ABSTRACT
Skylab was launched on May 14, 1973. After eleven days of frantic simulation and testing, the first Skylab crew set off to fix the ailing station, lifting off on May 25. Pete Conrad's fellow Apollo 12 moon explorer Alan Bean commanded the second Skylab mission. The final Skylab crew launched on November 16, 1973. Gerald Carr was the commander, accompanied by William Pogue and scientist-astronaut Ed Gibson. Revived from the ground in 1978, Skylab's apparently imminent fall from orbit caused a maelstrom of criticism to descend on the space agency. Two decades after Skylab was shuttered, following previously unthinkable political realignments on earth, the Soviet space station Mir would provide a place for American astronauts to work among the stars. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) did its best to allay the public's fears, and to control the descent when it finally occurred, on July 12, 1979.