Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day July 11th, 1979, the space station Sky Lab falls out of its orbit

disintegrates in the atmosphere and debris scatters across the Indian Ocean

and Western Australia.

Skylab had been in space for some six years, the world's first successful space station,

but I would argue that it is its crash crashed that it is most remembered for I checked and we've gotten like 10 emails from listeners saying we should talk about Skylab's crash

We've gotten zero emails from listeners asking us about all those years that Skylab was just up there

doing fine so you know it's a lesson you have one bad day and that's all that and

one bad day one bad Skylab one bad orbit but look look, we're all a little too young to remember this, but you know,

we have gotten emails from folks who were kind of young when this happened and

and certainly if you read accounts of it at the time I think the demise of Skylab and its impending crash back to earth was like

Super riveting the country was captivated it was dominating news were even, we'll get into this but like Skylab,

crash viewing parties, it was like a whole thing and very seared into the memory of people who were kind of watching it at the time.

So let's talk about Skylab Crash, which thankfully didn't cause that much damage, just a few fragments made it back to Earth as I mentioned. But there's actually some really interesting stories about that too, but here as always,

Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello there.

Hello, Jody.

Hey there.

So we've come, what's the phrase?

We've come to praise Skylad not bury it at the moment.

So let's start with Sky Lab as a very successful six-year mission.

...