It was the original space satellite. Before Space X and the International Space Station, there was Skylab — it fell back to Earth and crashed home in ’79 with everyone watching and wondering if it’d fall on them!
In ’73, it went up via a conventional Saturn V rocket, but its time in orbit was limited. Those last few days when its orbit decayed had everyone on high alert. They asked the same question: Would it hit me?
Let’s return to May 1979. Scientists warned the public that the bus-sized orbiter had fallen from its proper orbit and couldn’t be saved. Skylab had been in service for just six years. They said it would fall back in mid-July. The wait was on. Nervous excitement bubbled throughout the worldwide community. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Where would it fall? Would it kill anyone when it crashed?
Doom and anticipation were felt in equal amounts. The news bulletins reported more accurate re-entry times as the weeks passed and speculated on possible crash-landing sites. It was exciting for everyone, including me, at just twelve years old.
This map (published in most newspapers and TV networks) had three red orbit lines over Australia. One passed over the eastern area of the continent, another through the middle, and yet another passing by the western side. According to Australian news media outlets (there was no Internet back then), NASA’s best guess was that Australia was potentially in the firing line. They assured the world that the massive satellite could plop harmlessly into an ocean and sink. Statistically, that was the more likely outcome.
But that’s not what everyone wanted to believe! They saw their homes underneath those red lines, and they wanted to run!
Vast sums of money were offered to locate pieces of Skylab.
Treasure hunters were at the ready. Others were so frightened that they suffered anxiety heart attacks and died. Skylab killed people even before it reentered the atmosphere.
As a small boy living in Logan City (near Brisbane), I wasn’t anxious but cautiously anticipating it to land at my house. They said it could land anywhere. I wanted Skylab to crash into my backyard! My backyard was anywhere.
I ignored NASA’s statements that it’d fall into an ocean. To me, my home was where it’d fall. It’d fall somewhere over Woodridge and land in my street. My parents and I would go outside in the morning and collect bits of Skylab from our backyard, and we’d tell the world we found it.
I did see Skylab pass by on its final orbit. Yes, I sure did. I looked up that night. It broke apart, and I saw both pieces tracking across the sky until they disappeared over the horizon. Dammit! Why was it going away from our home? It was supposed to fall here!
Maybe it’d take another orbit to fall. Perhaps it’d come back. I wondered about it all night long. That was a long night.
It fell over an obscure little place called Esperance. (An Australian coastal town in the far west)
Esperance made headlines, and my head sank. I didn’t even know where stupid Esperance was. I had to pull out an Australian Atlas to locate where stupid Esperance might be. It was way over in stupid Western Australia!
Western Australia had received most of the satellite’s debris. Bits of the lab were strewn from Esperance to an unpopulated area of the Nullarbor Plain, thousands of miles from where I lived. I wouldn’t get myself a piece of space junk after all.
(And no one died)
It landed in my country but in the wrong damn place! Oh well, what an exciting time for a 12-year-old kid growing up in the seventies!
Discover more from Michael Forman – Author of Dark Fiction & Drama
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