James Lileks—whose blog, with its calm voice recounting his day , is one of the treasures of the Web—has a column this week on the Star Tribune website about the anniversary of Skylab. Or, rather, the anniversary of the day Skylab fell from the sky, on July 11, 1979. Interestingly, even after it recounts all the mockery of Skylab in the 1970s, Lilek’s piece ends with something of a defense of the project.
Nobody likes a little bit of counter-intuitive twist better than I do, but, in this case, I think Lileks is wrong. The mockery derived from a serious insight: Worthy or not scientifically, Skylab lacked the spark, the imagination-catching glory, of the moon walk. Maybe we learned some important things from having a giant laboratory circling Earth, but where was the ad-astra oomph that could inspire us? There’s always an odd, heavy gravity that draws humans inward on themselves. Skylab lacked the centrifugal force to tug us out to the universe instead.
As then, so now . Can’t you hear Mars calling?
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