On July 12, 1979, Skylab was falling back to the earth. I blogged this a couple of years ago…but today is the anniversary.
In 1979 I was twelve and hearing the news that a space workstation named Skylab was falling to earth. It was exciting for me…I was hoping that a piece of it would fall near so I could touch something that had been flying through space.
That didn’t happen because unless I was Australian I was not going to see any debris. In school, our science teacher went over the event and I do remember people wearing Skylab t-shirts, hats, and buttons.
Watching the news…there were some people panicking and…some people partying. This is from Newsweek in 1979
In various parts of the country, wags painted X’s on their neighbors’ roofs or sported T-shirts with targets on the back. Entrepreneurs sold plastic helmets and Skylab survival kits compete with bags for collecting stray parts of the spacecraft and letters suing NASA for damages. “I don’t know how much we’re making, but we’re having fun,” said Steven Danzig, 25, of Bloomington, Ind., who sold more than 20,000 such kits. In Washington, a bar called Mr. Smith’s sold a concoction dubbed the Chicken Little Special.
Around the U.S., there were Skylab parties to coincide with the crash, and betting pools on precisely when or where the debris would come streaking back to earth.
Skylab was designed to go up but not come back down. It was launched in 1973 and was occupied for almost 24 weeks. There was a lot of time and money spent on how to get it up there but not much time on how to get it down. It only had a 9-year life span, to begin with. In 1979 it was clear that Skylab was rapidly descending orbit.
On July 12, 1979, Skylab came back to earth in the Indian Ocean and in Western Australia. No one was injured by the falling debris.
The San Francisco Examiner offered a $10,000 reward for anyone bringing a part of Skylab to their office. They knew it wasn’t going to hit America so it was a safe bet they would not have to pay…but Stan Thornton…an Australian truck driver heard about the reward, grabbed a piece of debris, and jumped on a plane to San Francisco and got the reward.
Stan Thornton collecting his $10.000
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I think I remember that now… been a while since I heard mention of Skylab!
Wonder how many of those helmets are still around?! Quite a collectors item, LOL
But of course I would like to have one! I’m sure a few survived
Wow, that is such a cool pop culture thing! I wasn’t around in the 70’s so I didn’t get to experience it. Pretty neat 🙂
It was exciting as a kid…we were all looking up in the sky with a hope we would see a piece fall down.
I remember things falling but I don’t remember any of the parties. I was either not celebrating at all or celebrating too hard!
I would guess the latter!
Badfinger20
interesting post. Reminded me of the nuclear bomb drills I had in grammar school when we where instructed to sit under our desks supposedly to protect ourselves from a nuclear bomb that would have melted us under our desks.
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Regards and goodwill blogging.
Thank you…in the seventies I remember we had a few of those drills. Yea liked that would have helped.
Thank you again.
Those helmets would have worked as well as hiding under a desk for a nuclear bomb, which I had to do in the 60s for the Cuban missal crisis.
We had a few of those drills in the mid 70s…for the cold war…by 3rd or 4th grade though they went away
Great post! I couldn’t have told you about where it landed for a million bucks. There’s a really funny movie called “Long Hot Wet American Summer” which makes some Sky Lab references.
I will HAVE to watch that man…thanks! I remember it very well…we were all hoping it would hit the school
The CD post is coming tonight
I remember the Skylab thing but, don’t remember t-shirts or parties. It was summertime so, no kids at school wearing any shirts or hats. I didn’t remember that it fell in Australia.
Heh. Yeah. Skylab hats would work about as well as the “duck & cover” nuclear scare crap and the masks that the zombies are wearing, now. Funny how hysteria keeps repeating itself.
I remember the new stations showing parties…we were too young to be at them.
I love the hats I would would to have one now! I bet not many survived…they were pitched.
Duck and Cover while you melt!
Wow, I don’t think I ever head about this! Neat story, it’s like a sci-fi! 😀
For some reason, I don’t remember all of the gimmicky stuff. I remember it was falling, and that it ended up landing about as far from me as it could have. It’s bewildering that they didn’t plan for bringing it back down.
If I remember it right…they planned on it burning up before it got here…well that didn’t happen. I just remember all of our class at recess looking up…hoping.
I didn’t remember that they planned on it burning, but that makes more sense than no plan at all. I can imagine your disappointment at recess. 😀
Frankly, I don’t recall Skylab at all. While my memory can be spotty, this makes me wonder whether the incident was more of an afterthought in Germany where I was still living at the time as a 13-year-old.
Obviously, there were no Internet and social media back then, which may be part of the explanation. Moreover, my consumption of news through the newspaper and TV and radio newscasts was probably still relatively limited at the time.
While it doesn’t surprise me people in the U.S. came up with ideas related to the incident, I think it’s fair to say Skylab helmets and T-shirts are concepts that would be very hard to imagine in Germany.
Yea they made a big party over here about it. As kids we kept our eyes to the sky hoping it would come down near us.
Ha! Great story – never heard it before
I thought you would like a space story lol.
You bet!
Cool story. I don’t really remember too much about it or at least the hype about it crashing. I remember Skylab, but that is it.
haha I remember this. I was bummed that it didn’t fall in my backyard.
We were hoping the whole lab would just plonk down in front of us lol.