Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and a love of all things tech. And just in
Speaker 1: case this sounds different, it's because I'm once again recording
Speaker 1: on my own equipment, but in the office studio. So
Speaker 1: just in case you think it sounds weird, and it's
Speaker 1: not just me, that's why. But we recently did a
Speaker 1: history of the evolution of the space suit and how
Speaker 1: countries like Russia and the United States dedicated millions of
Speaker 1: dollars in research and development to create suits that would
Speaker 1: help astronauts and cosmonauts survive the rigors of traveling to
Speaker 1: space and then back to Earth. I mentioned the International
Speaker 1: Space Station a couple of times in that series and thought,
Speaker 1: you know, I haven't really done any episodes talking about
Speaker 1: space stations or how the I s S came to
Speaker 1: be and what folks do up there as they whizz
Speaker 1: around the Earth at four point seven six miles per
Speaker 1: second or seven point six six kilometers per second for
Speaker 1: you know, everyone who's not in the US. And I
Speaker 1: figured that it was more than past time to cover
Speaker 1: these sort of things, because you know, the modules that
Speaker 1: make up the I S S were originally rated for
Speaker 1: a fifteen year lifespan, but the first modules for the
Speaker 1: International Space Station launched in So if you do your math,
Speaker 1: that means that puts the fifteen year market two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: and we are well past that as it stands. There's
Speaker 1: hope that we could see the I S S continue
Speaker 1: to operate for another few years to hit that thirty
Speaker 1: year mark, but recently we've seen some claims that suggest
Speaker 1: the end might need to come a little earlier than
Speaker 1: that if we want to avert catastrophe, because parts of
Speaker 1: the I S S are a little worse for where
Speaker 1: But of course this is tech stuff that means we
Speaker 1: have to dive into a lot of history before we
Speaker 1: get to the I S S. In fact, spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: we won't be touching on the International Space Station in
Speaker 1: this episode. We'll be getting that in a later one.
Speaker 1: So the International Space Station was not the first space
Speaker 1: station in orbit. That honor goes to the first Saliot
Speaker 1: space Station, and there were multiple of those, and those
Speaker 1: came from the then Soviet Union. Now earlier this year
Speaker 1: we passed the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Saliot
Speaker 1: one that got off the ground literally on April nineteenth,
Speaker 1: ninety one. Now, this space station is important for quite
Speaker 1: a few reasons. Not only was it the first space station,
Speaker 1: but elements in the Saliot would continue down through a
Speaker 1: line of different space station and spacecraft designs out of
Speaker 1: the U. S. S R, and then later out of
Speaker 1: Russia to find their way into components that are now
Speaker 1: part of the International Space Station. So it's all going
Speaker 1: to tie together in the end. But first, let's talk
Speaker 1: about Salute, which means salute. Surprisingly enough, it got its
Speaker 1: start in the nineteen sixties with Soviet scientists discussing the
Speaker 1: possibility of developing a space station specifically for military purposes.
Speaker 1: So this project had the name alamas A l m
Speaker 1: ay Z, which means diamond in Russian and I'm sure
Speaker 1: I'm mispronouncing it. My apologies to all you Russian speakers
Speaker 1: out there. So the real purpose of the Alma's stations
Speaker 1: were to serve as reconnaissance operations, so spying. In other words. Now,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, it's not incredibly wise to advertise that you're
Speaker 1: engaged in spying. It's kind of defeats the purpose. So
Speaker 1: the Soviets decided that they would mask that and they
Speaker 1: would launch a series of civilian space stations UH specifically
Speaker 1: dedicated to scientific research, and then they would just kind
Speaker 1: of hide the military ones in the mix. So some
Speaker 1: of those stations would genuinely be about scientific exploration and experimentation,
Speaker 1: some of them were more about peeping on the neighbors. Also.
Speaker 1: The original plan was for the Alma's stations to be
Speaker 1: modular in design, but the success of the Apollo eleven
Speaker 1: moon landing in nineteen sixty nine spurred the Soviets to
Speaker 1: move up their timeline and that necessitated a change in plans.
Speaker 1: So instead of going with the modular Alma's space station,
Speaker 1: which would mean that you would have to launch components
Speaker 1: in separate launches, and then crews would need to go
Speaker 1: up into space and assemble those modules together to create
Speaker 1: a space station, the Soviets decided to instead rely on
Speaker 1: a Salute design and all in one space station that
Speaker 1: could be launched fully constructed into space. The first Saliot
Speaker 1: was one of the civilian missions, so not one of
Speaker 1: the secret military ones. UH. Saliot two, three, and five
Speaker 1: were all military projects, so they were really mixed in
Speaker 1: there also, Quickside notes Saliot to suffered a catastrophic failure
Speaker 1: just two weeks of it being launched into orbit. The
Speaker 1: station depressurized after a collision with a part of the
Speaker 1: launch vehicle system and ended up moving lower in orbit
Speaker 1: until it re entered the our atmosphere and broke apart. Now,
Speaker 1: fortunately there were no cosmonauts aboard because no Soviet crew
Speaker 1: had yet visited the launched station, which meant that no
Speaker 1: lives were lost as a result of this incident. So
Speaker 1: to visit a Saliot station, in order to get there,
Speaker 1: crew of cosmonauts would launch inside a Soyu's space capsule
Speaker 1: talked about those in the space suit episodes, and this
Speaker 1: capsule would be you know, attached to a launch vehicle,
Speaker 1: a rocket in other words, and the Soyus capsule would
Speaker 1: get launched into orbit and that would be on a
Speaker 1: trajectory to dock with the Salut station using a new
Speaker 1: probe and drogue docking system. So the probe is the
Speaker 1: part that you know, docks inside the drogue. And it
Speaker 1: was originally going to have the name Zaria, the original
Speaker 1: original space station was. In fact, it had that name
Speaker 1: so long the engineers actually painted the name on the spacecraft.
Speaker 1: It had the name Zaria on it. That means dawn
Speaker 1: by the way. However, for several reasons, and they were
Speaker 1: all pretty valid ones, the Soviets decided that they needed
Speaker 1: to rename the spacecraft, so they renamed Saliot. But there
Speaker 1: wasn't enough time to give the space station a new
Speaker 1: paint jobs, so while it was named Saliott, it had
Speaker 1: the name Zaria painted on it. Also, the development of
Speaker 1: the Saliot station had some drama attached to it, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to do a full episode about the
Speaker 1: Soviet era space program to talk more about not just
Speaker 1: the program and the technology used and the goals of
Speaker 1: the program, but also the rivalries that existed within the
Speaker 1: program itself. So the guy who designed the Soya's spacecraft
Speaker 1: was Seragei Korolov, and the guy who came up with
Speaker 1: the Alma's Reconnaissance station, which eventually got merged into the
Speaker 1: Saliot program was Vladimir Chellamy and Chelloman also designed the
Speaker 1: Transport Supply Ship or the t k S that was
Speaker 1: designed to resupply the Alma's space station. And these two,
Speaker 1: these two Soviets had some pretty intense battles within the
Speaker 1: Soviet space program, and each attempted to level ridge various
Speaker 1: political favors in order to push their own projects ahead
Speaker 1: of the other. So I will have to do a
Speaker 1: full episode about that at some point. It's pretty fascinating.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about the first Saliot space station briefly.
Speaker 1: The main part of the station was cylindrical. It measured
Speaker 1: forty eight feet long or about fourteen point six meters,
Speaker 1: and it was a stepped cylinder, so in other words,
Speaker 1: like it wasn't a smooth cylinder. There were sections of
Speaker 1: the cylinder that had uh different diameters, right, so you
Speaker 1: might have a few meters of of space that are
Speaker 1: one diameter and the next few are different. So at
Speaker 1: its widest section, which was the rear of the spacecraft,
Speaker 1: it measured thirteen point nine feet or four point to
Speaker 1: five meters in diameter, and inside there was around three
Speaker 1: thousand five cubic feet of volume for the cosmonauts to
Speaker 1: live and work in, and as a NASA page on
Speaker 1: the topic puts it, it was about the size of
Speaker 1: a large in ground swimming pool. Inside there though not
Speaker 1: the shape, but you know, same sort of space. The
Speaker 1: station solar arrays that collected energy from the Sun to
Speaker 1: power the station were really important, right. They were using
Speaker 1: solar power to provide electrical power to the station, and
Speaker 1: it also had a lot of scientific equipment aboard, enough
Speaker 1: that the equipment weighed two thousand, six hundred pounds here
Speaker 1: on Earth or just under one thousand. It had antenna
Speaker 1: to allow it to transmit messages back to Earth. Very important,
Speaker 1: and the cosmonauts were meant to inhabit the station, conduct
Speaker 1: observations and experiments using the various equipment and telescopes aboard
Speaker 1: the station, and generally pushed science forward by leagues. Heck,
Speaker 1: the cosmonauts themselves were technically experiments because no one was
Speaker 1: really sure what the long term effects of a prolonged
Speaker 1: mission in space might be on the human body. Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course there were the military operations as well,
Speaker 1: where cosmonauts would be conducting reconnaissance missions rather than scientific ones. Now,
Speaker 1: the station include did a refrigerator and a food warmer.
Speaker 1: Cosmonauts wore special suits that provided resistance to major muscle
Speaker 1: groups in order to you know, exercise, and the reason
Speaker 1: for that was to fight against the tendency for cosmonauts
Speaker 1: to lose significant muscle mass while just maneuvering through a
Speaker 1: microgravity environment. The resistance meant that just moving around would
Speaker 1: require a bit more exertion than normal, and the station
Speaker 1: also had a treadmill as well as elastic restraints to
Speaker 1: hold you onto the treadmill so that the cosmonauts could
Speaker 1: take exercise. For the same reasons, you know, you wanted
Speaker 1: to fight against things like muscle loss and bone density
Speaker 1: loss as best you could. Unfortunately, when the first Saliot
Speaker 1: space station innered orbit in April nineteen seventy one, the
Speaker 1: protective cover for the scientific instruments stayed in place rather
Speaker 1: than jettisoning off from the station as was planned, and
Speaker 1: that meant that a lot of those experiments just couldn't
Speaker 1: happen because the instruments were still covered by a casing
Speaker 1: you couldn't remove. Still, the station was habitable, and on
Speaker 1: April the Saya's ten space capsule launched, carrying three cosmonauts
Speaker 1: headed off to move into the station. Only there was
Speaker 1: an issue. The probe and drogue apparatus failed to create
Speaker 1: a good docking seal, so there was no hard lock
Speaker 1: with the space station, so the crew of the capsule
Speaker 1: could not make the transfer over into the space station,
Speaker 1: so they were forced to ultimately return home without having
Speaker 1: gone into the space station. But then a subsequent crew
Speaker 1: aboard the next capsule, Soya's eleven, which had a newly
Speaker 1: designed probe to interlocked, interlocked with the drogue mechanism on
Speaker 1: the space station that launched on June six of that year.
Speaker 1: So the first saliot did eventually get a crew, it
Speaker 1: just took a couple of tries. That crew stayed aboard
Speaker 1: the station for twenty four days. That was a record
Speaker 1: for the amount of time spent in space at that point,
Speaker 1: and tragically that crew perished on their way back to Earth.
Speaker 1: In fact, from what I understand, these are the only people,
Speaker 1: at least acknowledged anyway, who have died in space. There's
Speaker 1: been a lot of accidents related to space missions, but
Speaker 1: most of them have happened within the atmosphere of Earth.
Speaker 1: Um this one did not. The Saya's capsule de pressurized
Speaker 1: and tragically all three crew member died as a result,
Speaker 1: And in fact, this was the tragedy that would change
Speaker 1: the way the Soviet Union approached the Sayers capsule and
Speaker 1: space suits. If you remember from the space suit episodes,
Speaker 1: the Soviets decided for a while that they just would
Speaker 1: do away with pressure suits and space suits for any
Speaker 1: missions that didn't require extra vehicular activities, that is, spacewalks.
Speaker 1: But after the disaster of Saya's eleven, the Soviets then
Speaker 1: redesigned the Saya's capsule and it would only carry a
Speaker 1: crew of two cosmonauts instead of three, and that would
Speaker 1: allow enough space inside the capsule for both of those
Speaker 1: cosmonauts to wear pressurized space suits during launch and landing
Speaker 1: to protect against the sort of thing and to at
Speaker 1: least give them a chance. As for that first space station,
Speaker 1: it remained in orbit for one days, and the redesign
Speaker 1: of the Sayus capsule meant that no other crew was
Speaker 1: going to be able to visit Salut before it was
Speaker 1: no longer habitable, and so the Soviets chose to de
Speaker 1: orbit the space station so that it would re enter
Speaker 1: their atmosphere and break apart over the Pacific Ocean. So
Speaker 1: only one crew actually got to the first Saliot space station,
Speaker 1: and we already mentioned that the second Saliot space station,
Speaker 1: the first of the military ones, experienced catastrophic failure, again
Speaker 1: fortunately without anyone inside it, but then the Soviets launched
Speaker 1: lots of other ones, and the third space station went
Speaker 1: up just a few days before the United States was
Speaker 1: to launch its own first space station, and we'll get
Speaker 1: to that in a little bit. But anyway, that third
Speaker 1: one also failed to achieve orbit and would receive the
Speaker 1: name Cosmos five five seven, And information on that is
Speaker 1: kind of limited. The Soviets were incredibly secretive with their
Speaker 1: space program, and so finding reliable sources that talk about
Speaker 1: hard facts is difficult. You get a lot of you
Speaker 1: get a lot of speculation, and you get a lot
Speaker 1: of reports that may or may not be reliable. In fact,
Speaker 1: NASA just described this as quote an unmanned Soya's type
Speaker 1: vehicle end quote, and that the funding agency is quote
Speaker 1: unknown end quote. But then in parentheses behind that says USSR.
Speaker 1: So I guess kind of known. Anyway, The actual Salut
Speaker 1: three mission, which was one of the military missions disguised
Speaker 1: as a civilian one, reportedly included the testing of a
Speaker 1: twenty three millimeter gun attached to the stage sation so
Speaker 1: like um like a conventional gun actually as part of
Speaker 1: a station weaponry. Now there's very little information on this,
Speaker 1: so I hesitate to relay any stories about it. And besides,
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff has actually contradictory reports, so it's
Speaker 1: hard for me to say what happened because there are
Speaker 1: accounts that contradict each other. But yeah, at least according
Speaker 1: to some stories, this was the first spacecraft to be weaponized,
Speaker 1: and at least some of the stories indicate that the
Speaker 1: Soviets did test fire it while the space station was
Speaker 1: an orbit, though supposedly not when any crew were actually
Speaker 1: aboard the space station, So the command to fire the
Speaker 1: gun was given from the ground. The way this gun
Speaker 1: was on the station. By the way, you couldn't move
Speaker 1: the gun to point at targets. You would actually have
Speaker 1: to reorient the entire station to point at whatever it
Speaker 1: was you're going to fire at. Uh, don't have much
Speaker 1: more information about that. Got a lot of speculation though.
Speaker 1: In total, there were seven official Saliot space stations, but
Speaker 1: nine attempts. The Cosmos five five seven was one of
Speaker 1: the failed attempts, and another one was called the do
Speaker 1: OS two space station. Both of those failed to achieve orbits,
Speaker 1: so they didn't get the Saliot designation. Then again, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, the Saliot to space station achieved orbit that
Speaker 1: had to be de orbited within two weeks due to malfunctions.
Speaker 1: Saliot six and seven were of a different design than
Speaker 1: their predecessors. The older Saliot stations had a single docking
Speaker 1: port at one end of the cylinder, and that's where
Speaker 1: the Soya's capsule would connect to the station, But six
Speaker 1: and seven had two docking ports, one on either end,
Speaker 1: so the Soyas capsule could dock at one side of
Speaker 1: the cylinder and the other side could serve as a
Speaker 1: docking point for resupply ships. In addition, it made it
Speaker 1: possible for a second Soyas capsule to dock with the station,
Speaker 1: so you could have two crews aboard the station at
Speaker 1: one each with you know, two cosmonauts, and they can
Speaker 1: meet at the space station simultaneously. This allowed the Soviets
Speaker 1: to have some guest cosmonauts go on trips to the
Speaker 1: space stations in orbit. The cargo ships called Progress were
Speaker 1: automated and they would dock with new supply so there
Speaker 1: was no crew aboard these, it was just you know,
Speaker 1: resupply ships. These were all important steps towards creating the
Speaker 1: next generation of space stations. Now the first six Saliot
Speaker 1: space stations launched in the nineteen seventies. Most of them
Speaker 1: re entered the R's atmosphere just a few months after
Speaker 1: they had launched, so they didn't stay up there for
Speaker 1: very long. Saliot five stuck around a little bit longer.
Speaker 1: It launched in June nineteen seventy six and stayed up
Speaker 1: until August of nineteen seventy seven, so it was up
Speaker 1: for more than a year. Saliot six went up in
Speaker 1: September nineteen seventy seven and re entered Earth's atmosphere in
Speaker 1: July of nineteen eighty two, so it was up there
Speaker 1: for about five years. Then the final mission launched in
Speaker 1: April nineteen eighty two and stayed up until February, so
Speaker 1: nearly a decade. Pretty impressive for an early space station design.
Speaker 1: The civilian stations all had a core module that had
Speaker 1: the designation d O S, so that d O S
Speaker 1: two was one of those. The military stations had a
Speaker 1: core modular designation as h O P S. The d
Speaker 1: S design would then extend beyond the saliott era into
Speaker 1: the next phase of the Soviet Union's space program, which
Speaker 1: would include the Mirror, which spoiler alert, we also won't
Speaker 1: get to in this episode. But when we come back,
Speaker 1: we'll switch over to talk about sky Lab for a bit,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a break. So, the Soviets were
Speaker 1: launching space stations in nineteen one, and it would take
Speaker 1: a couple of years before the United States was ready
Speaker 1: to follow suit. But we've got some overlap that we
Speaker 1: need to talk about, because obviously the stuff isn't just happening,
Speaker 1: you know, one after the other. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff happening at the same time. And actually we need
Speaker 1: to backtrack as far as the late nineteen fifties and
Speaker 1: the scientist Werner von Braun. His is a complicated history,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty nice way of saying he was
Speaker 1: once a Nazi, or at least he worked for the
Speaker 1: Nazis during World War Two developing long range rocket based weaponry,
Speaker 1: and he was one of the engineers responsible for the
Speaker 1: infamous V two rocket. Some accounts suggest that he wasn't
Speaker 1: particularly sympathetic to the Nazis, but rather worked under them
Speaker 1: because he had little choice unless he was to abandon
Speaker 1: his life's pursuit of engineering. And so essentially he was saying,
Speaker 1: I had to work for them. They were the ones
Speaker 1: who were letting me do science. Now I find that
Speaker 1: explanation somewhat unconvincing and certainly not satisfying, but at any rate,
Speaker 1: Von Brown, along with more than fift hundred other German
Speaker 1: engineers and scientists, where they were all secretly away to
Speaker 1: America after World War Two as part of Operation paper Clip.
Speaker 1: So while the United States and the rest of the
Speaker 1: world we're you know, seeking out Nazi officers and trying
Speaker 1: to hold them accountable for various war crimes up through
Speaker 1: World War two and and after uh, the scientists and
Speaker 1: engineers were kind of spared that because they were seen
Speaker 1: as being useful assets, so they were relocated to America
Speaker 1: to work for us instead. That's also a fascinating story,
Speaker 1: that entire story of Operation paper Clip. It's one I
Speaker 1: should probably do a full episode on and maybe I'll
Speaker 1: get some of the lads from the stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know to come and join me for
Speaker 1: that one. Anyway, one of von Braun's ideas that you
Speaker 1: know once he made the transition over to America was
Speaker 1: to use a multi stage rocket in order to travel
Speaker 1: to the Moon. But he also had the idea of
Speaker 1: using the upper stage of the rocket to convert it
Speaker 1: in orbit to serve as a scientific laboratory. The upper
Speaker 1: stage would hold propellant during launch, so it would be
Speaker 1: part of your launch vehicle. But then a subsequent visiting
Speaker 1: crew could go to that, uh, that stage of the
Speaker 1: rocket which would be in orbit, and then they could
Speaker 1: vent any remaining propellant out of that. And it's an
Speaker 1: airtight container, so they could then fill the container with
Speaker 1: breathable oxygen and convert it into an orbiting laboratory. He
Speaker 1: called this proposal Horizon, and it would turn out that
Speaker 1: sky Lab, the United States first space station, would kind
Speaker 1: of follow this design. Now largely this was thanks to
Speaker 1: Van Brown advocating for this approach, as he anticipated he
Speaker 1: and his team wouldn't have a whole lot of work
Speaker 1: to do once the Apollo missions completed, and you know,
Speaker 1: guy has got to get paid. So in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, NASA began to consider, and not for the
Speaker 1: first time, the potential for establishing a space station in
Speaker 1: orbit around Earth for a more lasting presence in space.
Speaker 1: The Apollo program was proving to be a success after
Speaker 1: an initial catastrophe with Apollo one, and you had the
Speaker 1: first astronauts landing on the Moon in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: so the agency really began to look ahead while still
Speaker 1: pursuing additional lunar missions. The Soviets were planning out how
Speaker 1: to combine military operations with a civilian space station program,
Speaker 1: but NASA was looking to create a more persistent presence
Speaker 1: in orbit, and that became the origin of the sky
Speaker 1: Lab project. Now, the plan originally was to launch sky
Speaker 1: Lab as a wet works station. That means following the
Speaker 1: style of von Brown, having a multi stage rocket in
Speaker 1: which all the stages are holding propellant and one of
Speaker 1: them you then convert into a workstation. However, that changed
Speaker 1: for a couple of different reasons. One is that NASA
Speaker 1: originally had plans for additional Apollo missions after Apollo seventeen,
Speaker 1: but those got scrapped, and it meant that effectively NASA
Speaker 1: had a couple of extra Saturn five rockets, so they
Speaker 1: could then launch sky Lab on a Saturn five rocket,
Speaker 1: one of the ones that was originally going to be
Speaker 1: part of the Apollo program, and thus they could have
Speaker 1: a special payload attached to this rocket that would hold
Speaker 1: the scientific instruments and a solar observatory, as well as
Speaker 1: an orbiting workstation where astronauts would actually live and work,
Speaker 1: so the upper stage of this launch vehicle, the S
Speaker 1: four B stage, would become the orbital workstation. Again. Originally
Speaker 1: the plan was this was gonna be a wet workshop.
Speaker 1: They were going to pump out or vent out the propellant,
Speaker 1: the extra propellant inside of it and then converted into
Speaker 1: a workstation. But as it would turn out, by the
Speaker 1: time it came to launch, the plans had changed, so
Speaker 1: the S four B stage didn't need to hold any
Speaker 1: propel and at all, so it could be just a
Speaker 1: dry workshop, which dramatically simplifies things. Uh, there would be
Speaker 1: no need to do that conversion stage while in orbit.
Speaker 1: You could actually set everything out here on Earth. And
Speaker 1: the reason that was possible is that the Saturn five
Speaker 1: launch vehicle, which again was not originally intended to be
Speaker 1: a sky Lab launch vehicle, is powerful enough with just
Speaker 1: the earlier stages to get the payload into orbit without
Speaker 1: the need for the Saturn four B stage to also
Speaker 1: be part of the launch vehicle. So the station itself
Speaker 1: would have lots of different scientific instruments aboard. A large
Speaker 1: focus was on the study of the Sun and tightly
Speaker 1: wrapped around the S four B stage was this micro
Speaker 1: meteoroid shield. Uh. This shield was meant to do two
Speaker 1: major things to protect the the space station against micro meteoroids,
Speaker 1: so tiny particles traveling at intense speeds that could would
Speaker 1: cause massive damage if they were to collide with the
Speaker 1: space station. But was also supposed to be a heat
Speaker 1: shield because since this laboratory was meant to study the Sun,
Speaker 1: it was going to be exposed to solar radiation and
Speaker 1: it could get pretty warm out there if you didn't
Speaker 1: have a way of you know, throwing some shade, I guess.
Speaker 1: And this was all supposed to deploy once the station
Speaker 1: achieved orbit. The idea was that the sky Lab would
Speaker 1: get into orbit, it would deploy its solar arrays, and
Speaker 1: it would deploy its micro meteoroid shield. That did not happen.
Speaker 1: See I used words like it was it was to
Speaker 1: deploy and it and that the solar panels were to
Speaker 1: provide electricity. Because these things did not go smoothly when
Speaker 1: it came time for Skylab to actually launch, which was
Speaker 1: in May nine, three two years after the first Salut
Speaker 1: station went into orbit. So during launch, the micro meteoroid
Speaker 1: shield was damaged. It became dislodged and it tore away
Speaker 1: from the spacecraft. It also damaged one of the solar panels,
Speaker 1: which subsequently also tore away from the spacecraft. So you
Speaker 1: only had one main solar panel left behind. I mean
Speaker 1: you had one, had some for the solar observatory, which
Speaker 1: was part of the scientific instruments, but the main orbiting
Speaker 1: workstation only had one solar panel left, and it was
Speaker 1: partially jammed, so it was unable to fully extend to
Speaker 1: the way it was supposed to be. The shield, like
Speaker 1: I said, was meant to provide protection not just against
Speaker 1: micro meteoroids but also heat. So without it, the station
Speaker 1: started to reach temperatures of fifty two degrees celsius, and
Speaker 1: that's about a d degrees fahrenheit. That's way too hot
Speaker 1: for astronauts to take up residents for any sort of
Speaker 1: extended stay. The first Skylab mission with a crew was
Speaker 1: called sky Lab two. This gets a little confusing because,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you look at the Soviets and the
Speaker 1: Saliot missions, those numbers like salut to sell at three
Speaker 1: that refers to separate space stations, right, Each of those
Speaker 1: are space stations that either got into orbit or suffered
Speaker 1: a failure. But sky Lab, when we talk about Skylab
Speaker 1: to Skylab three and sky Lab four, those are just
Speaker 1: missions that were going to the one sky Lab station.
Speaker 1: There was only ever one sky Lab, so when you're
Speaker 1: sky Lab two, that's referring to the mission that went
Speaker 1: to the station. It brought the first three astronauts up
Speaker 1: to the Skylab station, and obviously one of the top
Speaker 1: priorities for that mission was to repair the space station
Speaker 1: after it's troublesome launch and try to get it into
Speaker 1: working order. Several days had passed since it had launched,
Speaker 1: and there were already some big issues that the astronauts
Speaker 1: had to address. First of all was that problem with
Speaker 1: the heat so they installed an ingenious little thing to
Speaker 1: fix it, and um it was good because there was
Speaker 1: a real fear that the entire mission was going to
Speaker 1: have to get scrapped because of the launch problems that
Speaker 1: had happened. But the crew of Skylab two were able
Speaker 1: to install a new sun shield of parasol. Essentially, it
Speaker 1: was a temporary fix. A later Skylab mission would install
Speaker 1: a more permanent heat shield, but this was like a
Speaker 1: little parasol, like just like you would hold up you know,
Speaker 1: if you were a Victorian and you wanted to take
Speaker 1: a stroll in the park, and they installed it into
Speaker 1: the station, which kept the station at a more tolerable temperature.
Speaker 1: The crew also made repairs to the exterior of the
Speaker 1: space station and a couple of e v A s
Speaker 1: extra vehicular activities spacewalks. In other words, they unjammed the
Speaker 1: remaining main solar panel. And the duration of Skylab two's
Speaker 1: mission aboard the space station was twenty eight days, so
Speaker 1: they were up there for four weeks. Uh, pretty phenomenal.
Speaker 1: Then you had two other Skylab missions, he had Skylab
Speaker 1: three and sky Lab four. Those would see crews spend
Speaker 1: fifty nine days with Skylab three and eighty four days
Speaker 1: for sky Lab four. Pretty phenomenal. And Uh, here's a
Speaker 1: cool personal connection that I just thought I would throw
Speaker 1: in there. One of the astronauts in the sky Lab
Speaker 1: three mission was Owen Garriott, a scientist astronaut. He was
Speaker 1: up there for that fifty nine day period. As I said,
Speaker 1: he would later go on a second space mission in
Speaker 1: nine three he was aboard the space Shuttle Columbia. And
Speaker 1: he also was the father of Richard Garriott. Then they
Speaker 1: might not mean anything to you unless you're a big
Speaker 1: computer game fan like computer role playing game fan. Because
Speaker 1: Richard Garriott is also known as Lord British. He is
Speaker 1: the guy who created the Ultimate series of computer games.
Speaker 1: He's also one of just a few civilians who ever
Speaker 1: got to visit the International Space Station. I'll talk about
Speaker 1: that in another episode. I used to chat with Richard
Speaker 1: Garriott at conventions. I met him and like we knew
Speaker 1: each other a little bit and would talk. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say we were friends, because we were never that close,
Speaker 1: but we were friendly with one another. Uh. And that
Speaker 1: is as far as my personal connection to sky Lab
Speaker 1: or the I S S goes, But it's still be
Speaker 1: kind of cool, I think anyway. So the first mission
Speaker 1: with a crew launched in May seventy three. The final
Speaker 1: mission with a crew returned to Earth in February ninety four,
Speaker 1: so you're looking at less than a year for all
Speaker 1: the Skylab missions. However, Skylab itself stayed up in orbit
Speaker 1: for quite some time, longer than that. NASA actually hoped
Speaker 1: to be able to boost sky Lab to a higher
Speaker 1: orbit and to send Space Shuttle missions there and extend
Speaker 1: its mission even longer. However, the spatial program ran behind schedule,
Speaker 1: and sky Lab ultimately ran out of time. Increased overer
Speaker 1: activity and a deteriorating orbit meant that sky Labs days
Speaker 1: were numbered. It was going to re enter Earth's atmosphere.
Speaker 1: There was no way to avoid it, because there was
Speaker 1: no way to push it further out into orbit. In July,
Speaker 1: sky Lab re entered or atmosphere. NASA had previously attempted
Speaker 1: to adjust sky Labs orientation. This wasn't an effort to
Speaker 1: kind of try to steer it toward like an ocean,
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't fall over a populated area. There was
Speaker 1: a real concern and in some places, like a media circus,
Speaker 1: regarding where this space station might fall, and that it
Speaker 1: could potentially you know, kill someone, or cause massive damage
Speaker 1: or or collide with, like, you know, a population center.
Speaker 1: A NASA study indicated that the agency itself was concerned
Speaker 1: about such an outcome. Now as it happened, the station
Speaker 1: did not hit the ocean as intended, at least not
Speaker 1: all of it. Some parts of it hit the Indian Ocean,
Speaker 1: but it broke apart in Earth's atmosphere much lower than
Speaker 1: anyone expected. Actually, it's it remained intact far longer than
Speaker 1: people thought it would, and pieces of it hit a
Speaker 1: largely unpopulated region of Western Australia. Uh and a lot
Speaker 1: of folks retrieve pieces of sky Lab and put them
Speaker 1: on display. I think that was even in like a
Speaker 1: Miss Universe pageant or something. But yeah, crazy stuff. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of the tech aboard sky Lab
Speaker 1: and what it was doing of there. So the parameters
Speaker 1: of the Skylab mission were to quote, observe the Earth
Speaker 1: to study natural resources and the environment, observe the Sun
Speaker 1: to study high energy solar activity, study the effects of
Speaker 1: weightlessness on the human body and assess crew adaptation to
Speaker 1: long duration spaceflight, study materials processing in microgravity, and perform
Speaker 1: experiments submitted by students for a classroom in space. Much
Speaker 1: of the scientific instrumentation aboard sky Lab was optical, which
Speaker 1: means tell Us hopes and related cameras and sensors. Chief
Speaker 1: among these were the instruments attached to the Apollo Telescope
Speaker 1: Mount or a t M. This major part of sky
Speaker 1: Lab had an octagonal structure that measured three point four
Speaker 1: meters across and four point four meters long, and within
Speaker 1: this octagonal structure was a cylindrical canister mounted in gimbal rings.
Speaker 1: These are rings that can turn in a different you know,
Speaker 1: different planes, so that you can reorient something that's mounted
Speaker 1: inside them. The gimbal rings allowed for a range of
Speaker 1: motion that let the cylinder point towards a specific region
Speaker 1: of the sun, despite you know, other things going on
Speaker 1: in space. Now, this was something I had not considered.
Speaker 1: Banasa had to solve a problem in order to get
Speaker 1: all of this to work, because we know from the
Speaker 1: laws of motion that every action has an equal but
Speaker 1: opposite reaction. So when we push against the Earth, technically
Speaker 1: the Earth is pushing back. It's just most of us
Speaker 1: are not dense enough for anyone to really notice this.
Speaker 1: But in microgravity, astronaut movements in the Skylab living quarters
Speaker 1: could conceivably cause enough motion to disrupt sensitive scientific experiments
Speaker 1: that required instruments to be precisely aimed at a specific
Speaker 1: point on the Sun. So if you need to be
Speaker 1: focused on a very specific region of the Sun, but
Speaker 1: you're worried about motion, you have to solve that problem.
Speaker 1: So to mitigate this Skylab itself, the entire space station
Speaker 1: had installed three control moment gyros or cmgs to stabilize
Speaker 1: the station, and these gyros were a double gimbal mounted
Speaker 1: and electrically driven system that could keep Skylabs orientation relatively maintained.
Speaker 1: And I say relatively because it wasn't quite finally tuned
Speaker 1: enough to stabilize the instruments aboard the A t M.
Speaker 1: I'll quote a NASA document about how they achieved even
Speaker 1: greater precision. Quote. This was accomplished with a solar pointing
Speaker 1: control system PCs. The PCs sensed the sun's center to
Speaker 1: a few tenths of a second of arc and sent
Speaker 1: error signals into the torque motors that controlled the rotational
Speaker 1: positions of the A t M canister gimbals. Offset pointing
Speaker 1: in yaw or in pitch by steps of one point
Speaker 1: to five seconds of arc. Up to twenty four minutes
Speaker 1: of arc could be introduced by counter rotating a pair
Speaker 1: of quartz wedges placed in the solar beam incident on
Speaker 1: the yaw solar sensor, or a similar pair for pitch.
Speaker 1: These solar sensors were one of the few items inherited
Speaker 1: from the AO s oh okay h end quote right there, so, Jonathan. Here,
Speaker 1: here's a side note. The AO s O stands for
Speaker 1: Advanced Orbiting Solar Observatory, which was a project that NASA
Speaker 1: had planned in the nineteen sixties but ultimately had to
Speaker 1: scrap when it was clear that the tech wasn't really
Speaker 1: ready yet and the spense of the project would be
Speaker 1: way beyond NASA's budget. All right, let me get back
Speaker 1: to the quote. Control of offset pointing by rotating the
Speaker 1: prisms was accomplished by the crewman with his panel joystick.
Speaker 1: Digital indicators read out yaw and pitch to one second
Speaker 1: of arc and roll to one minute of arc. End quote.
Speaker 1: All right, that's really complicated. It gets really technical, but
Speaker 1: essentially what it's saying is that this system could correct
Speaker 1: for those motions and keep the canister relatively uh stable
Speaker 1: with regard to whatever it was aimed at. So kind
Speaker 1: of like if you think of like stabilization technologies and
Speaker 1: digital cameras, it's in concepts similar to that. So much
Speaker 1: of the observational work done aboard sky Lab had to
Speaker 1: do with the sun, with the instruments taking multiple images
Speaker 1: of the Sun at a specific wavelength of light. These
Speaker 1: instruments are called spectro heliographs, and they produce a mono
Speaker 1: chromatic image, so you know, black and white image. So
Speaker 1: why would you focus on a specific wavelength of light. Well,
Speaker 1: it's one way to study the various elemental components of
Speaker 1: a star, as different materials will give off different wavelengths
Speaker 1: of light, So by looking at which wavelengths are the
Speaker 1: most intense, you can kind of get an idea of
Speaker 1: which elements are the most plentiful and something like a
Speaker 1: star like the Sun. Onboard sky Lab, astronauts performed all
Speaker 1: sorts of scientific experiments, including medical experiments and some designed
Speaker 1: by students back on Earth. The crew also conducted some
Speaker 1: observations of Earth, which was quite an achievement because the
Speaker 1: planned experiments and instruments for that purpose have been part
Speaker 1: of a previously canceled NASA project called the Apollo Applications Mission.
Speaker 1: The history of NASA is one that's filled with lots
Speaker 1: of projects that were meant to be but never came
Speaker 1: to fruition or were only partially developed before they were abandoned,
Speaker 1: and it's not always possible to salvage stuff from that.
Speaker 1: But in this case, sky Lab was able to incorporate
Speaker 1: some of the plans for the Apollo Applications Mission and
Speaker 1: incorporate some Earth observation experiments with sky Lab. In all,
Speaker 1: the astronauts oversaw more than a hundred experiments, ranging from
Speaker 1: using X ray and ultra violet cameras and spectrographs to
Speaker 1: stay the Sun to measuring stuff like mineral loss in
Speaker 1: a human body due to an extended stay in microgravity.
Speaker 1: Some of the student projects included things like observing Earth's atmospheres,
Speaker 1: ability to absorb radiant heat, X ray emissions from Jupiter,
Speaker 1: and capillary action studies in a state of free fall.
Speaker 1: While the collective times spend aboard Skylab amounted to one
Speaker 1: seventy one days for all of the crude missions, the
Speaker 1: amount of work done was truly little astronomical. I guess
Speaker 1: now when we come back, I'll cover one other really
Speaker 1: big aspect of sky Lab, and that's what it's like
Speaker 1: taking a shower in space. But first let's take another break,
Speaker 1: so I'll really have to do a full episode about
Speaker 1: sky Lab in the future, so that I can actually
Speaker 1: cover the whole thing and all the the science and
Speaker 1: technology aboard, because I know I'm just glancing over the
Speaker 1: topic in this episode, but that's because we have so
Speaker 1: much to cover to talk about space stations in general. However,
Speaker 1: one thing I just could not leave behind was the
Speaker 1: shower aboard sky Lab. Now you might wonder how does
Speaker 1: one shower in microgravity? If you've ever seen astronauts playing
Speaker 1: with I'm sorry, I'm sorry, experimenting with liquids in outer space,
Speaker 1: you know that those liquids tend to form little wobbly
Speaker 1: globes and float around their environment. You don't have gravity,
Speaker 1: or really you don't have sufficient gravity to have them
Speaker 1: form into drop shapes and fall to the ground. And
Speaker 1: yet sky Lab had a shower aboard, a true luxury
Speaker 1: when compared against earlier US spacecraft like the Apollo and
Speaker 1: Jimini capsules, which reportedly could get really stinky, particularly as
Speaker 1: missions stretched beyond a week in length. All right, so
Speaker 1: imagine that you've got a round shower curtain and it's
Speaker 1: on quote unquote the floor. The top of the shower
Speaker 1: curtain is connected to a metal ring. So really you
Speaker 1: see a metal ring and some material folded beneath it.
Speaker 1: So you step into the middle of this metal ring.
Speaker 1: Then you squat down, you grab the ring, and you
Speaker 1: lift it all the way up to the ceiling where
Speaker 1: it locks in place, and you essentially create your own
Speaker 1: little shower cylinder. Now, okay, how do you do that?
Speaker 1: Because of micro gravity because you're gonna be floating around everywhere. Well,
Speaker 1: the on the floor of the station, which is weird
Speaker 1: to think of, because I mean up and down are
Speaker 1: such weird concepts when you're talking about space. But on
Speaker 1: the floor were a pair of bands where you would
Speaker 1: just kind of slip your feet in a little restraints
Speaker 1: to hold you down against the floor of the station
Speaker 1: so you don't float off with the SuDS. The shower
Speaker 1: itself was a handheld nozzle attached to a hose and
Speaker 1: you would put heated water which was taken from the
Speaker 1: waste management compartment water heater. However, it was not I
Speaker 1: should point out the actual wastewater that'd be gross, uh,
Speaker 1: and it served as the bathing liquid, or at least
Speaker 1: the heated liquid. This water in a canister would get
Speaker 1: a pressurization boost from some nitrogen gas. So now you
Speaker 1: have some pressurized water in this canister, and then you
Speaker 1: would connect it to the shower mechanism, so the pressurized
Speaker 1: gas that had enough of the pressure to propel the
Speaker 1: water out of the nozzle. When you had the switch
Speaker 1: on the nozzle set to open a soap dispenser with
Speaker 1: eight whole milli liters of soap in it would serve
Speaker 1: for each shower, and uh it had velcrow on it
Speaker 1: so you could attach it to the quote unquote ceiling
Speaker 1: of the shower. So you also couldn't just use a
Speaker 1: drain for the shower, right because the water is not
Speaker 1: just gonna flow down to the floor. So to take
Speaker 1: care of the water, you also had a suction device.
Speaker 1: You were using essentially a vacuum to collect the water
Speaker 1: because the water wouldn't, you know, drain out otherwise, So
Speaker 1: astronauts would use a vacuum to remove water both from
Speaker 1: the shower and off of themselves as well. According to
Speaker 1: Jack Loosma, the experience was not necessarily relaxing. You had
Speaker 1: to mix water in a three quart container and make
Speaker 1: sure you've got the right mix of hot to cold
Speaker 1: so that you would have a comfortable shower temperature. The soap,
Speaker 1: he said, often left the astronauts feeling itchy. He said
Speaker 1: that it was better served as a veterinarian soap as
Speaker 1: opposed it for humans. Um He also said that the
Speaker 1: water would evaporate off of your skin very quickly because
Speaker 1: you're in a low pressure environment, and that that that
Speaker 1: you would start to get really cold. Because that evaporating
Speaker 1: process would pull energy away from you, heat energy, so
Speaker 1: you'd start to get the chills after a shower. Also,
Speaker 1: drying off took a really long time, so long in fact,
Speaker 1: that some astronauts opted for using a sponge bath rather
Speaker 1: than using the shower, though they could take as many
Speaker 1: showers as like one every week or ten days if
Speaker 1: they so chose. Now, according to the astronauts, it took
Speaker 1: about an hour to take a shower. Some accounts I've
Speaker 1: seen suggest it might have even taken longer than that
Speaker 1: when you factor in all the different prep work and
Speaker 1: clean up work needed to do the whole process, And
Speaker 1: in fact, some of the estimations I saw said it
Speaker 1: was closer to two hours. That's not two hours of
Speaker 1: you taking a really long, luxurious shower, that's rather two
Speaker 1: hours come to complete the entire task from you know,
Speaker 1: prep to clean up. And that's another reason that a
Speaker 1: lot of astronauts chose to go with sponge baths instead,
Speaker 1: because they felt it was a hassle. NASA eventually concluded
Speaker 1: that the shower was ultimately perhaps a little too complicated
Speaker 1: to operate, and if astronauts weren't going to use it,
Speaker 1: there might be better ways to make sure folks don't
Speaker 1: stink up the joint rather than incorporating a piece a
Speaker 1: gear that people would avoid using anyway, kind of like
Speaker 1: a stinky sullen teenager. And oh, I also need to
Speaker 1: talk about the toilet. So we talked a bit about
Speaker 1: how awkward pooping in space was for the Apollo cruise,
Speaker 1: and you know they had to use you know, essentially
Speaker 1: a bag with adhesive on it to glue to their
Speaker 1: butts in order to collect their poops. Well, the sky
Speaker 1: Lab version was better, I guess. Sky Labs toilet was
Speaker 1: mounted on the wall of the bathroom inside the space station.
Speaker 1: The toilet had a hinged seat on it. Inside the
Speaker 1: toilet was a mesh bag, So if you need to poop,
Speaker 1: you would first put a fecal collection bag inside this
Speaker 1: mesh liner. Um. Then uh okay, well let me just
Speaker 1: read from NASA to make sure I get this right.
Speaker 1: Here we go quote. Air was drawn through the fecal
Speaker 1: bag from holes in the seat and exhausted through the
Speaker 1: bags vapor port through the mesh liner into the fecal
Speaker 1: collection recept icle, and then through a filter where odors
Speaker 1: were removed before it was recirculated into the cabin by
Speaker 1: a fan. To use the toilet for defecation, the crewman
Speaker 1: sat on the contoured seat, then fastened a belt across
Speaker 1: his lap to hold him securely in position. Hand Holds
Speaker 1: and foot restraints allowed him to maintain a sufficiently tight
Speaker 1: seal on the seat, as airflow from the fans separated
Speaker 1: the fecal matter from his body and deposited it in
Speaker 1: the fecal collection bag. A separate fecal bag was used
Speaker 1: for each defecation end quote, which thank goodness for that right.
Speaker 1: As for urination, well, again to quote from NASA quote,
Speaker 1: the crewmen could urinate from either a standing or sitting position.
Speaker 1: A urine collector, located on the wall just below the
Speaker 1: fecal collector, also utilized airflow as a substitute for gravity
Speaker 1: to draw the urine through a receiver and hose into
Speaker 1: a urine collection bag. An alternate device incorporated a funnel
Speaker 1: like attachment through which the bag could be filled by
Speaker 1: bladder pressure. So I suppose by the way end quote,
Speaker 1: I suppose it's good to remind ourselves that around this
Speaker 1: time all astronauts were male. Not that I'm saying that
Speaker 1: was a good thing, only that it was a true
Speaker 1: thing at that time. Because many of the experiments aboard
Speaker 1: Skylab related to medical studies, like the effects of microgravity
Speaker 1: and being in space for prolonged periods, much of that
Speaker 1: waste was meant to be returned to Earth for examination.
Speaker 1: So these bags would be vacuum dried and stored for
Speaker 1: return to Earth. That included feces and, according to NASA,
Speaker 1: vomit because motion, sickness, and nausea were a thing up
Speaker 1: there too, so space sure is glamorous. As for the
Speaker 1: urine that went into a centrifuge to separate the gases
Speaker 1: inside the liquid from the liquid itself, then the liquid
Speaker 1: sample would be frozen for storage and to prevent any
Speaker 1: chemical changes that might occur otherwise in order to be
Speaker 1: returned to Earth. None, not all of it was stored
Speaker 1: and saved for for examination, some of it was some
Speaker 1: of it actually would go into a waste containment system
Speaker 1: aboard the space station. So I just want to make
Speaker 1: it clear that the astronauts weren't bringing all of their
Speaker 1: poops and peas back home, just you know, some of them.
Speaker 1: Oh and some other fun and less disgusting anecdotes during
Speaker 1: the Gemini missions, astronauts typically didn't really complain about the
Speaker 1: space food that NASA packed for them, but in the
Speaker 1: Apollo missions that changed astronauts really hated it, and so
Speaker 1: there was an effort put forward to make the food
Speaker 1: aboard sky Lab more palatable because astronauts were going to
Speaker 1: be up there for much longer, and NASA wisely judged
Speaker 1: that the food was bad. It was going to have
Speaker 1: a negative impact on crew morale and thus potentially a
Speaker 1: negative impact on productivity, so they worked pretty hard to
Speaker 1: try and fix that while also making sure to meet
Speaker 1: the nutritional needs of the astronauts. Now, some of that
Speaker 1: food that was sent aboard Skylab in that initial launch
Speaker 1: was deemed to be dangerous by the time the first
Speaker 1: crew got to Skylab because remember that that laboratory had
Speaker 1: been exposed to very high temperatures because the heat shield
Speaker 1: had failed to deploy because it was stripped away in launch.
Speaker 1: So the stuff that was in cans had been heated
Speaker 1: to a point where it could potentially be dangerous, so
Speaker 1: that could no longer be consumed. But there was other
Speaker 1: stuff that was frozen and it was unaffected because it
Speaker 1: was protected in a freezer. And there are other types
Speaker 1: of space food that were also fine, so not everything
Speaker 1: was wasted. Also because Skylab used air flow to substitute
Speaker 1: for gravity, so you you know, used the flow of
Speaker 1: air like you had had vents that were suctioning up
Speaker 1: air and other events that were blowing out air. While
Speaker 1: astronauts found that stuff had a tendency to kind of
Speaker 1: migrate towards the air filters where the system was siphoning
Speaker 1: up air to recycle it. Uh So, if something got lost,
Speaker 1: they would just look around the air filters because typically
Speaker 1: that's where stuff was because that flow of air was
Speaker 1: pulling things toward it. So they actually made one surface
Speaker 1: that had one of these filters a workspace because the
Speaker 1: tools would tend to stay put on the filter rather
Speaker 1: than just float off, which is kind of interesting. It's
Speaker 1: something you don't necessarily think about when you're not in microgravity.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, sky Lab wasn't just an efficient science platform,
Speaker 1: nor was it just a space station that was up
Speaker 1: in orbit for way longer than we could actually use it.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you think about it, it was up
Speaker 1: there for several years, but we only used it for
Speaker 1: less than a year. But it was also a learning
Speaker 1: experience for NASA and would go a long way toward
Speaker 1: informing the agency about designing the next big space station.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more about that in our next episode. So
Speaker 1: things to look forward to. In our next episode, We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the Russian space station mirror. That's
Speaker 1: very important. We're gonna talk about the proposal of space
Speaker 1: station freedom, the US space station that never was, and
Speaker 1: the birth of the International Space Station and how it
Speaker 1: has a halter of the time. Text Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.