Earth and Space News: Skylab 3 launch May 1973

Showing posts with label Skylab 3 launch May 1973. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Skylab 3 Astronaut Wives Pranked Spouses With Unofficial Mission Patch

Summary: Skylab 3 astronaut wives pranked their spouses with an unofficial mission patch, designed as a parody of the Skylab 3 mission’s official patch.

The Skylab 3 mission crew’s wives created their own version (right) of the mission’s official patch (left): Dante Centuori @ScienceDante, via Twitter July 28, 2017

Skylab 3 astronaut wives pranked their spouses with an unofficial mission patch, which they designed to parody the original patch officially approved by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) for the second manned mission to the Skylab space station.

The Skylab 3 mission launched Saturday, July 28, 1973, at 11:10:50 Coordinated Universal Time (7:10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time), from Launch Pad 39B at Cape Kennedy (Cape Canaveral since Oct. 9, 1973) in east central Florida. The 59-day stay at Skylab, the first United States space station, ended with a northeastern Pacific Ocean splashdown Tuesday, Sept. 25, 1973, at 22:19:51 UTC (6:19 p.m. EDT).

Fourth moonwalker Alan LaVern Bean (March 15, 1932-May 26, 2018) commanded the Skylab 3 mission. Bean had walked twice on the moon, during extravehicular activities (EVAs) on two successive days, Wednesday, Nov. 19, and Thursday, Nov. 20, 1969, for the Apollo 12 mission.

The two other members of the mission’s three-astronaut crew were Owen Kay Garriott (Nov. 22, 1930-April 15, 2019) and Jack Robert Lousma (born Feb. 29, 1936), as scientist-pilot and mission pilot, respectively. The Skylab 3 mission afforded first spaceflights and first spacewalks to Garriott and Lousma.

The three astronauts’ input into the mission patch yielded a patriotic, tri-color design with the red, white and blue of the United States flag. The patch’s iconography emphasized Earth, sun and medical themes. The design centered on Italian Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci’s circle-and-square-inscribed, dynamic Vitruvian Man, modified for “family viewing.” A red, partial solar disk, alive with yellow orange flares and edged with lively solar prominences, halved the circle backdropping the male figure’s right side. The North and South American continents, resplendently framed by the Atlantic and Pacific’s blueness, claimed the half enclosing the figure’s left side.

The last names of the Skylab 3 mission’s three astronauts arched above the circle’s upper half. Black capital letters identified “Bean Garriott Lousma” as the mission’s crew.

The official patch, however, did not remain as the only Skylab 3 mission-themed patch. Mission pilot Jack Lousma recalled for Dick Lattimer’s All We Did Was Fly to the Moon (1983) the Skylab 3 mission’s “wives’ patch.” After their arrival in orbit, Bean, Garriott and Lousma discovered their wives’ version of the official mission patch affixed to three of the storage lockers in Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) 117, the spacecraft that delivered the trio to the Skylab space station. Jack Lousma described the wives’ prank as “. . . consistent with one of our mottos, ‘Never lose your sense of humor.’”

The pranked patch differed from the official patch in its caption and central figure. The wives’ first names, Sue (Bean), Helen-Mary (Garriott), Gratia (Lousma), replaced the official patch’s last name listing of the crew, Bean, Garriot, Lousma. The male figure is redrawn as a female with lowered arms. Her inner arms rest at her sides while her outer arms hover less than halfway to shoulder height.

Houston area artist Ardis Shanks drew the unofficial patch’s female figure using her favorite model, a local girl named Cheir, according to Spacepatches.nl. Ardis Shanks gave private art lessons, and one of her students was Alan Bean. The Skylab 3 mission commander resigned from NASA in June 1981 to begin a new career, in retirement, as a painter of lunar landscapes.

Both the official and unofficial patches for the Skylab 3 mission identified the mission as Skylab II. The Skylab II caption referenced the mission’s status as NASA’s second manned mission to the Skylab space station.

Designated as SL-3, the Skylab 3 mission numbered as the third launch in the Skylab space station’s operational history. Skylab 1 (SL-1) indicated the Monday, May 14, 1973, launch of the modified Saturn V rocket carrying the Skylab space station. Skylab 2 (SL-2) and Skylab 4 (SL-4) launched Friday, May 25, 1973, and Friday, Nov. 16, 1973, as the first and third manned missions, respectively, to the space station.

In Homesteading Space (2008), spaceflight historian William David Hitt (born Aug. 7, 1975) and Skylabbers Owen Garriott and Joseph Peter “Joe” Kerwin (born Feb. 19, 1932) explained the changed numbering scheme as stemming from a communications snafu between the Skylab Project manager and NASA headquarters.

The takeaway for the Skylab 3 astronaut wives’ pranking their spouses with an unofficial mission patch is a sense of humor can trace a long trajectory, even from Earth outward into space.

Unaware that their wives’ pranked patches are already stowed in storage lockers in their space transport vehicle, Apollo CSM (Command and Service Module) 117, Alan Bean (right), Owen Garriott (middle) and Jack Lousma (left) head to their ride to the Skylab 3 mission’s launch vehicle Saturday, July 28, 1973; the mission’s official patch is affixed to the van’s open door: Public Domain, via NASA Human Spaceflight

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

The Skylab 3 mission crew’s wives created their own version (right) of the mission’s official patch (left): Dante Centuori @ScienceDante, via Twitter July 28, 2017, @ https://twitter.com/ScienceDante/status/890986000897462273

Belew, Leland F.; and Ernst Stuhlinger. “Chapter IV: Skylab Design and Operation.” Skylab: A Guidebook: 61-113. NASA EP 107. Huntsville AL: George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1973.
Available via NASA History @ https://history.nasa.gov/EP-107/ch4.htm

chromedome (Jon Mendyk). “Dick Lattimer’s Obituary.” The Leatherwall Bowsite. Sept. 13, 2011.
Available @ http://leatherwall.bowsite.com/tf/lw/thread2.cfm?threadid=228443&CATEGORY=9

Dante Centuori @ScienceDante. “Replying to @GLScienceCtr @NASAglenn and 2 others En route to Skylab, the crew got a surprise hidden in the capsule lockers: their wives made a special mission patch with their names on it!” Twitter. July 28, 2017.
Available @ https://twitter.com/ScienceDante/status/890986000897462273

Dorr, Eugene. “Introduction.” Gene Dorr > Spaceflight Mission Patches > Introduction.
Available @ http://genedorr.com/patches/Intro.html

Dorr, Eugene. “Skylab.” Gene Dorr > Spaceflight Mission Patches > Introduction.
Available @ http://genedorr.com/patches/IndexSk.html

Dorr, Eugene. “Skylab Expedition 2.” Gene Dorr > Spaceflight Mission Patches > Introduction > Skylab.
Available @ http://genedorr.com/patches/Skylab/Sk03.html

Garriott, Owen K.; Aldo V. da Rosa; Michael J. Davis; and O.G. (Oswald Garrison) Villard Jr. “Solar Flare Effects in the Ionosphere.” JGR Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 72, issue 23 (Dec. 1, 1967): 6099-6103.
Available via Wiley Online American Geophysical Union (AGU) publications @ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/JZ072i023p06099

Hitt, David; Owen Garriott; and Joe Kerwin. Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story. Featuring the In-Flight Diary of Alan Bean. Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2008.
Available via Google Books @ https://books.google.com/books/about/Homesteading_Space.html?id=sR5Cm_zeIekC

Kelly, Michelle. “Alan L. Bean Oral History Interviews.” NASA Johnson Space Center History Portal > NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. June 23, 1998.
Available @ https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/BeanAL/beanal.htm

Lattimer, Richard L. All We Did Was Fly to the Moon: By the Astronauts, as Told to Dick Lattimer. Gainesville FL: The Whispering Eagle Press, 1983.

Marriner, Derdriu. “Arabella and Anita Spun First Space Webs in August 1973 at Skylab.” Earth and Space News. Wednesday, July 31, 2013.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2013/07/arabella-and-anita-spun-first-space.html

Marriner, Derdriu. “First Web in Space Was Spun in 1973 by Common Cross Spider Arabella.” Earth and Space News. Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2020.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2020/08/first-web-in-space-was-spun-in-1973-by.html

Marriner, Derdriu. “Fourth Moonwalker Alan Bean Commanded Skylab 3 July to September 1973.” Earth and Space News. Wednesday, July 22, 2020.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2020/07/fourth-moonwalker-alan-bean-commanded.html

Marriner, Derdriu. “Owen Garriott and Jack Lousma Did Second EVA Aug. 24, 1973, at Skylab.” Earth and Space News. Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2020.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2020/08/owen-garriott-and-jack-lousma-did.html

Marriner, Derdriu. “Skylab 3 Mission Patch Emphasized Earth, Sun and Medical Themes.” Earth and Space News. Wednesday, July 8, 2020.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2020/07/skylab-3-mission-patch-emphasized-earth.html

Marriner, Derdriu. “Skylabbers Owen Garriott and Jack Lousma First Spacewalked Aug. 6, 1973.” Earth and Space News. Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2020.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2020/08/skylabbers-owen-garriott-and-jack.html

Marriner, Derdriu. “Two Mummichog Minnows Became First Fish in Space in 1973 Via Skylab 3.” Earth and Space News. Wednesday, July 29, 2020.
Available @ https://earth-and-space-news.blogspot.com/2020/07/two-mummichog-minnows-became-first-fish.html

NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Public Affairs Office. “Skylab Operations Summary.” NASA/Kennedy Space Center > Space Flight Archives > Skylab > Program Overview.
Available @ https://science.ksc.nasa.gov/history/skylab/skylab-operations.txt

Ross-Nazzal, Jennifer. “Alan L. Bean Oral History Interviews.” NASA Johnson Space Center History Portal > NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. Feb. 23, 2010.
Available @ https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/BeanAL/beanal.htm

Ross-Nazzal, Jennifer. “Jack R. Lousma Oral History Interviews.” NASA Johnson Space Center History Portal > NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. March 15, 2010.
Available @ https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/LousmaJR/lousmajr.htm

Rusnak, Kevin M. “Owen K. Garriott Oral History Interviews.” NASA Johnson Space Center History Portal > NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. Nov. 6, 2000.
Available @ https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/GarriottOK/garriottok.htm

Shayler, David J. Skylab: America’s Space Station. Springer-Praxis Books in Astronomy and Space Sciences. London, England; New York NY: Springer, 2001.
Available via Google Books @ https://books.google.com/books?id=X4WaYqQDVKwC

Shayler, David J.; and Colin Burgess. NASA’s Scientist-Astronauts. Springer-Praxis Books in Space Exploration. Chichester UK: Praxis Publishing Limited, 2007.

van Oene, Jacques Edwin; and Erik van der Hoorn. “Skylab 2 Wives Patch.” Spacepatches.nl > Patch Index > Skylab.
Available @ http://www.spacepatches.nl/skylab_frame.html

Wade, Mark. “Garriott, Owen Kay.” Astronautix > Alphabetical Index > G.
Available @ http://www.astronautix.com/g/garriott.html

Whiting, Melanie. “Skylab 3: A Record 59 Days in Space.” NASA > History. Sept. 25, 2018.
Available @ https://www.nasa.gov/feature/skylab-3-a-record-59-days-in-space

Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Skylab 3 Mission Patch Emphasized Earth, Sun and Medical Themes

Summary: The Skylab 3 mission patch emphasized Earth, sun and medical themes in its iconography and the United States flag’s red, white and blue in its colors.

Patriotic colors of red, white and blue intentionally predominate in the Skylab 3 mission patch; a communications snafu caused the designations of Skylab's three manned missions (Skylab 2, 3, 4) without inclusion of the space station's launch (Skylab 1) into the numbering scheme: Public Domain, via NASA History

The Skylab 3 mission patch emphasized Earth, sun and medical themes in its iconography and honored the red, white and blue of the United States flag in its main color scheme.

The Skylab 3 mission launched Saturday, July 28, 1973, at 11:10:50 Coordinated Universal Time (7:10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time), as NASA’s second manned mission to Skylab, the first United States space station. The mission ended 59 days later, with splashdown Tuesday, Sept. 25, at 22:19:51 UTC (6:19 p.m. EDT) in the northeastern Pacific Ocean.

The patch’s design centered on an adaptation of a circa 1490 drawing, known as Vitruvian Man (L’Uomo Vitruviano), by Italian Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452-May 2, 1519). The artistic genius used the medium of pen and ink with wash over metalpoint on paper for his famous depiction of a nude male figure.

The drawing presents the male in two superimposed positions. The superimposition yields an eight-limbed figure of four arms and four legs sharing a head and torso. A square inscribes one position, in which the figure in closed leg stance and with arms outstretched at shoulder height. A circle circumscribes the other position, in which the figure’s legs are splayed and his outstretched arms rise above his shoulders.

The Skylab 3 mission pilot, Jack Robert Lousma (born Feb. 29, 1936), explained for Richard L. “Dick” Lattimer’s 1983 spaceflight history, All We Did Was Fly to the Moon, that the Vitruvian Man represented the mission’s “medical aspects.” Lousma noted that the patch’s illustration of Vitruvian Man modified Leonardo’s original drawing for “family viewing” suitability.

Leonardo’s drawing also features blank space within the circle and the square. Contrastingly, the Skylab 3 mission patch colored the enclosed space with a solar half and an Earth half.

Red represented the solar half, with a yellow orange flare. Lousma shared that the patch’s flare outlined the shapes of flares that the mission’s scientist-pilot, Owen Kay Garriott (Nov. 22, 1930-April 15, 2019), had extensively analyzed prior to his selection in 1965 as one of NASA’s first six scientist-astronomers.

From 1961 through 1965, Garriott taught and conducted research in ionospheric physics as assistant, and then associate, professor at his alma mater, California’s Stanford University. (Solar radiation ionizes the ionosphere by negatively or positively charging the layer’s atoms and molecules. NASA places the ionosphere’s stretch from approximately 48 kilometers, or 30 miles, above Earth’s surface to “the edge of space,” at about 965 kilometers, or 600 miles.) Garriott co-authored, with Stanford University colleagues Aldo V. da Rosa, Michael J. Davis and O.G. (Oswald Garrison) Villard Jr., “Solar Flare Effects in the Ionosphere,” a study of the solar flares of Monday, May 21, and Tuesday, May 23, 1967, published in the Dec. 1, 1967, issue of JGR Journal of Geophysical Research.

The patch’s Earth half backdropped the eight-limbed figure’s left side. The North and South American continents, depicted as silvery off-white land masses shaded with blue-gray topographical stretches, interrupt the blue vastness of the Atlantic and the Pacific. The Southern Ocean possibly lies between Skylab 3 man’s two left feet.

Elena Passarello, assistant professor of English at Oregon State University, devoted a chapter to the Skylab 3 mission’s most popular experimentee, common cross spider (Araneus diadematus) Arabella, in her 2017 bestiary, Animals Strike Curious Poses. Passarello ended her tribute to Arabella with a description of the Skylab 3 mission patch’s “take on Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.” She saw the patch’s central figure as reaching out “with all eight of his appendages” (page 170). Perhaps the patch’s eight-limbed figure also could have suggested the eight-legged Arabella, dubbed in the chapter’s opening Reuters’ quote as “. . . in many ways . . . Skylab’s star performer” (page 158).

The Skylab 3 mission patch designated the mission as Skylab II. In Homesteading Space (2008), co-written by spaceflight historian William David Hitt (born Aug. 7, 1975) with Skylabbers Owen Garriott and Joseph Peter “Joe” Kerwin (born Feb. 19, 1932), the discrepancy is attributed to scrapped plans for designating the space station’s three manned missions as 1, 2 and 3, by excluding the space station’s orbital launch, Monday, May 14, 1973.

The takeaways for Skylab 3 mission patch’s emphasis on Earth, sun and medical themes are that the primarily tri-colored patch honored the red, white and blue colors of the United States flag; that a communications snafu accounted for the mission’s designation as Skylab II instead of Skylab 3; and that the eight-limbed Vitruvius Man could have suggested the mission's most popular experimentee, Arabella, who spun the first made-in-space web as the one of the first two spiders in space.

First two spiders in space were common cross spiders (Araneus diadematus) Arabella (left), who spun first made-in-space web, and Anita (right), second spider to form a web in space; Lee B. Summerlin, ed., Skylab, Classroom in Space (1977), page 44: Public Domain, via NASA NTRS (NASA Technical Report Server)

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

chromedome (Jon Mendyk). “Dick Lattimer’s Obituary.” The Leatherwall Bowsite. Sept. 13, 2011.
Available @ http://leatherwall.bowsite.com/tf/lw/thread2.cfm?threadid=228443&CATEGORY=9

Dorr, Eugene. “Introduction.” Gene Dorr > Spaceflight Mission Patches > Introduction.
Available @ http://genedorr.com/patches/Intro.html

Dorr, Eugene. “Skylab.” Gene Dorr > Spaceflight Mission Patches > Introduction.
Available @ http://genedorr.com/patches/IndexSk.html

Dorr, Eugene. “Skylab Expedition 2.” Gene Dorr > Spaceflight Mission Patches > Introduction > Skylab.
Available @ http://genedorr.com/patches/Skylab/Sk03.html

Passarello, Elena. "Arabella (1973)." Animals Strike Curious Poses: 157-170. Louisville KY; Brooklyn NY: Sarabande Books, 2017.

Shayler, David J.; and Colin Burgess. NASA’s Scientist-Astronauts. Springer-Praxis Books in Space Exploration. Chichester UK: Praxis Publishing Limited, 2007.

Summerlin Lee B., ed. “Web Formation.” Skylab, Classroom in Space: 41-49. Prepared by George C. Marshall Space Flight Center. NASA SP-401. Washington DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration Scientific and Technical Information Office, 1977.
Available via NASA NTRS (NASA Technical Reports Server) @ https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19770022245.pdf

Wade, Mark. “Garriott, Owen Kay.” Astronautix > Alphabetical Index > G.
Available @ http://www.astronautix.com/g/garriott.html

Whiting, Melanie. “Skylab 3: A Record 59 Days in Space.” NASA > History. Sept. 25, 2018.
Available @ https://www.nasa.gov/feature/skylab-3-a-record-59-days-in-space

Zell, Holly, ed. “Earth’s Atmospheric Layers.” NASA > Mission Pages > Sun-Earth > Science. Jan. 22, 2013. Last updated Aug. 7, 2017.
Available @ https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/science/atmosphere-layers2.html