Talk:Skylab/Archive 1

Archive 1

Reentry date?

The article seems to mention that Skylab reentered on both 11 July and 16 July 1979. NASA's resources [1] all seem to indicate that the correct date is 11 July, but I can't find anything to confirm or refute the time or other information in the paragraph regarding debris field, etc. Perhaps someone with a better idea of where to look could fact-check that. Chris 13:25, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Featured Article

Skylab was "Today's featured article" a while back, but it is not, and appears to have never been, a featured article? Why? --GW_Simulations_{|User Page | Talk | Contribs | E-mail} 23:23, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Link description cannot be right

A new link was recently added: http://www.maniacworld.com/skylab.htm According to it, the video was taken as Skylab 2 was approaching the station. But this can't be correct. Skylab 2 was the first manned mission. If it was approaching the station for the first time, the solar panel would not be free and the sunshade would not be deployed. Something should be done.

Finally took care of this. Andy120290 (talk) 01:23, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Skylab Mission Numbering

There are comments on the Skylab 2 and Skylab 3 discussion pages about the discrepancy between the patch numbering and mission numbering systems. Per NASA here [2], Skylab 1 is the unmanned launch, and Skylab 2, 3 & 4 are the manned missions (not called 'expeditions' in that era) to the station. But the patch for Skylab 2 clearly shows "Skylab I", and likewise with -3/II and -4/"3". I'd like to insert clarifying text at the start of each article (and in the table at the bottom of this page), but I would really like to see a transcript of a mission to know for sure how the manned missions referred to themselves. Anybody got a transcript? Thanks! Srain 17:15, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I got some good information/links from an historian at NASA, so I've done a first edit on the Skylab articles to try and remove the confusion. See [3] for the story. Srain 05:21, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

That page of Bill Pogue's is an excellent find! That clears it up. --EarthPerson 04:32, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Other Space Stations

The first sentence states that SkyLab is the the second space station ever launched which is in contradiction with the Salyut article. According to the Salyut article, apart from the obvious Salyut 1, there were : DOS-2 (launched but never reached orbit), Salyut 2 (not functionnal but stayed more than 50 days in orbit) and Cosmos 557 (Problems forced a reentry after about a week of orbits). Maybe the phrasing 'second successful' station would be better ? JoanCharmant 13:12, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Fixed.-- Andy120290 (talk) 20:06, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Second Skylab?

"Two flight-quality Skylabs were built. The first one was that which de-orbited and crashed in Western Australia in 1979; the second, a backup, is on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC."

Why wasn't the second Skylab used? It could have been launched by the Shuttle years before the ISS was built.

Launched by the Shuttle?? Do you have any idea how big Skylab was? There is no way it could have fit in the Space Shuttle's payload bay. Andy120290 (talk) 19:40, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, why didn't they use one of many Saturn 5's that were built and left to rot at the end of the Apollo program? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.67.35.112 (talk) 18:39, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

There was no need. It was built as a back-up. Besides, there needs to be funding for such an undertaking. The launch pads had to be modified for the Shuttle; They could no longer support Saturn V launches. Andy120290 (talk) 19:51, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Littering?

Is it true that the Australian authorities sent NASA a fine for littering when Skylab crashed down?

Yeah, I've got a book somewhere mentioning that. When I find which one it is, I'll add that to the article and cite it. —User:ACupOfCoffee@ 17:51, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

It wasn't so much a fine for littering as a bill for the clean-up, although someone may have phrased it that way to the media. Remember, this was a year or so after the Cosmos 954 incident in Canada. Governments were getting PO'd at having to pay for this kind of thing and the Canadians had set a precident. CFLeon 01:57, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

This article specifically mentions a $400 fine "for littering," but it's misleading to say that "the Australian government" issued it. The referenced Space.com story indicates that it was at worst a municipal fine:

At the time of Skylab’s crash to Earth, her husband Mervin also was president of Esperance shire. He issued the Americans a ticket for littering, a fine which to this day remains unpaid. Others who achieved notoriety from Skylab’s fall was 17-year-old local boy Stan Thornton. He scooped a few pieces of Skylab off the roof of his home and caught the first flight to San Francisco, where he collected a $10,000 prize from the San Francisco Examiner.

Stan Thornton is presumably the "Australian farmer" mentioned in our article. The Space.com story also directly contradicts the claim that "three cows were reportedly killed by debris," inasmuch as it says "no injuries were reported, not even of cattle kept outdoors." —Eric S. Smith 13:30, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I noticed the same contradiction; that's the reason I came to the talk page. I'm deleting the reference to "three killed cows" until someone can provide a source to cite. --TheLimbicOne(talk) 04:07, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

There was a Modern Marvels episode (don't recall which one) which mentioned one cow being killed. As a newbie, I added this haphazardly to the article (without a citation) and just today saw that someone had (correctly) reverted it soon after. I searched for cow and found that "According to Modern Marvels, a piece of Skylab killed a cow!" was in the middle of one of the ref tags... it was put there by 70.7.219.130 on April 16th, 2008. I removed it. 216.68.56.218 (talk) 07:08, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Much of the material in para 2 of section 2 seems redundant to the section on AAP. Is there any benefit in leaving it, so if a reader jumps to section 2 they get the summary? dhollm Dec 24, 2006 11:16pm GMT

The fine was paid on the 17th of april by an American radio station which raised funds to pay the fine. I dont have any references but was on the front page of Esperance's local newsapaper. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.24.97.5 (talk) 15:50, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Improper identification of corporate descendents as their corporate ancestors..

This is general complaint, but since I saw it here first (In the Skylab article)... In the article, one of the defense contractors is referred to as "Lockheed Martin", but during an era (1960's) when these two companies were not one (that happened in the 1990's consolidation of the defense sector in the US). My gripe is that I think it is improper to refer to the ancestors by the name of their descendent entities... Anybody know how to highlight this to more than the moderator for this article? Assume that the correct name for the contractor should have been Martin (I'm not sure, it may also have been Lockheed that had the contract), then the fact that Martin and Lockheed merged in the 90's is irrelevant to a discussion about NASA operations in the 1960's... if the reader needs to, or cares to, find out what happened to the Glenn L Martin Company, they can click the hyperlink and find out what happened to it... Regards.

The usual fix for this problem on Wikipedia is to use a piped link: [[Lockheed Martin|Glenn L. Martin Company]]. This will display only the text after the pipe character, but take the reader to the article with the corporate history. In some cases defunct companies retain a separate article, but mostly only those that have merged since Wikipedia began. --Dhartung | Talk 10:02, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

There are separate articles for Lockheed, Martin, etc. They should be linked to directly, not descendant companies. -Fnlayson (talk) 23:10, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Trivia tag

I removed the trivia tag as I don't feel a short section of popular culture references constitutes trivia. If I'm misguided, add it back and take away my library card, heh.... StanislavJ 14:59, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. The Wikinazis are too damn anal about this "no trivia" crap. Like it or not, Wikipedia *will* become a repository of knowledge, not just some suppository of links to other articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.188.250.148 (talk) 01:07, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Military purpose

I thought it was announced some years ago that Skylab had had a secret military mission? Spy satellite or something? Ben Finn (talk) 20:11, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Online 1967 article on Apollo Applications Program station

I've come across this article in a journal from 1967 discussing the Apollo Applications Program space station plans. I've lost track of more potential sources for citations than I've used, so I'm going to dump it here. Note that OCR seems to have been used in scanning the magazines, which makes it possible to copy and paste text from the PDFs. jhf (talk) 19:13, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Skylab Reentry and Chicken Little/BKY Lawrence Berkeley

The recounting of Skylab's reentry and the politics of event management are not correct as presented in the Wiki Skylab article. Originally, NASA had a plan from back 1974 that called for a two-hour warning on reentry and no graphical support or warnings to international civil aviation. The reentry was to be allowed to fall randomly with no human intervention. Techie response focused to two resources: a Chicken Little team in Washington, D.C., and the BKY computer user group in Berkeley, California. That BKY user group had built up around academic use of a supercomputer -- a Seymour Cray-designed CDC 7600. Investigation of likely reentry risks was conducted, similar to SIGs that pop up on today's Internet.

Efforts by non-NASA professionals led to clear results. First, if Skylab had come down on or near a major city, the two-hour warning would have risked an urban panic. That panic would have been more dangerous than the satellite reentry. Second, Skylab was projected to break up to some 5,000 lethal pieces. A danger to man, animal, and airplane. There would also be a loud sonic boom, similar to the Concorde. A proposal for change of policy was published first in the BKY SIG community open-text files. Then versions appeared widely, including the Washington Post Op-Ed page. Text is available today at DailyKos.

NASA responded immediately and did a good job of it overall. Citizen feedback and awareness/oversight at the Carter White House led to creation of a Skylab Information Center. High quality graphics were generated for the world's media. The warning horizon was extended to 36-hours with steady updates to the expected splash-down band. International civil aviation received first-rate projections, broad enough by several orbits so that Australia was warned prior to impact. At the very end, July 11, 197, an effort was made to control reentry by spinning the space station. The spinning worked, hastened the descent, but expectations did not match the actual dynamics and parts did come down on Western Australia. No one was killed. Chicken little skylab (talk) 14:36, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

This needs other reference(s) to be included. An Op-ed pieces and blogs do not meet WP:Reliable sources policy requirements. -Fnlayson (talk) 15:25, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Lockheed Martin

There was no such company as Lockheed Martin in this time frame. Please correct this to refer to the correct predecessor company. It could be Lockheed Missiles and Space, Martin, or even GE, whose Aerospace division became part of Martin before the merger with Lockheed. Something like "GE (now part of Lockheed Martin)" is you feel the need to point to a current company. --J Clear (talk) 11:29, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Two NASA publications; more work needs to be done

I've done a fair bit of editing and cite-adding using two NASA (and thus public domain) publications, Skylab, Our First Space Station and the more comprehensive Living and Working in Space: A History of Skylab. I am amazed neither was previously used as a cite source.

The article isn't in bad shape. The abandonment and reentry section (which I combined with the shuttle-reuse plans) is now pretty solid. The background/design section stil needs more detail but is better than it used to be. The big area of need is the Skylab history section; there needs to be much, much more on the many scientific and medical experiments (preferably written in a general way so that it is appropriate for this article as opposed to the individual missions'). YLee (talk) 08:45, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Design history vs. configuration as flown

There's a nice, comprehensive section on Skylab design in the article as it now exists. But it's an historical discussion following the evolution of the space station concept from conception to the final dry workshop configuration. There's no paragraph that sets out the various modules that made up Skylab as flown (the workshop/S-IVB, airlock, Multiple Docking Adapter, and Apollo Telesope Mount). I see that as antecedent to the design history section, with that (longer) section then available for the interested reader. I won't have time to work this up for a couple weeks, probably, so if anyone else wants to take a crack at it, go ahead. (In anticipation I'm also going to modify the section headings.)--Apascover (talk) 21:26, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Pictures

It looks to me like the same pic of Skylab from the departing Skylab 4 crew is used twice, but the first use (in the info bar) is cropped a bit. I suggest we pick one and cut the other. I like the lower use of it (where it shows the curvature of the Earth) better for aesthetic reasons, but I can also see how the one used in the info bar might be better for that purpose, as Skylab itself then takes up more of the picture, making it a bit more encyclopedic. So I'll let someone else decide on which one should be used or not, or just to leave it as is. Jedikaiti (talk) 18:05, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Mass

In the book U.S. Spacesuits it lists the launch mass as 90,606 kg, this contradicts what's currently listed (and un-sourced).--Craigboy (talk) 08:10, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

The 90,606 kg, as quoted by NSSDC for example, includes the mass of the Command/Service Module (CSM) when attached. See commons:File:General characteristics of the Skylab.jpg. I'm currently trying to find a good written source that clearly makes this point. The current 77-odd tons stated in the article is correct for the launch mass of the space station proper, as far as I know articles on Wikipedia tend to use just the station mass, e.g Mir. ChiZeroOne (talk) 08:28, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification.--Craigboy (talk) 00:31, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Pounds are not units of mass; they are units of weight. Can something be done about this? Perhaps put the mass in kg then say what the equivalent would be in pounds when earth's gravity is added? 199.239.46.254 (talk) 15:44, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Pounds can be either depending on circumstance/context. See Pound (mass) and Pound-force. -Fnlayson (talk) 18:08, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Deorbit Study

The NTRS just made available a document that indicates that sometime before June of 1973 NASA commissioned a study into de-orbiting Skylab using the Command/Service Module (CSM). Entitled "Skylab Hardware Evaluation SPS/SWS Deorbit Study, Analysis Report" and dated November 1973. I thought it might be worth incorporating into the article, but at present only the final report is online.Graham1973 (talk) 23:45, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Rendering of the Name Skylab

Since Skylab is the name of a vessel, why is it not italicized in the article? Isn't this generally done with the name of a vessel? (For example, RMS Titanic, Spirit of St. Louis, Space Shuttle Discovery, etc.)

I suggest the name be italicized, if no one else objects.

Sincerely, --Skb8721 (talk) 22:28, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

• I would object to that. In practise, few spacecraft names are italicised; Discovery is the exception rather than the rule, and Skylab is not one of the exceptions. --W. D. Graham 23:47, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Is Skylab a vessel? Calling space vehicles "vessels" is merely a colloquialism borrowed from nautical terminology rather than a formal designation. In fact as far as I know NASA does not italicise "Space Shuttle Discovery" for example, see NASA Space Shuttle. On a lot of articles on Wikipedia about non-nautical machines editors have italicised the name despite sources stating the contrary. ChiZeroOne (talk) 23:51, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

"20-ton film vault" - in reality more like 1.4 tons?

From the article: "The 20-ton film vault was lead-lined, for example, and might land intact at 400 feet per second."

Unfortunately i don't have access to the source cited: Lewis, Richard S. (1984). The voyages of Columbia: the first true spaceship. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-05924-8.

The mass stated contradicts another source I found, by a huge factor (about 14 times less): "Final Design. [...] One large aluminum casting with 12 drawers, 2 with 0.25 in. of shielding, 6 with 1.9 in., and 4 with 3.4 in. [...] The total weight of the vault was reported to be 2820 lb including contingencies and 445 lb of film magazines."

source: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19720002724_1972002724.pdf (Development of Skylab environmental protection for photographic film (George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, 1971) page 28

Does someone know why this discrepancy exists? Did the final design change another time, and include 20 tons of lead (instead of 1.4 tons of aluminum) for the protection of sensitive film onboard? Flo422 (talk) 23:39, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

I think it has to be a mistake; there's no way the "20 ton" number passes the common-sense test. (First, it's not clear whether U.S. or metric tons were meant.) 20 US tons is 11.8% of Skylab's 169,950 lb. mass, and 20 metric tons is an even bigger 26.0% of the total 77,088 kg. mass. I think it's highly unlikely such a large part of the mass would have been allocated to film storage. (Compare: 20 US tons is nearly the mass of the Apollo spacecraft used to ferry the astronauts.)

I can't really account for the discrepency though, not being familiar with Lewis. I am a bit suspicious of its position in the article, which seems to possibly flirt with POV by inflating the degree of danger posed by the reentry?

If we have better sources, we probably should change it. I know one or two of the NASA documents under Further reading should have weight breakdowns of the station components, which could help with the sanity check. JustinTime55 (talk) 19:47, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

clarification on the above incorrect comparison. 1 Metric ton is ~1.1023 US ton (added by 216.81.94.68 on 15 August 2019)

I'm the editor who inserted the text. The relevant paragraph from the book (search for "Battelle" from the cite to find the page in Google Books) states:

A study by the Battelle Memorial Institute showed that as much as 25 tons of metal would reach the ground in 500 pieces or more. The largest probably would be the 4,950-pound airlock shroud and the 39,600-pound lead-lined film vault, which Battelle figured might fall as one piece with an impact velocity of 393.6 feet a second. In addition, there were six 2,650-pound oxygen tanks on board, and a 14,960-pound bulkhead that might survive reentry heating.

Ylee (talk) 21:16, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

It seems quite likely the 39,600 pound figure might be a typo; 3,960 pounds is more believable. And perhaps a bit more detailed paraphrase of the BMI study's concerns would have been in order. It sounds like the bulkhead and airlock module would be the bigger concerns.

I know I saw a component-by-component breakdown of the station weights in a NASA report, which I can't find quickly. However, [EP-107 Skylab: A Guidebook, chapter 4] gives a table of estimated film weights, and a picture which shows two film vaults stored in the Multiple Docking Adapter [Figure 86]. JustinTime55 (talk) 16:40, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

A typo makes sense. I've rewritten the relevant portion of the article to avoid mentioning the film vault's mass and focus on the 25 tons of metal debris. Ylee (talk) 17:18, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Reentry: odds of hitting person vs. particular person

Airforce narrows guess on Skylab fall, Milwaukee Sentinel, Washington D.C. (UPI), page 2, July 3, 1979: " . . The space agency estimates there is one chance in 152 of one injury occurring somewhere around the world, and one chance in 600 billion that any specific individual will be hit. . "

This might make for an interesting tidbit of information to include. The different kinds of odds, depending on what question is being asked. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 19:11, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

I remember hearing that the only human casualty was a guy in Manila who became so frightened over the news stories he'd been reading that he jumped from his balcony, waving with his arms and calling out "Aaarghh!! Skylab, Skylab!!" - and died when he hit the lawn a few floors down. ;) 83.254.151.33 (talk) 02:57, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

40 years later, NASA considers Skylab 2 to be placed in L2 orbit....

I was happily surprised by this MSNBC article which I will post the link to:

http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/14/18252648-40-years-later-plan-for-skylab-ii-takes-shape?lite

Apparently NASA is serious about starting Skylab 2. They will use the upcoming Mega Lift Rocket the SLS to carry Skylab 2 to L2 Orbit. I am not sure how far they are on their planning, or if this is just one of billions of Ideals that will eventually be tossed as unworkable due to budget etc. Not sure how you all want to handle this info, if you want to start a new page or add it as a side note to this article. Its a Miracle that I am able to type this much, My Heart took a turn for the worse yesterday but news of Skylab 2 made my day.

Magnum Serpentine Magnum Serpentine (talk) 18:47, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

(First, sorry about your health issues.) We already have a Skylab II page started, thanks. Skylab 2 was the first manned mission to the Skylab, back in 1973.

(BTW, this beautifully illustrates the appropriateness of Roman vs. arabic numerals in mission numbering, which has been debated elsewhere. "Skylab II" indicates a second (or in this case, "son of") Skylab, rather than just sequential missions. NASA started a fad officially using Roman numerals for the Gemini program, which they reconsidered for Apollo. The fact that some crews chose to use the Roman numerals on their patches was purely a style issue and didn't make it "official".) JustinTime55 (talk) 16:53, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Italics in title?

Mir has italics for its page title. And since "Skylab" is a proper noun and not like a series of common nouns like "International Space Station", should "Skylab" be italicized? Does anyone know if the manual of style clearly covers space stations? Transphasic (talk) 02:03, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

The spirit of the MOS:ITALICS is understood to apply to named vehicles, e.g. ships, aircraft, and by extension spacecraft and space stations. That being said, whether or not it applies really is determined by whether or not the space article has been named ("christened"), not whether proper nouns are used. Mir apparently was the first, semi-permanent station which the Soviets named Peace or World. By contrast, "Skylab" came from a catchy name NASA decided to give to replace Apollo Applications Program. It was a simple, temporary orbital laboratory and not really a "space station" in the sense of Mir or ISS. As a program name, I think it is no different from Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, or Space Transportation System (the Space Shuttle) and thus should not be italicized. So I think it depends on whether or not we can consider the Skylab a named vehicle; I don't think I've ever seen it referred to as such outside of Wikipedia.

Appropriately italicied examples: Freedom 7, Molly Brown (Gus Grissom's name for the Gemini 3), Eagle, Columbia (Apollo 11 Command Module and a Space Shuttle), Challenger (Apollo 17 Lunar Module and a Space Shuttle), Mir, etc. (In most cases, these seem to not be used as article titles.)

Not appropriately italicized: Vostok 1, Mercury-Redstone 3, Gemini 3, Apollo 11, etc. JustinTime55 (talk) 16:44, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

I guess you're right. I'll leave Skylab without italics. Transphasic (talk) 19:03, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

"LEM" vs. "LM"; and whether or not it was pronounced

Listen to the recorded video and voice transmission of Neil Armstrong's first moonwalk; just before he takes his first step, he very clearly says, "Okay, I'm going to step off of the lem now" (and several other times he refers to "the lem".) How it got that way is complicated, and explained in the Apollo Lunar Module article. It was originally "Lunar Excursion Module" and pronounced as the acronym LEM. But pretty early in its development, NASA figured "excursion" wasn't quite right, sounding more like a lunar rover, so they shortened it to the Lunar Module (LM). However, the astronauts and flight controllers got into the habit of continuing to pronounce the acronym, rather than saying "lunar module" or "L-M". No one was ever heard pronouncng the letters L-E-M.

I don't know if LEM was still used when Apollo Applications Program came along; I think we should probably change it here to LM. Now the problem remains for of how to clarify "a LM" (correct because of the above) rather than "an LM", without going on a tangent of unnecessary detail. Any ideas? JustinTime55 (talk) 14:23, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

As I said, it's just how I seem to remember it, and as I am from the wrong side of the pond, my memory carries probably little weight. Cheers IdreamofJeanie (talk) 16:50, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

The cow ?

There are numerous reverences to a cow that was hit by the return of Skylab. Why are none of them in the article / talk?

Johnson points out that no one has ever been seriously injured by space debris, although there are anecdotal reports that a cow was killed by debris from the Skylab space station, which re-entered over Australia in 1979. (Pulled form a cached article)

"One cow was reported killed" Bomarc (talk) 22:24, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

References

"no one" clearly means no people. What makes 'one cow was reportedly killed' significant enough to mention? This seems non-notable to me, especially considered it is based on anecdotal reports. -Fnlayson (talk) 23:32, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Space endurance records

BatteryIncluded's recent updates imply that Skylab set only American endurance records, and that the Soviet stations set longer records. This was not true at the time; although the Russians were first to launch the Salyut 1 station in June 1971, they set the first endurance record at only 23 days. Skylab 2 broke this in June 1973 with 28 days, then 56 days on Skylab 3 in September, then 84 days on Skylab 4 February 8, 1974. The Russians had a string of bad luck with their stations and did not break the Skylab records until March 1978, when a Salyut 6 expedition set a new record of 96 days. JustinTime55 (talk) 20:37, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Experiments Section

If it is agreed that the table shouldn't be big enough to be legible, then I would recommend duplicating the table in text and removing the image. There isn't really a point in having a giant table there that you can't read that messes with the formatting of the article, in my opinion. Thoughts? Kees08 (talk) 04:38, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

More on Raising Skylab's Orbit

As I read the article, I'd like it to include more on the plan to raise Skylab's orbit. I assume it did not have an engine. How did they plan on doing it?66.25.171.16 (talk) 23:47, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Thrusters. BatteryIncluded (talk) 02:28, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

This is basically covered in the article; Plan A using the Shuttle, would have used the Teleoperator Retrieval System, a little space tug that would have docked to the Skylab and push it to the higher orbit (which is already in Shuttle mission plans); Plan B, using an Apollo CSM as Skylab 5 would have used the Apollo's Service Propulsion System engine to do the same thing. It's really moot, anyway. JustinTime55 (talk) 13:26, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Neutral point of view

"Unfortunately the station was damaged during launch..." I removed "unfortunately" because it is unarguably a subjective judgement, and therefore violates the neutral viewpoint. (I mean, I agree that it was unfortunate, but WP shouldn't be taking a stance.) User:Scaraway reverted me. What are other editors' thoughts about this? Equinox ◑ 05:14, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

How's this for one of life's many ironies: our WP:EDITORIAL guideline can be more subjective (controversial) than this use of unfortunately (as you have admitted, you agree with it.) Only a very sick individual would think the station's damage was "fortunate". But I can see both points of view, and I think it's a coin toss; not really worth arguing about. I think we should be concerned with more substantial violations of the guideline: controversial, unsubstantiated words that place undue emphasis or importance, presume too much about the reader's knowledge, or could imply a WP:synthesis. JustinTime55 (talk) 12:35, 9 August 2016 (UTC)