Back in 1973, owen garriott, astronaut and physicist, lived aboard Skylab, America's first space station, for 59 days. The station's core was a modified Saturn V third stage, the S-IVB; McDonnell Douglas transformed its hydrogen fuel tank into an orbital lab and habitat. Garriott and his Skylab 3 crewmates, Alan Bean and Jack Lousma, launched to the station on July 28. In 2010,1 joined Garriott at the National Air and Space Museum for a tour of Skylab B, the backup vehicle for the original 100-ton Skylab, which reentered the atmosphere and broke up in July 1979. Garriott led me into Skylab's main living and experiment spaces. We were at the bottom of a high-ceilinged cylinder with half the living volume of today's typical suburban house. Above us, the forward compartment rose from the lattice ceiling to the airlock hatch at the top of the tank. Beneath the domed ceiling, storage lockers ringed the 70 feet of the hull's circumference.
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