it from the station caught this panel and ripped it off entirely, while the other was trapped by debris from the lost shield.
I realise this moves me squarely into old fart territory, but I miss the days when a car breakdown actually meant something had literally broken and needed repair. Something a trained mechanic, or even you with the aid of a Haynes manual and the right parts, could fix. Not a software update. 🤦♂️
Human Spaceflight: 14 May 1973. Skylab is launched, but immediately after entering orbit something is clearly very wrong. Telemetry indicates that the temperature inside the space station is rapidly rising beyond habitable levels, and the main solar panels have not deployed, so power is far too low.
Video
Skylab was designed to have an outer micrometeoroid and thermal shield that, once in orbit, would deploy to 'stand away' from the main skin of the workshop. Instead, aerodynamic forces during launch ripped it off about a minute into the flight, also damaging the solar panels.
When they turned the station to minimise heating inside this also caused power generation to drop, so a continual round of adjustments was needed. To make matters worse, the high internal temperatures would eventually spoil the food and camera film stored onboard, so time was of the essence.
Jason Thompson
Jason Thompson
Jason Thompson
Jason Thompson
Jason Thompson
Team @trapone.bsky.social highlights from the photo studio at #Utopia2026 taken by paulphippswilliams.com www.fantomevents.co.uk/utopia2026/
In these difficult times we must all come together to support fans who simply cannot afford to complete their platic tat collections. I urge you to book this person for your event photography so he may finally get that destroyed Cassandra figure.
Also, he’s a fucking great photographer.
