Skylab – America's First Space Station
Turning the page on the Skylab program
Exploring the intersection of spaceflight history, pop culture, and space art.
Creating Space rounds out this year of Skylab anniversary posts with a look inside a pop-up book published in 1974, the year the final crew returned to Earth. I offer a final reminder that there are only a few weeks left to make your visit to the Museum of Flight’s Art+Flight exhibition in Seattle and see my Moonlight Dreams artwork in person. I introduce you to Mission Mail, a newsletter from The Space 3.0 Foundation, in which I was recently featured. And, I lead off by marking a personal milestone for my own NERDSletter.
Are you new to Creating Space? It’s the NERDSletter that explores the intersection of spaceflight history, pop culture, and space art. You can find this and all other posts at creating-space.art.
Milestone of the Month
This month’s post marks one year since I began writing Creating Space. My original intention in starting what I affectionately call my NERDSletter was to connect with people who are interested in my space-inspired artwork. It quickly became much more than that.
My vision for Creating Space was to provide something unique in the world of artist newsletters. Of course, it would include features about my space-inspired artwork. And, to make it more interesting for an audience of Space Geeks, I would couple my artwork with items from my space collection. Then, to provide context, I would interject some relevant space history that was associated with the art and collectibles.
Even with that solid sounding plan, when I started, I didn’t know if I would have anything to say. Now, a full year and thirteen newsletters later, I find that when I sit down to write about a certain space vehicle, or book, or contractor model, I end up writing several post’s worth of material.
I became an accidental space historian, actually reading the NASA historical documents for the first time so I could provide my readers not only accurate information, but perhaps tell them something they hadn’t known before.
I think I am succeeding, for at least some of my readers, since I have been told that they are learning something new and are finding my posts enjoyable. And the number of people who have signed up to receive Creating Space in their email inboxes has reached 185 since I published the first post in December 2022. I am extremely grateful for all of my readers ... over the Moon, I might say.
Going forward, expect to see more items from my space collection of contractor models, model kits, books, space art from notable artists, toys, and games. These will be paired with more space history stories, for as long as I can think of new ‘old’ things to talk about. And of course, there will be more of my own space inspired artwork and news about future art shows and publications.
Thank you for being part of the Creating Space community.
Merch of the Month
Celestial Sphere Giclée Print
Get this beautiful custom Giclée print for your space! Or, give someone special the space they deserve!
Celestial Sphere honors the beautiful 18th century meldings of art and science, the mechanical models of the Solar System called orreries.
About Giclée Prints
Open edition giclée prints of select images are made with high-quality archival inks on fine art Premium Lustre paper that has a lovely soft fine grain pebble textured surface. This thick and textured fine art photographic medium is a popular choice among professionals. Archival pigment-based inks produce highly saturated prints with accurate color creating stunning images.
Prints of select images are custom ordered for you by the artist. Professionally printed in the United States. They come ready for you to add your own distinctive frame and mat to match your personal taste and decor. Make a statement that is as individual as you are.
FREE SHIPPING ON ALL ORDERS WITHIN THE U.S. (Excluding Zazzle products.)
(NOTE: I currently ship exclusively to the U.S.)
SOCIAL IMPACT
Your purchase from Pixel Planet Pictures helps support and promote space-related STEAM organizations and initiatives that enable and inspire students and youth to learn, develop, and pursue passions in science, technology, engineering, arts, and math.
Art News
My space-inspired artwork, Moonlight Dreams, continues its run as part of the Art+Flight celebration now in its seventh month at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington. The exhibit is scheduled to end on January 7, 2024, so you have less than a month left to see it in person.
I have previously rewritten about the art exhibit in the following two posts.
Art News from Moonlight Dreams post, June 4, 2023
Art News from The collectSPACE Insignia post, July 8, 2023
Stop by if you are in the Seattle area and check out the clear brilliant colors of my metal prints first hand. Prints are available for purchase in the museum store, and you can always find Moonlight Dreams and more of my artwork for sale at my online shop.
Art+Flight is free with Museum admission.
Open Daily, 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Admission FREE 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM the first Thursday of every month.
The Museum of Flight is located at 9404 East Marginal Way South, Seattle, WA 98108.
Book of the Month
Skylab – America's First Space Station
A Hallmark Pop-Up Book, by Gail Mahan Peterson, illustrated by Carl Cassler, paper mechanics by Howard Lohnes, Hallmark Children’s Editions, Kansas City, Missouri, 1974.
Skylab, America’s first space station, is the next “giant step” into space following the Apollo lunar missions. From the work aboard Skylab, we can see how our space program aims to solve problems on earth while it reaches farther and farther for knowledge of the stars. Soon, life may be better for everyone on earth because of the Skylab program.
This month marks the fifty-fifth anniversary of the historic Apollo 8 circumlunar mission. I use the famous Earthrise photograph in the Creating Space logo image because it is incredibly inspirational to me. It also reminds me of the fact that we live on a very special, and indeed fragile, planet in space.
The optimism and ecological focus that resulted from seeing Earth from the vantage point of the Moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s exudes from the opening paragraph of this Skylab pop-up book.
While it may be difficult to see through the wildfire smoke and extreme weather events of recent years, I think it can be said that Skylab set us in a good direction in terms of understanding how to take care of our Spaceship Earth. Perhaps it would help to look back and renew that early spirit of planetary stewardship that drove so much of Skylab’s scientific purpose.
I have written previously about Skylab during this fiftieth anniversary year. You can find the posts here:
Published in the same year as the conclusion of the final Skylab mission in 1974, this book covers the launch, deployment, crew docking, living quarters, and scientific purpose of the orbiting workshop. It is fairly comprehensive in covering all of these aspects, and seems to be written for a young teenage audience.
To call this a pop-up book might be to oversell it, somewhat. There are eight double page spreads plus the two inside cover illustrations. Only five of the spreads have any elements that actually pop up from the page. The remaining three spreads have either sliders or turning wheels that rotate through a series of scenes appearing through cutout windows.
The colorful illustrations by Carl Cassler are what really pop out for me. The book catches your eye starting right off with the brilliant cover painting which spans both the front and back glossy hardcovers.
Opening the book to the front endpapers places us high above Earth looking out over the entire solar system. The Earth, it’s Moon, and all the other planets (yes, even Pluto!) are labeled with their names, distance from the Sun (and in the case of the Moon, distance from Earth), and their orbital periods. The diameter of the Sun is also called out.
The careful observer will notice two tiny spacecraft floating near Earth. One is Skylab, itself. And the second? We will later find out what that one is at the end of the book.
The title page echoes the cover illustration with a pop-up overview of the Skylab workshop with the docked Apollo Command and Service Modules.
The main components of the cluster configuration are numbered, corresponding to brief descriptions that rotate into a small cutout window with the spin of a finger wheel.
Turning the page also turns back the clock to the launch of the massive workshop, converted from the Saturn S-IVB stage. The same wheel from the previous page doubles, here, to work the countdown clock. Suitable for the times, the typeface used for the clock numbers has a distinctive 1970s vibe to it.
Opposite the clock, we find the giant Saturn V rocket already billowing exhaust smoke from its five powerful F-1 engines. A pull on the launch gantry pulls back the swing arms making way for the booster to lift Skylab on its way.
Just as during the actual launch, we don’t see the damage occur to the workshop. But, we are now informed about the part of the outer covering that tore away and caused damage to the large solar panel arrays.
The drama of the ensuing repairs is nicely summarized in the text. And, one of the actions on the page illustrates the deployment of the solar array. But, it seems they missed some great opportunities to depict the popping up of the Mylar parasol sunshade, Pete Conrad and Joseph Kerwin being flung out to the ends of their umbilical cables, as well as the initial attempt by Paul Weitz to free the panel from the hatch of the Command Module.
We now get our first view of the accommodations inside the workshop. The pop-up elements give a very good impression of the crew quarters and some of the biomedical experiments. In the scene’s foreground are an astronaut using the bicycle ergometer, and the lower body negative pressure experiment. To the right is the rotating litter chair. On the left can be seen the galley stools and table in the wardroom.
Opening the one of the doors in the center reveals the waste management compartment behind the wardroom. An astronaut floats out of the sleep compartment through a second doorway.
Zooming back outside, we see an expansive cutaway view of the spacecraft. The narrative emphasizes the 2,200 hours of training required to master the scientific equipment, as well as the scope of the experiments performed aboard the orbiting workshop.
Pulling a tab sends an astronaut through the access hole from the crew quarters into the voluminous upper section. A thumb wheel on the right reveals a simulation of the lunar phases.
Here we see Skylab scanning the Earth’s surface with its cameras and sensors from its 270 mile high orbit. The text states that “Skylab circles the earth on a path that takes it over about 3/4 of the Earth’s surface every five days.”
Assessing the health of the planet was the clear emphasis of this aspect of the Skylab program. Of use to farmers would be the studies of soil conditions, health of crops and forests, and areas effected by disease or pollution. Efficient use of our planet’s resources would be aided by the search for fresh water, oil, and other minerals. Hazards such as volcanic eruptions, landslides, floods, and floating sea ice would be assessed. And, they would survey geological changes and weather patterns.
By combining all the data collected, scientists hoped to create a comprehensive picture of how the Earth’s environment, make-up and structure worked together as a balanced global system.
The thumb wheel from the previous page now serves to cycle various images from the multi-spectral camera. Different wavelengths of light reveal data about the amount of chlorophyll in plants, water depth, location of mineral deposits, and temperature. Other images could be used to create useful maps.
On the right, pulling the tab slides a depiction of Skylab, and a representation of its scanning range, along its high orbit.
The study of the Sun was the role of the Apollo Telescope mount (ATM). Placing a telescope outside of the Earth’s dense atmosphere gave scientists access to the full unfiltered electromagnetic spectrum.
The importance of solar observations is explained in clear language – “All life on earth has the sun to thank for it.” The ATM helped shed light on how changes in the Sun’s radiation output influence our atmosphere, climate, and weather.
The author goes on to highlight the benefits of solar power and learning how to control nuclear fusion for providing pollution-free power.
The pull-tab action in this scene sends an astronaut floating at the end of his umbilical toward the ATM to exchange film canisters. A remote control television camera extends with the tab to capture the space walk.
The thumb wheel on the right of the scene displays several features associated with solar activity, such as flares, surges, and prominences.
An impressive fold-out view of the entire globe greets us on the next page. The workshop orbits above while what may be the final Skylab crew descends toward its landing spot, marked by an ‘X’, under a trio of orange and white parachutes.
The careful viewer may notice a couple of anomalous details. First, the capsule has followed a reentry path going from east to west, which of course is opposite the orbital direction of the workshop.
Second – and this may be more of a time shift than an oversight – closer inspection reveals that an entire Apollo spacecraft remains docked to the workshop!
And, the casual observer may overlook the obvious absence of clouds, which was a common way to depict Earth in the times before we began space exploration. By this time, however, one might think artists would have realized they needed to cover up their carefully painted continents with the realistic bright white clouds that were so prominent in photographs from space.
I point out these items mostly for fun, since the rest of the book seems quite well researched and presented.
For instance, the thumb wheel on this page displays no less than twenty-five experiments, most of which were carried aboard Skylab from high school students across the nation. Imagine the thrill of becoming a finalist in the National Science Teachers Association competition. Not only might you get to see your experiment fly in space, but now you see your name called out in this pop-up book!
Turning the last page brings us to the back endpapers and back to a view of our solar system. At first this seems like a different view of the solar system compared to the one that opens the book. But closer inspection reveals that the planets, our Moon, and the sun are all identically sized and positioned. The difference turns out to be that the planetary orbit ellipses are now replaced by several pathways of planetary probes – Venera 8 to Venus, Pioneer 10 to Jupiter, and Mariner 9 to Mars.
We still see two spacecraft orbiting Earth, as well. Skylab, as we have determined at the start, is one of them. The second spacecraft, appearing as a delta-winged vehicle, turns out to be the Space Shuttle. Or rather, it is perhaps a more optimistic version of the space shuttle. As was common in children’s books about spaceflight, this book ends with a forward-looking vision. That winged vehicle is described in this way – “Space Shuttle: Future spaceships designed to take off and land at airports.”
Shout Out of the Month
I am happy to report that I have been featured in Mission Mail from The Space 3.0 Foundation, publishers of Quest, the spaceflight history quarterly journal as well as a host of other spaceflight history initiatives.
Mission Mail is a relatively new bi-weekly newsletter curated by Emily Carney of Space Hipsters fame. Emily curates the internet and shares space history-related things with her readers. Expect oral histories, little-known stories, interviews, events, astronaut appearances, videos, and more.
Check out Issue #11 from December 5th 2023 in the Mission Mail archives. Then consider signing up to receive these out of this world (and free) emails.
My space-inspired art portfolio can be found at pixel-planet-pictures.com.
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Great post Dave, I loved that Skylab pop-up book!