Skylab Rescue

Skylab Rescue was a planned space mission in the context of the U.S. Skylab project.

In the event that the three crew members could not return with their own spacecraft to the Earth, a special rescue spaceship should start with two other crew members to the space station and pick up the Skylab crew there. Since this emergency did not occur, Skylab Rescue was never carried out.

Background

The crew of the Skylab space station consisted of three astronauts. The flight to the space station was carried out in an Apollo spacecraft. After the astronauts were switched in the space station, the spacecraft systems were switched off, but it was functional and could ensure the return to Earth in an emergency.

In the event that the Apollo spacecraft was defective, or the access there has not been possible, a rescue mission was first planned in the history of space travel. This would involve the replacement spacecraft, a converted five courses and controlled by only two astronauts Apollo command module, start with a Saturn IB for Skylab and connect it to the second docking port. The three Skylab astronauts would descend and return to the space ship with a crew of five.

Operation Plan

For the Skylab space station three manned missions were planned:

• Skylab 2 with the AS- 206 rocket and the spacecraft CSM - 116; Crew: Conrad, Weitz, Kerwin; Backup crew: Schweickart, McCandless, Musgrave
• Skylab 3 with the AS- 207 rocket and the spacecraft CSM -117; Crew: Bean, Lousma, Garriott; Backup crew: Brand, Lind, Lenoir
• Skylab 4 with the AS- 208 rocket and the spacecraft CSM - 118; Crew: Carr, Pogue, Gibson; Backup crew: Brand, Lind, Lenoir

After every start of the following rocket and the next spaceship for a possible rescue mission should be kept ready.

After the launch of Skylab 4, the replacement rocket AS- 209 and the replacement spacecraft CSM -119 would be kept ready. CSM -119 was the last ship that was prepared in the Apollo series.

Planned Mission Steps

The Kennedy Space Center is only one launch pad for the Skylab missions was available. After a rocket launch no earlier than after 22 days she was ready for a new mission. The preparation of the rocket needed a lot of time, so it would take, depending on the mission phase from 12 to 48 days until the rescue mission would be ready to start.

However, the preparation of the Apollo command module needed just about eight hours. Here, various storage spaces were remodeled and two more beds and life support systems to be installed, so that instead of the usual three now five astronauts took place.

When starting the middle of the three usual chairs would remain unoccupied, but filled with ballast.

When the rescue ship was on the way, the three Skylab astronauts would have created space suits and go into the docking adapter. At one of the two docking port would be the non-operative Apollo spacecraft. It would have been possible to do this mechanically decouple and continue to push from the space station, but that was not absolutely necessary, because the rescue spaceship could also create the second docking port.

The rescue flight to the space station and back should not take longer than five days.

The planning, which ran from 1970, assumed that the three Skylab astronauts would have enough supplies of oxygen and food to await the arrival of the rescue ship.

A rescue mission would not have been possible if the emergency would only have occurred after the Skylab astronauts enter their spaceship for the return flight to Earth and had decoupled from the space station.

Launch preparations during Skylab 3

During the second Skylab mission Skylab 3 occurred in two of four control engine systems ( quads ) of the Apollo spacecraft problems. Although the spacecraft was fully controllable even with two quads, but there was a risk that the two were related defects and the remaining two quads failed, what would make a return to Earth impossible.

Under normal circumstances, the mission would have been aborted. But because there was the possibility of a rescue flight, the problem could be analyzed in peace. At the same time the preparation of the rescue flights was in full swing. The work on the launch pad, rocket and spaceship ran from August 3, 1973 around the clock. For a start on 9 September would have been possible.

As a crew for this rescue flight were commander and pilot Lind fire ready because these were the backup crew for Skylab 3 together with the science astronauts Lenoir.

It was found that the two problems of the control engines were independent of each other, and the other two quad systems were not affected. From the 13th of August, then worked at the normal tempo, so that a start yet on September 25 would be possible. On 10 September, the ship was kept in a state which would have made a start within the next nine days. With the splashdown of Skylab 3 on September 25, the launch date was put back to 10 November.