With „Searching for Skylab“ author Dwight Steven-Boniecki returns to his original profession, filmmaking. Thanks to his extensive research and discussions with experts and astronauts of Skylab, he has created a fascinating documentary about the first American space station that stood in the shadow of Apollo. In an interview with the Swiss Space Museum, he talks about his work and his personal experiences with Skylab.
Skylab crashed over Australia in 1979. You grew up in Australia and were 10 years old then. What memories do you have of the event?
I vividly remember a student at my school had made a poster which had in big letters, „Skylab is Falling“. It then listed what Skylab was and how it was expected to fall to earth and that Australia was in the reentry footprint. I remember going to bed being terrified that our house and our house alone would be the one it hit as it crashed to earth. I went to school the next day very much relieved that I lived to tell the tale. Shortly afterward, I heard about the kid who got $10,000 for pieces of the station he found. I was insanely jealous, and recall thinking how much Lego Space (that was the newest range of Lego at the time – all based on space stations, shuttles and the like) I would be able to buy with that amount of money!
Skylab stood in the shadow of Apollo for a long time. Why did Skylab fascinate you anyway?
Skylab was always something I knew about ever since 1979, but I had incorrectly always viewed it as a failure. When I was interviewing Stan Lebar via telephone for my book “Live TV From the Moon” his conversation would always steer to Skylab. He was immensely proud of Apollo, and his work in developing the TV camera used to televise Neil Armstrong’s first step onto the moon, but he always told me he felt what was televised on Skylab superceeded anything from Apollo. This got me very interested, and in 2004 I was lucky enough to acquire a batch of VHS tapes haphazardly thrown together with Skylab material on them. When I began my second book, “Live TV From Orbit” I decided to arrange these segments into chronological order. When I finally sat down and properly watch the 300+ hours of footage, my opinion changed immediately about just how amazingly cool Skylab was.
Where does Skylab stand out significantly from Apollo?
Despite being built upon hardware developed for Apollo, Skylab was a project in its own right. To quote David Hitt, author of “Homesteading Space”, in our film “Skylab is the first time that orbit becomes a destination.” Everything NASA learned about in-space maintenance, repairs and emergencies was bourne out of lessons learned on Skylab. Also, whereas Apollo explored the moon, Skylab ultimately explored planet earth. It taught humanity that we could indeed live in space for long periods of time.
Skylab had big problems after the launch. But these problems could be solved to a large extent. What can we learn from these missions?
64 seconds after launch the protective Micro-Meteroid Shield was ripped off the spacecraft by the forces encountered at such high speeds in the atmosphere, this, in turn, caused a solar wing to also be ripped off the side of the spacecraft, and the other to be lodged into place by debris. The rocket also came to within seconds of exploding due to the S-II stage of the rocket after a stage separation anomaly. The $2.2 billion Skylab program nearly came to a disastrous end, and quite possibly that would have been the end of NASA. The main fact learned from the mishap is that humans are essential in space exploration. No robot or automatic systems could have fixed the problems. Astronauts in space putting into practice what thousands of devoted team members on the ground developed are what saved Skylab. SL-2 Commander Pete Conrad stated openly that he felt his Skylab mission way surpassed walking on the moon on Apollo 12.
In your opinion, which is the greatest triumph of Skylab?
Skylab taught us so many things about living in space. The data collected was so detailed that according to ESA astronaut Dirk Frimout, there aren’t enough scientists to be able to investigate all of it, 45 years since the last mission on Skylab. It should come as no surprise that missions planned on the ISS today still heavily rely on data collected in 1973-74. Even the Russians were thankful for the openness and thoroughness of the Skylab data findings. They state that it helped them plan their MIR missions.
Skylab has long been history. You would think that you already know everything. Which fact was completely new in the course of your research on the film?
From the missions themselves, I did not realize that SL-4 was specifically extended and modified to observe comet Kohoutek. While interviewing Dr. Kohoutek, I also discovered that he wasn’t particularly interested in comets, but rather Planetary Nebulae, which is ironic considering he is most well known for discovering comet Kohoutek. The Magnetospheric Particle Composition experiment, devised by the University of Bern was also something I was not aware of until the Swiss Space Museum actually informed me of it! I also found the link to Australian Indigenous Dreamtime legends particularly mystical, but you’ll have to see the film to know what I’m talking about.
In the course of the production of „Searching for Skylab,“ you met many Skylab astronauts personally. What experience have you had in this context?
This experience was a humbling one. These men have largely been forgotten, precisely because Skylab falls in the shadow of Apollo. Despite this, they are very approachable – they were the first group of scientist-astronauts, and have a slightly different view of life than test pilots do. For Joe Kerwin, I never realized just how wicked his sense of humor is. Evidence of this is featured in the film. Paul Weitz was a very humble man, who had accomplished feats of greatness on Skylab. Initially, he did not want to appear in our film, but I convinced him that his story was worthwhile and needed to be shared with the world. For the astronauts who worked as the backup and support crew, they were very thankful to be able to tell their story. When I asked if Bruce McCandless would like to speak on camera about his pioneering work on Skylab, his face lit up. Everyone knows him as the astronaut on the photo of him floating untethered in the MMU (Manned Maneuvering Unit), but no-one knows how crucial he was in developing and testing the unit on Skylab. He put in countless thankless hours working on that, as well as the Capcom duties he diligently performed for all of Skylab. Both Paul and Bruce gave their last ever interviews to us before they passed away. We were arranging to interview Al Bean, but he also passed away before we got the chance. Losing these heroes is something that has saddened me greatly.
What do you especially want to convey to the audience of „Searching for Skylab“?
My answer follows on from the one above. I don’t want to sound morbid, but these guys will not live forever. I greatly desire that the world does not forget who they are, and what they did to move humanity forward. Some people may criticize looking towards the stars as naïve dreaming. I see it as the best way for humans to shrug off the bonds of the earth and move forwards. As Russian rocket scientist and pioneer of cosmonautics, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky stated, “Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.” Skylab represents what happens when humans leave that cradle, and the results are astounding. As SL-4 Scientist Pilot, Ed Gibson, told us, “If you think walking on the moon was great, wait until you hear about we did on Skylab!”
About Dwight Steven-Boniecki
Dwight was born in Sydney, Australia and became an international broadcasting professional. After studying television theory at North Sydney Technical College he moved to San Diego, USA where he completed his TV production training. He returned to Australia and worked in TV before heading back to university majoring in Psychology. Television was the industry for which Dwight’s heart was really beating and so he returned to the industry. Naturally, when he heard of an unusual opportunity of expanding digital satellite TV in Eastern Europe he jumped on a plane. It is in Europe, having moved from Great Britain to Germany – where he still works today as a transmission engineer.
Dwight is the award-winning author of Live TV from the Moon, Live TV from Orbit, and editor of Skylab 1 & 2: The NASA Mission Reports, Skylab 3: The NASA Mission Reports, and Skylab 4: The NASA Mission Reports.
With „Searching for Skylab“ Dwight returns to the art of filmmaking. Armed with an in-depth knowledge of Skylab, he presents the largely forgotten Skylab Program in a detail on film not seen since 1973.