1973:
Skylab Tool Kit #1
"Skylab Repaired With $65.50 Cable-Cutter, Salvaging the Mission and Rest of Program."
Imagine preparing to move into a brand new house and finding out just before the moving truck arrives that your new house already needs repairs! During the launch of the Skylab orbital workshop, the United States' first station in space, the spacecraft suffered serious external damage to its meteoroid shield and one of its solar panels, jeopardizing the entire program. This made repair of the workshop a critical task for the first crew of astronauts. NASA engineers went to work, urgently improvising tools to fix the exterior problems. As noted in the headline above, a $65.50 commercial cable-cutter became part of the repair activity.
But long before this launch-caused damage, NASA engineers had anticipated the need to make repairs to the space station that would serve as the astronauts' home. They developed tools for use inside and outside the spacecraft, trying to foresee all of the possible repair work astronauts might encounter during their weeks and months in orbit. Astronauts moved into Skylab with kits including an extensive range of tools — impressive even to the most avid of home improvement gurus. During three missions to the workshop, nine different men worked with dozens of tools to deal with urgent problems and daily maintenance tasks on America's first space station.
As the nearest hardware store was hundreds of miles straight down, Skylab was equipped with tools for every size nut, bolt, and screw holding the spacecraft together. In this set, Tool Kit #1, transferred from NASA to the Museum in 1976, astronauts found familiar household tools such as screwdrivers, clamps, wrenches, and ratchets. NASA saved time and money by buying commercially available tools designed for indoor use only. In contrast, most tools for exterior work were custom-made to withstand the extreme conditions of space and the special needs of astronauts wearing bulky spacesuit gloves. One important addition to each indoor tool, helpful as astronauts floated weightless in the spacecraft, was a small piece of Velcro. This simple but strong material kept these and hundreds of other articles taken into space from drifting around. Other tool kits on board Skylab included materials such as twine, tape, and adhesives for making other kinds of repairs.
The Skylab mission proved the ability of humans to survive long-term space missions — a crucial part of which was being able to make major and minor repairs as needed. From daily scheduled housekeeping repairs to unexpected minor damages, Skylab tool kits proved essential resources for astronauts aboard the orbiting workshop. Engineers later standardized this equipment on the Space Shuttle. On-orbit repair became a critical skill as the United States moved out of the Apollo program and toward days-long flights on the Space Shuttle and long-duration missions to the Russian Mir Space Station and the International Space Station.
After Sputnik is a testament to the unique story-telling power of the "real stuff." New, richly detailed photography of each artifact and "behind-the-scenes" essays reveal the many ways in which space became part of the fabric of our lives.
Click here for more information.