I'm not sure I understand your comment. I suppose in a way we are but it's more like we're deterriforming it

No, it was multiple factors, the public believing that we were shooting a lot of money into space and politicians needing to line their pockets in different ways. If we let the scientist run it we'd have been on Mars years ago. All things being equal the US would have only continued to fund a lunar program at the rate they had if the Soviets had gotten there first.

Yeah I think you have something there. I don't know if you've seen that show on Apple TV but that's part of the basis of it that the Soviets actually got there first.

Given how valuable everything from the space program produced it's a shame that we let some ignorant politicians say oh we're launching all that money into space when every penny was spent on the ground.

As I've said elsewhere the second somebody gets a successful mining operation going in space or build some sort of orbiting factory the race will be on again and it won't be just governments this time. At this point it's not only governments at this time

It wasn't accepted by a lot of people at NASA. I keep telling you my grandfather brought me all that stuff from the Huntsville rocket center, why do you think he had all that stuff?

It's not what von Braun envisioned it was an orbiter it was not a space station

You know anything about the dry centaur project? That was an alternative floated during the space shuttle years and also never got off of the ground.

Do you have money on getting me to change your mind is somehow your life goal to convince me and everyone else that Skylab was some sort of space station when it was nothing more than an orbiter. An aircraft carrier could be called a city on the ocean but it's not.

NASA for whatever reason be it public opinion, or political apathy lost its vision Skylab was not a space station it was an orbiter, not much better than a porta John

It very well could have been, there was a plan for that 0,to convert the modules into a complete space station not simply a one-off orbiter. During the space shuttle program several former astronauts put forward a program called dry centaur, the idea was it would be possible to boost the large tank into orbit and convert them slowly into a larger space station, more like something von Braun had envisioned.

I think the real problem was that the public after the moon landing simply lost interest in the space program. Von Braun had envisioned an orbiting space station, we would launch from Earth to the space station then transfer to a lunar transfer module which would launch to the Moon and then a landern would go to and from the Moon and then that lunar transfer vehicle would come back to the space station.

I had everything that you used to come out of the Huntsville rocket Center about this unfortunately when I left for college my mother threw it all out as junk. I'm sure it's still available somewhere and it was fascinating they put a lot of thought into what they wanted to do. I don't know if it's true or not but I was told the whole purpose of the Germans who were building rockets for Hitler was really to launch rockets to the Moon. I often wonder what would have happened had the United States in the Soviet Union collaborated since we split up the German scientists involved

We at NASA... Oh I didn't realize I was speaking to someone so exalted

Once again, von Braun, the man who was behind the program and envisioned the real space station didn't envision orbiting Porta John. You can call it whatever you want to that doesn't make it that. Although a child at the time I was highly interested in the space program and had everything I could get my hands on about it. We dropped the ball. Now you can pretend we didn't but I'm here to tell you that we did and we still haven't really picked it up again.

I'm going to say that in the end the science fiction guys from the 40s and 50s got it right, it's going to take private individuals with more money than they ought to have to get it going again. Although in the case of science fiction they were the ones that got it going in the first place. Eventually someone is either going to mind something on the moon or figure out how to mine an asteroid and then it's going to blow up. At that point in time you will see real space stations.

Calling Skylab a space station is like calling Plymouth Massachusetts in 1621 a metropolis. I get it you work for NASA and you're butt hurt that somebody out in the general public doesn't think that that joke of a project was a real space station, I don't even think they called it that at the time. They obviously didn't value it because they could have kept it in orbit much longer rather than letting it crash back into the Earth, Australia if my memory serves

I followed the Skylab missions, I even had a copy of the orbiter. That's the word it was an orbiter. I knew if I ran my mouth long enough the words would find me. You're not going to get me to change my mind and I'm sorry your feelings are hurt however calling Skylab a space station would be like calling Scott's expedition to Antarctica a success, he wasn't even first, nor did anyone live from his party.

You can defend Skylab all you want it was viewed as a failure of initiative by those of us in the public who were firmly behind the program. I don't even think the space station was occupied for a full 6 months total, that's hardly a space station, you couldn't even call it an outpost.

Well I hate to break it to you but I and many other people like me don't consider Skylab to have been a space station, it was an orbital Porta John. Many of the astronauts that were in it didn't have very good things to say about it afterward. It was the we give up move by the United States space agency and here we are 50 years later and we barely have launched systems when we should have established bases on the moon

My parents? Did you not understand me saying I was alive when they landed on the moon? I was really into this stuff and I'm here to tell you that no one considered Skylab a space station at the time. We were actually told it was a stopgap measure until they could put up a real space station and once again based on what von Braun wanted to do there is still nothing in orbit resembling that, there's nothing up there that's even close.

Now maybe it's not feasible, it's not my area of expertise, but von Braun believed it was doable in the 60s so I'm going to go with him. America had the best Nazis you know

I am going by the things that used to come to me via my grandfather from the Huntsville space flight center, Skylab had absolutely nothing to do with the space station that it was envisioned by von Braun Warner von Braun. Rather than a full-blown space station that could support many people they basically sent up a porta John. I don't know if you were alive at the time but I was and there was great dissatisfaction in those of us who were very interested in the space race. You can paint whatever picture you want but Skylab was sort of an orbiting science station it was not a space station. A space station in my opinion still doesn't exist. The ISS while a noble project, still falls far short of what von Braun had envisioned and I'm guessing could have made happen had they allowed him to do so.

That is great to hear, it would really be nice to see our expansion into space finally become a everyday reality and not a hobby

No, it was not a space station it was a converted module of an Apollo launcher. If you want to call that mold infested thing a space station you go right ahead but even the astronauts that were on it wouldn't say that. Look at the plans von Braun had originally drawn up and then tell me how Skylab is a space station, it's basically an orbiting toilet

Skylab wasn't really an orbiting space station it was just one module off of Saturn 5. The project that was designed was nothing like Skylab. I was alive at the time as I said in the earlier comment, there was a lot of people saying that Sky lab was a joke at the time and has become more of a joke overtime.

My favorite Skylab story, is that one of the crews got fed up with the work schedule and staged to work stoppage for a day. I don't remember which one of the Skylab Cruise it was, I think there was only three so I'm going to randomly choose three

I'm using speech to text I'm surprised it didn't misspell more words, I think there's quite a few people at nasa that know what a disaster Skylab was and that it had nothing to do with the international space station, but you believe whatever you want to

Please tell me when and where I said Skylab didn't exist. I said the planned space station did not exist and it didn't, you might want to do a little research into what Warner von Braun had actually planned and it wasn't Skylab

Edit: and please keep demonstrating your character by down voting me, apparently you're unable to understand common English if you think I ever said Skylab didn't exist, I don't consider it to be the space station that was talked about, even NASA wouldn't say that, if I recall correctly it was nothing but a modified third stage of a Saturn 5 rocket, or maybe you want to call it the first stage I truly don't remember but Skylab was nothing like what was originally planned, it was the US giving up and doing the least amount of work they could to try to pretend that they hadn't

Skylab, was an abomination compared to what was originally planned. It was basically the US saying we give up

MIR was a better program and I don't believe the ISS as much of anything to skylab

I was a kid during the Apollo missions, my grandfather used to bring me stuff from the rocket Center in Houston. I never understood why they never carried forward with the plans to build a permanent base, of course there were some other things they didn't do as well including a orbiting space station. I'd like to believe the government would get this done but I'm starting to think we're going to need these billionaires to do the right thing instead. The second anyone starts making money off of mining in space it'll blow up