Talk:Skylab controversy

New BBC report

The BBC website has a new report on the incident, including an interview with Ed Gibson: Skylab: The myth of the mutiny in space - BBC News JezGrove (talk) 11:30, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Nice! This is the first reliable secondary source to disprove years of apparent misinformation, I'm satisfied with its reporting. ɱ (talk) 13:18, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

I've added that report as least to explain the events as Gibson reports (I am assuming he's telling factually what happened), but I think a refactoring of this article is need to frame around this, putting the myths into a separate section. --Masem (t) 17:07, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Someone will have to explain to me why the exact same information as relayed by Dr Ed Gibson, featured in a multi-award winning documentary about Skylab released two years ealier was actively fought against but yet a BBC report with the same astronaut saying the same thing is now accepted as reliable. (talk) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.16.163.244 (talk) 21:11, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

I wasn't involved with the RFCs on the matter a few years ago but looking at the logic, it was really poor, claiming the weight of RSes over the authorative primary sources. The biggest changes are clearer articles from both the BBC (in Gibson's interview) and a 2020 NASA article outlining how the myth likely came about that do a better job than we can in terms of original research; that is, NASA, Gibson, etc can assemble the facts they know from their POV and even though they are still primary, their own research is not an issue for us to incorporate as compared to us reviewing transcripts/etc. and making the call there was no mutiny given that I didn't see much that expressly said "there was no mutiny" in pre-2020 sources. --Masem (t) 21:53, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Dubious period without comms

My original research (which I intend to publish, but just haven't been able to find the time to write for publication yet), reveals no unexpected periods of non-communication. From my own tracing of the account, a lack of communications never came up until Balbacky's account. If there was any period of non-communication, it would show in the transcripts, and we have nothing of the sort, and certainly not on December 28 (a day plucked out of a reading of Cooper by Balbacky), and there is no contemporary reporting of it. Even though Gibson and NASA have talked about this alleged period of non-communication, it came after Balbacky. To be anything other than dubious, it would need to be attested in some form before an urban legend spun up alleging misconduct. While the facts demonstrating its dubiousness are not suitable for inclusion in our article because they are not attested in secondary sources, we certainly can flag sources as suspect because critical thinking and determination in talk pages about the reliability of the information leads us to suspect it might not be accurate. -- ke4roh (talk) 14:21, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

First, much of what you are describing is original research. We put far more much weight in the first-hand accounts than second-hand. What we certainly want to move away from is the urban legend claim that they shut off communications and went on strike. But key is the difference between a lack of being able to make contact verses a complete loss of communications (the latter would be more a technical problem). I can actually see on the transcripts (page 118 of [1]) the point where mission control tried to contact Skylab but failed to get word back, but regained it next orbit (which they chalked up to telemetry problems initially and nothing of immediate concern). --Masem (t) 16:05, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I see the contact problem you're referencing in the transcript - it occurred between 12/29/1973 01:01 GMT (which would be the 28th in the U.S.), and 12/29/1073 01:10 GMT - a span of nine minutes as they passed over the relay station at Tananarive. PAO said that the ground station had trouble aiming their antenna at Skylab. Nobody questioned or, to my knowledge, investigated that, and the next AOS at 01:25 GMT included bi-directional voice communication. The only reason we know about this lack of communication today traces to Balbacky's invention of the radio being off, ultimately spurring our poring through transcripts. This particular outage is therefore not notable and not worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia. *If* we could find a secondary source that pins the alleged radio outage on some specific time that we might corroborate in the transcript or in some independent secondary source, particularly prior to 1976, then I would be happy to see it included in the article. In the meantime, the allegation that there might have been sloppy comms work on the part of the astronauts are dubious at best, and claims of an outage of an entire orbit (90 minutes) or a whole day are absurd. -- ke4roh (talk) 13:51, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Since I'm having a hard time tracking the time (not date) of when the reported problem occurred, I can find a second period on the 12/28 logs of missed communication that could also b the case. FWIW 12/28 logs start on page 63 and run until page 135. There is a period on page 91 that they also failed to get response back from Skylab, which gives a 40 minute window (+ 20 from the end of the prior log) which they had not heard back from Skylab, but you can see from these logs in general that ground control didn't seem to panic when they didn't get word back from Skylab. But that said, yeah, I can't seem to find a 90min period (excluding the midnight-6am part when the crew was asleep). I see the concern here and I think there's a way to write this to avoid the 'one orbit' aspect. --Masem (t) 15:06, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. The first mention of any specific date was Balbacky. Cooper just said "end of the sixth week". There are a few different dates mentioned, as well, e.g. the first mention of "Mutiny" gives December 25.[2][3] I gave some discussion of this in the talk archive. It also might be helpful to have a look at this old revision. -- ke4roh (talk) 16:36, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Here's where we have to take the first-party's (NASA + Gibson's) word at this, including NASA affirming that the legend is likely confusing the date with a known day off on Dec 26. They make it very clear and which can be checked by the order of events: Dec 25 was the spacewalk for the comet, they were given the normal day off on Dec 26, and Dec 28 is the day of the missed communication, Dec 29 was second spacewalk for comet, such that by Dec 30, they had the chat with CAPCOM on relaxing the schedule ( see [4] starting page 100, ending about 119. We cannot touch Cooper as reliable at this point, despite his past reliability, given that we can tell from NASA, Gibson, and the transcript that nothing of the scale he reported happened. --Masem (t) 17:59, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

That is the timeline according to the urban legend. As you say, nothing of Cooper's scale happened. My understanding of the situation is that Cooper was (probably) in a rush to write this bit, he had seen the Molly Ivins article, and he mixed up the timeline while writing the paragraph, to suggest that there was some "sort of sit-down strike in space" before a heart-to-heart conversation which undeniably happened December 30. Ivins, however, quotes Carr about their day off, saying, "We rebelled," and "[i]t was the day of the great camera orgy." We can see from the transcripts that that particular day off was January 10, it was scheduled, and the very idea of rebellion is humorous (bear in mind Molly Ivins was a humorist). -- ke4roh (talk) 18:35, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Aha, I see what you're saying, reading between the lines. Dec 28 is the possibly mistaken date from the legend (everything else on the 25, 26, 29 and 30th can be documented). I'm still finding stories that say at some point that they failed to respond to ground control for a whole orbit (eg [5] though not a usable ref) but the date is unclear and while Gibson says its before the Dec 30 session, that may be a faulty memory? I have to think about that more, but I think its good to present the 28th as the legend's date until we can be clear on it. --Masem (t) 19:00, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Exactly! Balbacky gives us the first specific date we have, which she worked out from Cooper's "end of the second week" to be December 27. She gives quotes from December 30 as happening at that time, and says "When complaints and blistering language failed to get their message across, the astronauts turned off the radio and would not talk to ground control Houston," and that is the first time the radio is purportedly off (Cooper makes no such claim). Balbacky and Cooper are the sources for these dates. I agree that the 28th appears to be the most popular, though the 27th is also up there. That's the trouble with urban legends, though. Those who report them don't care enough to check the facts against more reliable sources first. I suspect Gibson has heard this story so many times and been asked about it relentlessly so has come up with the most plausible explanation he can - that they missed a turn answering the radio. I think that's a false memory. I also don't think he heard any complaints about this "mutiny" before Cooper '76, since I surely haven't been able to find any accounts of it prior. I hope to ask Gibson about that directly. -- ke4roh (talk) 20:22, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

As you can see, I specifically took out any factual claim of what date that the short period of "oops we forgot to turn on our radios" happen - but otherwise is definitely something that did happen and from the various accounts sometime likely before Dec 30. But then reworded the urban myth to give that date since that's central to it. I still think that while I yet can't find in the transcript when this happened, there was a period of one orbit that they missed communications, but now that it could be anywhere in the 82day mission logs, I'm not going to stress on finding it, and unless we have a reliable source that firms that date, its best to just it happened mid-mission. --Masem (t) 20:58, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

So, while you guys are hammering out some of the content and sourcing here, what-say we create a condensed version of this page and move it over as a section of the main Skylab page? There was a proposal a while back with a consensus to merge, but that didn't happen for some reason. Perhaps we can see that through now? - wolf 22:52, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

The main Skylab article doesn't seem to have a good section on the individual missions (since each mission has a page about it), but there ought to be a Legacy or Impact section, which is more than just the effects of this "strike" but like what lessons learned from Skylab led to other NASA missions, etc. If that was added, then a brief brief paragraph there would make sense. There is a section in Skylab 4 which is far too long and I'm going to trim that down. I will state that the concept of the "Skylab strike" despite it being wrong or an urban legend is still very much notable, and this page should still exist where the indepth details of what actually happened and what was misreported can be discussed; the other pages about Skyline should only touch on it briefly. --Masem (t) 00:19, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Typo... I meant the Skylab 4 page. (and "Skyline" ? I think you just a typo as well) Anyway, Skylab 4 is the page that the community had determined this page should be merged into. For all the space this minor urban legend really needs, there is plenty of room on the Skylab 4 page (it's only 30kb total right now, 5kb of which is the current controversy section). This page is somewhat bloated and basically an unnecessary content fork. - wolf 01:31, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Ah, I see the merge notice, though that was from 2018 and obviously when the article was in a state that put the myth over fact. That said, I think merge is still a good option at the present size. I had already edited the Skylab 4 article where a full version of the prior state of this article was added. I think just having a quick straw to see if there's any major objections to that merge exist and then it can be done, since some time and significant change has happened. --Masem (t) 01:51, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

That sounds perfectly reasonable. - wolf 02:33, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi, @Thewolfchild:, LTNS indeed. Yes, I'd like to see this article condensed and merged over ASAP. Time to wash the storm out of the teacup, or something. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 04:57, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Basic merge now done, lots of cleanup still to do. If anybody knows about the merging of edit histories or whatever, please feel free. I'll take care of What links here stuff. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 05:32, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

I've added the {{copied}} template for attribution facets and did some initial cleanup there. I don't think we need to do merge histories though unless this was determined to be an unnecessary spinout? --Masem (t) 13:44, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Nice job guys. - wolf 14:22, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

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