In 1979, NASA's first space station, Skylab fell to Earth.

The intention was for it to crash into the Indian Ocean, but it survived deeper into

the atmosphere than anyone expected.

And so once it finally broke apart, pieces of the lab reached as far as Western Australia.

The largest pieces of debris landed near the town of Esperance.

There were pieces of metal falling from the sky, and so town leaders had to do something about it.

They issued NASA a $400 citation for littering.

The debt went unpaid.

And yeah, technically it was just a humorous jab.

They didn't really intend for NASA to collect the fine for littering,

and in 2009, a California radio host raised

the funds to pay off the debt. But it does highlight how Skylab, and especially Skylab's fate,

became something of a joke in the 1970s, and how we let a space station fall to Earth without

having a replacement waiting in the wings.

And here we are again, half a century later, facing the potential demise of our own space station with plans for it to fall to Earth without having a replacement waiting in the wings.

So I know the title of this episode is what's going to happen after the ISS. And the answer is,

we don't really know. There are a few options on the table. But I want to explain to you how we got

in such a tricky position where we're about to lose a space station without a firm replacement

for what comes after it. And so most of this

episode is actually going to be the history of the international space station, our current

space station, and how we got to this point because it looks like we're just repeating

the mistakes from 50 years ago. And in some small ways, we are. But in other ways,

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