_Live From Cape Canaveral_ - Jay Barbree [83]
NASA failures were not with its equipment, but in promising that the Space Shuttle would be all things for all missions, that it would serve both civilian and military needs—and save truckloads of money in the process. The Space Shuttle program escalated swiftly in cost and decelerated just as rapidly in productivity. Weeks became months, and projects meant to take months stretched into years without a definite future.
Something had to fill the gap.
Engineers still on the job from Project Apollo dusted off the Saturn rockets and Apollo spacecraft left over from the three lunar landing missions that had fallen victim to the congressional ax. The few visionaries left in NASA proposed modifying this hardware into a modest space station where astronauts could study the sun and other stars, conduct experiments seeking pure materials and medicines, and learn to live in space for long periods just in case someone came up with a sensible thought of going somewhere else in the solar system. The cost would not be great, and the White House and Congress agreed what was left of the great NASA Apollo launch teams should be preserved. Thus Skylab, the country’s first space station, was born.
The third stage of a Saturn V was stripped and converted into the house-size “home away from home” with racks of scientific equipment, a state-of-the-art astronomical laboratory, and more than thirteen thousand cubic feet of comfort and freedom for three astronauts. Gone were the cramped spacecraft of the past. Cooking facilities, private quarters, showers, even the astronauts’ own gym for keeping in good physical shape while spending months in weightlessness rounded out Skylab’s interior.
America’s first space station thundered into orbit May 14, 1973. Three successive missions of three astronauts each rode smaller Saturn 1B rockets and Apollo spaceships to NASA’s first orbiting outpost. The final crew’s stay in 1974 was extended to eighty-four days and proved that astronauts would suffer no ill effects during long weightless voyages.
In the normal course of events, the man who rode herd on the astronauts would have been Deke Slayton. But during Skylab, Deke was busy getting himself back on flight status. He was being treated and tested by Dr. Harold Mankin, a world-renowned cardiologist from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Dr. Mankin found Slayton’s heart was, and had been, disease free and he was placed back on flight status. No one was happier for Deke than his close friend Alan Shepard, who had taken charge of the astronaut office.
Meanwhile, the Russians and NASA were plotting a mission where the two countries would meet and dock in space. Their efforts were inspired by Martin Caidin’s novel MAROONED, which legendary Hollywood producer Frank Capra had made into an Academy Award–winning motion picture. In the novel, a Russian cosmonaut saved American astronauts, and it was agreed a common docking device between both countries’ spacecraft would be wise. Project Apollo-Soyuz was born.
The selection team would have been shot if they had not picked Deke Slayton as a member of the Apollo-Soyuz crew. A classic party was thrown for Deke, and the happy and drunken astronaut was carried onto an aircraft with his crewmates Tom Stafford and Vance Brand. It was wheels up for training in Moscow.
Legendary Hollywood producer Frank Capra (center) at Cape Canaveral with the author of MAROONED, Martin Caidin (right). (Caidin Collection).
Two cosmonauts and three astronauts would make up the team that would meet in Earth orbit. The problems of making the Russian and American pilots function as a tightly knit unit were as formidable as the many technical issues that had to be resolved. The cosmonauts didn’t speak English, and the astronauts didn’t speak Russian. Neither side could read the