And we had Skylab, which got off to a bumpy start involving overheating. One of the solar panel didn’t deploy, if I remember right…
At least Skylab didn’t cost something like 15 aircraft carriers (the ISS). One launch, one space station. And we didn’t have to share it with the whole civilized world (meaning not the Chinese). The neat thing about it was wondering where 100 tons of sizzling steel were going to smack down when they found out its orbit had decayed.
I think one didnt fully deploy and the other was torn off along with the heat shield. I was ~10 when they launched skylab and I remember going out that evening to watch it fly over in the night sky. We expected to see one bright light, and instead we saw a train of seven bright objects come across the sky.
Not quite. Skylab did have one of it’s solar panels that did not deploy, because it was ripped off during launch. The thing that caused overheating was one of the outer panels which was also ripped off during launch and exposed the under skin of the space station. They ended up having to put a tent over the exposed part to prevent overheating.