The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters

Kerwin recounts, “I had on my suit an extra six foot tether, just a rope, with hooks on both ends. Where we were there was an eyebolt so we hooked one end of the tether to a ring on the front of the suit, snaked it through the eyebolt and back up to the suit, hooked it again, adjusted it to the right length and I could stand up with my two feet planted one either side of that eyebolt and suddenly I was standing there as steady as you could get with a three-point suspension. Once we had accomplished that, it was only a couple of minutes work to get the jaws in place. Pete had to help me a little with depth perception to get it exactly right – he said: ‘No… you passed it… come back, dammit… no… nowback…’

“So it went on and I pulled the rope just hard enough to tighten the jaws against the strap but not hard enough to cut it. That was very important, because Pete was now going to use that twenty five foot pole as a handrail. He went hand over hand down to the solar panel, trying to take care not to cut himself, and attached another rope to the cover of the solar panel.”

Conrad hooked one end of the rope to a vent module relief hole on the beam, and the other end was secured to an antenna support truss on the solar observatory.

Kerwin continued:

“First we tightened the jaws the rest of the way and cut the strap of aluminium. When we did that the panel came out another few inches and stopped.”

Conrad, inspecting the jaws, suddenly found himself tumbling out into space to be brought up with a jerk by his umbilical cord. “That shot me out into the boonies!” he chuckled. He looked back to see the solar panel was only extended about 20°.

Kerwin adds, “We knew that would happen – that’s what they told us at Houston – that the joint is very cold, it’s frozen, you’re going to have to break the friction. That was what the second rope was for, so now we disposed of the twenty five foot pole then the two of us worked our way under the remaining rope and stood up between the rope and the lab. That exerted just enough tension on the solar panel cover to break the friction. Suddenly – I want to say there was a cracking sound but of course there wasn’t because we couldn’t hear it – but there was this sudden release of tension in the rope and we both went flying ass over tea kettle into space. We hand over handed our way down to some structure, turned around to look, and there was the solar panel fully deployed, sticking out ninety degrees, and the panels were already starting to come out.”

At the other end of the radio link the flight controllers heard Conrad say, “Whoops, there she goes!” and within six hours the solar panel was functioning and sending 7,000 watts of power to the workshop, enough to ensure the missions could go ahead as planned.

The Skylab mission, the whole $2.6 billion project, was saved!

The crew agreed that the best form of relaxation, 237 mi. Tles above the earth, was just looking out of the windowheir favourite music to accompany weightless exercise was from the film 2001.

They found sleeping difficult, as astronaut Paul Weitz explained:

‘I tried for a day or two but I was not comfortable sleeping with what I perceived as hanging on a wall, even though it was zero G. I wanted to get a good night’s sleep. I didn’t wander that far. Each night I would take my bunk up into the upper part of the workshop and lay it out so it was towards the Command Module. Also those sleep compartments were small, and I preferred to have more space.”

It wasn’t always easy to get to sleep. As the laboratory swung around the world from day to night each 93 minutes the skin creaked and popped with the change in temperature. If the thrusters fired during the night to keep the laboratory’s attitude, they sounded like bursts of gunfire. If anyone got up he would wake the others.

The Skylab toilet was a hinged, contoured seat mounted on the wall – it was uncomfortable and awkward to use, but did work. The astronaut sat on the seat, fastened a belt across his lap, and used forced air drawn into a plastic bag to collect the faecal matter. The shower was a cylindrical cloth enclosure fed with water from a preheated pressurised portable bottle. With only 2,722 kilograms of water on board, bathing showers were rationed to 2.8 litres of water per shower per week. The liquid soap and water were carefully measured before the mission and rationed out – no luxurious long hot showers if you were feeling a bit seedy! Weitz was first to try the shower. “It took a fair amount longer to use than you might expect – 15 minutes of shower and 45 minutes of cleaning up – but you came out smelling good!” so it wasn’t really a success. They found it was easier to rub down with wash cloths.