stories
HOW I BECAME A FILM PRODUCER
Written By Alexandra Steven-Boniecki
1. Meeting Dwight
I met Dwight Steven-Boniecki, the director of “Searching for Skylab” at a TV studio in the UK. Like many musically talented young men, he was then part of a local band. His fascination with Star Wars was in my view rather childish, but I soon discovered that beneath my superficial view there was a young man with great knowledge of cinema, TV, video effects and sound production. It was the end of the era of the fax machines and Dwight was already working on special digital effects for a Star Wars fan movie called “The Dark Redemption”. To me, a recent psychology graduate from Paris, such technical skills were most impressive.
When we met again years later, I was surprised to see Dwight’s fascination with Star Wars transformed into a serious passion for space exploration. To keep up conversation I had to quickly catch up on all the Apollo missions and at least some names of the astronauts. I didn’t know then that I was about to meet Buzz Aldrin, Jack Lousma, Dick Gordon and Scott Carpenter. Talking to them in an otherwise empty room was great fun as you can imagine. Dwight was meeting his heroes and the living legends. I was just chatting to some cool and very interesting guys. As to Buzz Aldrin, he was shut away in a big room of his own and I was not about to queue up with all the crowds just to get him to sign a picture for me.
2. Mountains Of Research Turned Into Books
Soon, mountains of paperwork about TV cameras in space surrounded Dwight and I remember his frequent calls with NASA engineers or experts who would pass him onto the next engineer or expert and the next one to resolve some obscure detail which only that one specialist would know the answer to.
Being the technically savvy guy, passionate about space and broadcasting technology, Dwight was looking into the question of how exactly NASA managed to get a TV signal from the Moon and transmit the pictures live back to Earth. Curiously, no one seemed to have asked themselves this question before and Dwight could find nothing clearly digested and put together in a story that he could just grab off the shelf and read.
Other books followed and I got used to seeing Dwight passionately going through archive films, meticulously cleaning up old NASA material, documenting and archiving all of the collected information.
At this point I was bravely queuing up with him to meet Buzz Aldrin and being most excited to have the opportunity to chat with him even briefly before a gala dinner. The more I know about space history — and I still know relatively little — the more I find talking to astronauts of any name a very humbling privilege.
3. This Movie Had To Be Made
There was a distinct sense of urgency in Dwight’s voice. Nobody, except maybe a few more people in the world have ever seen the footage or audio he had discovered over the years.
Historical material of such great value to humanity was deteriorating in front of our eyes and the astronauts who could still give us a first-hand account were not getting any younger. If we hurried, we could still catch their memories on tape. “It’s not on — Dwight kept saying — that the world doesn’t see what I get to see and happily ignores all this!
No self-respecting historian can watch physical evidence of such importance disintegrate in front of their eyes without trying to preserve it for posterity. Even less, knowing that society already forgot most of what has happened. The material Dwight found researching many hundreds of hours of video and listening to many hundreds of hours of audio was of such importance, that he felt he had to preserve it for future generations in a story that they would like to hear. "If I don’t do it now, who will? When?” - he kept saying.
I was working on a number of projects at the time which meant that I didn’t have a spare minute to help. Still, my company had a budget that seemed large enough at the time to absorb the costs of a small, independent movie production. I just wanted to ensure that this project would fit the mission statement and fit with the overall goals of the company.
I created 1080 Virtual Media Consulting Ltd. with the view of assisting experts in making learning easier for their learners without compromising on results. To me, digital solutions - existing or new ones - are key in the path to success.
In this case, I had an expert right in front of me. A film may not be the most digital tool I can think of, but digital education can’t evolve without well thought-through video and sound. In other words, I just found my next project. I had seen Dwight’s earliest productions and I knew how much natural talent he brings to the video production. His expert status on Skylab is unquestionably recognised even by the Skylab astronauts themselves.
Would this be enough to pitch his idea to a production studio and trust that Dwight would retain complete creative freedom? Would any production studio agree to a project like this at a drop of a hat? None of us believed they would. Instead, we both jumped into the film's production head first.
The movie was to turn 10 years of research into 1.5 hours of a powerful story for anyone interested in the subject of space.
We wanted the story of Skylab to share Dwight’s findings, but Skylab is about so much more than just a Space Station. We wanted to see the audience inspired by the story to look for more answers on their own. If a novice space fan happened to stumble upon our movie, we wanted to reward their curiosity. We have integrated the most jaw-dropping historical material into the movie to do just that!
4. Who Do You Think You Are?
We soon realised that doors were closing everywhere. film festivals, sponsors, distributors... Other independent filmmakers were cheering us on "Welcome to the world of independent film making. We've all been there." I decided to run a test to see what Google says about the best independent documentaries in 2019. Sorry Google, but the result was funny, "independent" clearly meant "backed by a major media mogul". I guess everyone is entitled to their own definition of "independent".
Nevertheless, the hardest lesson came from our naive thinking that space fans didn’t need to be marketed to.
Why did we ever believe that space enthusiasts would quickly understand the importance of Skylab just because we told them so? Why did we think that most would jump at the occasion to see historical video evidence so obscure, that not even NASA realised their importance? Because they were passionate about space?
The overwhelming positive reviews didn’t generate the wave of interest we were hoping for. Marketing now became key and one of us had to learn it from scratch. That someone had to be me.
You may find it strange coming from someone who runs their own business, but after 15 years in the corporate world of IT, I never had to market to clients before.
First I needed to get to know the story of Skylab much better. I realised that despite assisting with almost every interview, I never really understood what was being discussed until the day I saw the first completed version of the film. Finally all the curious pieces of the puzzle came together! Finally I had a clear picture of what the Skylab story was all about.
Every version I watched since has been revealing. I started to see details I didn’t notice before. In the end I was left inspired to learn more about Skylab to answer questions the movie couldn’t answer anymore.
I understand the words of David Hitt, the co-author of the book “Homesteading Space” so much better today: “(…) this story really hadn’t been told in the way that I wanted to see it preserved to the world!”
I couldn't agree more. “Searching for Skylab” gave me the first glimpse into what this NASA program was all about.
For someone who isn’t a “space fan” to never grow tired of watching the same movie on that subject over and over again is rather surprising. To me in any case it is completely unexpected.
Given my growing fascination with the story of Skylab I sometimes wonder why "Searching for Skylab" is the first-ever feature film made on this subject? Is it because:
1. The Space Station crashed — and therefore - like Dwight says - until diving into the subject, you have the impression that it was a failure and is not worth looking up? A point of view perhaps confirmed because media overall rarely ever speak about Skylab?
Or because:
2. The science done on Skylab is so overwhelming, that the research alone would cost too much? Skylab required 1000 senior scientists and engineers to analyse its data at the time. Who today has the resources to seethe through so much data to understand a Space Station that was left to rot away in some space archives? Maybe people feel that it’s “a waste of time” and "too complex" to market the story altogether?
It makes me immensely proud to have been given the opportunity to produce such a unique documentary. One that is inspiring people like me, the curious ones, but no space fans.
I am most grateful to our Kickstarter backers, who believed in our skills to make this a great movie and made it possible for us to finalise its production.
The youngest fan of the movie we know of is an American girl who turned 11 shortly after watching the film at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL. Her passionate support confirms to me that we must have done a great job in sharing complex knowledge and entertaining the viewer at the same time. For a child to be interested enough to sit through an entire 95+ minutes of a documentary and then to become its fan makes me, the producer, feel very deeply honoured.
Marketing remains a work-in- progress however, so if you've never heard about this movie before, please accept my very personal apologies. You can read about it on our website or you can go directly to renting or downloading it from Vimeo.
We are working on releasing it on iTunes, Hulu, Google Play, Blu-ray and maybe DVD. However, these questions too are budget sensitive and likely to take a month or two to complete. What I know is that if you are into space exploration you will be delighted with the result!
Owen K. Garriott 1930-2019 ; Skylab SL-3 Shuttle STS-9
Written by Carl Alessi
Why Are We Sharing This?
We believe that knowing Skylab today, can still lead to amazing projects tomorrow.
And maybe you are the one getting inspired?
In our view, you too deserve to know how Skylab initiated changes to our lives on Earth without having to research the NASA archives for decades in the process.
Having done the research, we were also able to speak with many of the astronauts in person and record their Skylab stories.
Today, we feel it is our duty to share with you what we found and bring you closer to the astronauts themselves, the true American heroes, who worked on what many consider "one of NASA's most important programmes ever".
To this day, arguably, up to 40% of data collected by Skylab has not been analysed due to the lack of scientists.
Are you the one who will contribute to another marvellous change in our world while standing on the shoulders of giants? Even if you "only" spread the Skylab stories, you might.
Thanks for sharing.
As I look back on the events surrounding Dr. Garriott’s life, I’m struck by many of the “firsts” that could be attributed to his long and storied career. I’m also impressed by many of the in-flight problems that he and his crewmates encountered as they learned to live and work in that most rewarding and unforgiving of exploration environments, space.
The path to Owen Garriott’s career in NASA was paved with a remarkable first: he was among the first group of six science astronauts recruited by the program in 1965. Having earned a doctorate in electrical engineering, his assignment to the prime crew of Skylab 3 as a science pilot would be a natural fit for a man skilled in a broad array of technological and natural science skills. As a member of the Skylab 3 crew, Garriott and fellow astronauts Alan Bean and Jack Lousma would be the first humans to spend 59 days living and working in space. And his technical skills would be put to tests, in terms of both imagination and endurance, in ways that could scarcely be conceived of prior to the launch of the new orbital station.
It didn’t take long after Skylab 3’s launch for Garriott and his crewmates to realize that something had gone wrong with their Apollo spacecraft. Upon achieving orbit, a look through the right-most window revealed globules of frozen liquid drifting away into space, debris which was no doubt originating from their vehicle. At the very onset of the long-duration mission, they were confronted with a leak from a nozzle of one of their reaction control system thrusters. Six days later another leak from the opposite side of the spacecraft’s service module crippled another reaction control system quad. While docked with Skylab, a coolant leak developed inside the Command Module itself; still, another leak began in the primary coolant loop for Skylab’s Airlock Module. And along with the Apollo spacecraft manoeuvring thruster failures, Skylab itself suffered the failure of control moment gyros that were used to orient the entire complex in orbit.
You may be wondering at this point how Dr. Garriott, along with Al Bean and Jack Lousma, managed these problems, and how they impacted their productivity in what was planned to be an unprecedentedly long mission. Quite simply, they fixed what could be fixed, and worked around what they could not. And the net impact of all these fixes on the mission? By drastically cutting into everything from sleep time to mealtime to off-duty time, they exceeded their planned activity for experiments in the Apollo Telescope Mount by 54%, their medical experiments by 18% and earth studies by 43%…by those metrics making them the most productive crew up to that point in the history of spaceflight.
Dr Garriott contributed to another set of firsts as a member of Space Shuttle mission STS-9, the first six-person crew to fly into space. As a scientist aboard that first mission of Spacelab, the station mated within the payload bay of the shuttle Columbia, Garriott actually became the first man to ever transmit and receive broadcasts over a “ham” radio, which provided him with a platform to comment on the work his team was doing while studying plasma and solar physics, along with their many observations into geophysics. But challenges abounded once again, and this time they cascaded into frightening reality when Columbia prepared for entry at mission’s end: when Commander John Young pitched the Columbia into the proper attitude for entry, the abrupt impulse from the shuttle’s manoeuvring thrusters caused one of the ship’s general-purpose computers to crash. Shortly thereafter a second computer crashed as well, causing a landing delay of eight hours until that second computer could be reliably booted and checked out (it turned out later that the shock of from the firing of Columbia’s reaction control thrusters knocked solder loose in the first computer, causing a short). As if all that were not enough, the successful landing was followed by the discovery that two Auxiliary Power Units near Columbia’s tail had caught fire due to a propellant leak.
If this story makes you hungry for more, awesome! Join us on SKYLAB EXCLUSIVE today!
Why Are We Sharing This?
We believe that knowing Skylab today, can still lead to amazing projects tomorrow.
And maybe you are the one getting inspired?
In our view, you too deserve to know how Skylab initiated changes to our lives on Earth without having to research the NASA archives for decades in the process.
Having done the research, we were also able to speak with many of the astronauts in person and record their Skylab stories. Today, we feel it is our duty to share with you what we found and bring you closer to the astronauts themselves, the true American heroes, who worked on what many consider "one of NASA's most important programmes ever".
To this day, arguably, up to 40% of data collected by Skylab has not been analysed due to the lack of scientists.
Are you the one who will contribute to another marvellous change in our world while standing on the shoulders of giants? Even if you "only" spread the Skylab stories, you might.
Thanks for sharing.
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Did NASA's Existence Depend On Skylab?
Written by Carl Alessi
What would have happened to NASA had Skylab not been rescued?
64 seconds after the final launch of the Saturn V rocket carrying the unmanned space station Skylab, the micro-meteoroid shield, which would have also given thermal protection, was ripped off due to excessive aerodynamic forces. A series of other faults ripped off one solar wing and obstructed the other from opening. Skylab had come within seconds of being destroyed and was now essentially crippled.
The New York Times wrote on May 16, 1973,
“With Skylab suffering a partial power failure and a potentially dangerous buildup in internal temperature, even the advisability of sending up one group of three astronauts—let alone the three groups originally planned—is now in question.”
This would have been a major blow to NASA flying crews into space using an already limited budget. Some would argue that the Apollo missions were cut short precisely for fear of something going drastically wrong during the mission, as Apollo 13 had displayed just 3 years earlier.
At a bare minimum, there would have been an investigation, with several heads rolling. Space historian Sean Murphy speculates that “(...) NASA wouldn’t have been the flavour of the month for a short time but they would have picked themselves up, dusted themselves off and got on with the job of putting an Earth-orbiting work station into space.”
The question remains open as to how long it would have taken NASA to dust themselves off and would it have affected the shuttle program?
There is no doubt in my mind that every avenue would have been pursued in order to get Skylab working again. There was the second OWS, Skylab B which could have been potentially launched, but whether Congress would have allowed the budget for that following a failure of Skylab, remains an open question. Space Historian/Artist Brian Fiore speculates that “NASA would have come under even harsher scrutiny, especially from the "taxpayer watchdog" members of Congress (Proxmire, Pike, and Mondale).
The political climate in those days was not favourable to what the public was increasingly coming to see as a frivolous program, and funds for Skylab B could have been blocked. True, the Shuttle would have flown later, and ASTP would almost certainly have flown, but any other manned programs would have come under serious question. Nixon knew that his head was on the block in those days, and he probably would have not authorized funding for what he may have seen as a proven failure.”
History shows that Pete Conrad, Paul Weitz, and Joe Kerwin worked admirably to get Skylab back on its feet.
SL-2 Commander, Pete Conrad was well aware that the stakes were high, and that his crew had no choice but to save Skylab. He stated as the crew arrived back at Houston following the scrubbing of the next-day flight of SL-2,
“We’ve come home to regroup. I’m hopeful that in the next 5 days that we can’t figure out some way to figure out the problem of no-meteoroid-shield. We’ll be able to get 28 days out of it one way or another, and with any luck at all, we may get all 3 (missions) of them done."
For the rest of his life, Pete Conrad felt his work on Skylab to be above and beyond the feat of walking on the moon. NASA managed to have all 3 missions of Skylab completed successfully, and the missions of ASTP, Voyager, Viking and ultimately, the shuttle happened as they were supposed to.
The endeavours made in the understanding of our solar system, and of our planet thanks to NASA's ability to proceed with Skylab as planned were above and beyond expectations and maybe, like us, you too feel that they are worth celebrating? The film “Searching for Skylab” is all about that - celebrating the Skylab story.
Why? Because we believe that some stories are just worth searching for.
If this story makes you hungry for more, awesome! Join us on SKYLAB EXCLUSIVE today!
NASA'S SECRET TREASURE
Written by Dwight Steven-Boniecki
Why Are We Sharing This?
We believe that knowing Skylab today, can still lead to amazing projects tomorrow.
And maybe you are the one getting inspired?
In our view, you too deserve to know how Skylab initiated changes to our lives on Earth without having to research the NASA archives for decades in the process.
Having done the research, we were also able to speak with many of the astronauts in person and record their Skylab stories.
Today, we feel it is our duty to share with you what we found and bring you closer to the astronauts themselves, the true American heroes, who worked on what many consider "one of NASA's most important programmes ever".
To this day, arguably, up to 40% of data collected by Skylab has not been analysed due to the lack of scientists.
Are you the one who will contribute to another marvellous change in our world while standing on the shoulders of giants? Even if you "only" spread the Skylab stories, you might.
Thanks for sharing.
Skylab was – in my view – way more important for NASA than anything which came before or since.
But I didn’t always think that.
How My Adventure Began
When I was 10 years old, a poster that had been placed in the main window looking out into the schoolyard of our principal’s office detailed the impending doom of the Space Station. I can vividly recall the iconic “windmill” solar panel design, and the title of the poster: “Skylab is Falling!”
A few days later, on the evening of July 11, 1979 (Australian time), I went to bed terrified that Skylab would hit our house, and our house alone, in the suburbs of West Sydney. It was with much relief that I awoke the next morning to a fully intact house.
But that joy quickly turned to envy when I learned of a kid in Western Australia who had won $10,000 USD for being the first to bring in Skylab debris. How much Lego Space could I have bought with $10K?
And there began my assumption that Skylab was nothing but a failure. I learned how it was damaged upon launch, and how astronauts had to rescue it. A success? For my 10-year-old mind, hardly.
Discovering Skylab
It was when I was writing my first book, “Live TV From the Moon” that I started to hear about how great a project Skylab really was.
Stan Lebar, ex-Manager of the Westinghouse Lunar Surface Camera Division, and with whom I had telephoned every third day, would always relate the obligatory Apollo TV camera stories, but then would divert away by stating, “But Skylab is where we really started getting good!”
“Hmmm….” I thought, “why would the man in charge of the TV camera that recorded the first step of a human being on the lunar surface speak so highly of this Skylab thing?”
I would soon find out.
I acquired a series of telecasts made from Skylab, which were fortunately dated and labelled so as to ease my foray into assembling them chronologically.
When I started to watch the footage, my jaw dropped. At around the same time, I was in a Waterstones bookshop in Kingston, England.
Amidst all the Apollo books, one book stood alone: “Homesteading Space”, written by David Hitt, Joe Kerwin and Owen Garriott. Wanting a respite from reading about nothing but Apollo, I opted to purchase it.
And so began my love affair with Skylab.
Between the videos, “Homesteading Space”, and another book by David Shayler, “Skylab: America’s First Space Station” (which featured Jerry Carr’s autograph inside the front cover!!!) I began my quest to know all I could about Skylab.
Following Up Apollo
Following the success of “Live TV From the Moon”, Apogee Books CEO, Rob Godwin, gave me the green light to do the follow-up “Live TV From Orbit”, which detailed post-Apollo TV, and that included a big chunk of Skylab history. The more I delved, the more I wanted to know. I watched the videos. I read the books. I wrote more of my book. Then I repeated the cycle. Again, and again, and again.
I was impressed by the observations Skylab made of the sun. To quote Emily Carney in “Searching for Skylab”, “It re-wrote the book on solar physics!”
I wanted more. To drop another quote from “Searching for Skylab”, this one from Andrew Chaikin: “This was a whole new frontier!”
I learned about the daring rescue mission by the first crew, which managed to dislodge a jammed solar panel and deploy an emergency parasol to cool the station down after the micro-meteoroid shield had been ripped off the launch vehicle during launch. Had they not been successful, that would have been it for Skylab.
I read of the rescue plans for the second crew after the Control Thruster (RCS System) problems that threatened to hinder their safe return to earth. I was impressed with the long-duration missions, and I was humbled to learn that data from Skylab was still being used to plan ISS missions.
Then I joined a group on Facebook, called Space Hipsters, and found other people who loved Skylab as well. At the same time, I received the green light to compile the Skylab Mission Report series for Apogee books, and my knowledge of Skylab increased exponentially. Every anniversary I would post a snippet of Skylab mission footage to celebrate, until one day, someone suggested I turn all of that footage into a film about Skylab. I thought it was a great idea.
And so “Searching for Skylab” was born.
Searching for Skylab
On February 8, 2019, on the 45th anniversary of the splashdown of the last mission to the station, I presented to the world my greatest anniversary “video snippet” to date:
the feature-length film about Skylab, which looks for meaning in what Skylab actually brought humanity, as it seemed to have been forgotten in those 45 years.
And it appeared that the Gods of Space Travel were looking down on Searching for Skylab that day. Right before the film started, I was told that the ISS would fly directly over Huntsville. You cannot plan movie premieres any more spectacularly than that!
In future posts, I’ll go into more detail as to why I believe Skylab was so important to NASA. A lot of it is in the film. But a lot of it still needs to be told, lest we forget.
HOW I BECAME A
FILM PRODUCER
By Alexandra Steven-Boniecki
HOW I BECAME A FILM PRODUCER
Written By Alexandra Steven-Boniecki
1. Meeting Dwight
I met Dwight Steven-Boniecki, the director of “Searching for Skylab” at a TV studio in the UK. Like many musically talented young men, he was then part of a local band. His fascination with Star Wars was in my view rather childish, but I soon discovered that beneath my superficial view there was a young man with great knowledge of cinema, TV, video effects and sound production. It was the end of the era of the fax machines and Dwight was already working on special digital effects for a Star Wars fan movie called “The Dark Redemption”. To me, a recent psychology graduate from Paris, such technical skills were most impressive.
When we met again years later, I was surprised to see Dwight’s fascination with Star Wars transformed into a serious passion for space exploration. To keep up conversation I had to quickly catch up on all the Apollo missions and at least some names of the astronauts. I didn’t know then that I was about to meet Buzz Aldrin, Jack Lousma, Dick Gordon and Scott Carpenter. Talking to them in an otherwise empty room was great fun as you can imagine. Dwight was meeting his heroes and the living legends. I was just chatting to some cool and very interesting guys. As to Buzz Aldrin, he was shut away in a big room of his own and I was not about to queue up with all the crowds just to get him to sign a picture for me.
2. Mountains Of Research Turned Into Books
Being the technically savvy guy, passionate about space and broadcasting technology, Dwight was looking into the question of how exactly NASA managed to get a TV signal from the Moon and transmit the pictures live back to Earth. Curiously, no one seemed to have asked themselves this question before and Dwight could find nothing clearly digested and put together in a story that he could just grab off the shelf and read.
Soon, mountains of paperwork about TV cameras in space surrounded Dwight and I remember his frequent calls with NASA engineers or experts who would pass him onto the next engineer or expert and the next one to resolve some obscure detail which only that one specialist would know the answer to.
Dwight’s friends were urging him to publish his findings either in a series of articles or in a book. He eventually chose the book and “Live TV from the Moon” was born.
3. This Movie Had To Be Made
There was a distinct sense of urgency in Dwight’s voice. Nobody, except maybe a few more people in the world have ever seen the footage or audio he had discovered over the years.
Historical material of such great value to humanity was deteriorating in front of our eyes and the astronauts who could still give us a first-hand account were not getting any younger. If we hurried, we could still catch their memories on tape. “It’s not on — Dwight kept saying — that the world doesn’t see what I get to see and happily ignores all this!
No self-respecting historian can watch physical evidence of such importance disintegrate in front of their eyes without trying to preserve it for posterity. Even less, knowing that society already forgot most of what has happened. The material Dwight found researching many hundreds of hours of video and listening to many hundreds of hours of audio was of such importance, that he felt he had to preserve it for future generations in a story that they would like to hear. "If I don’t do it now, who will? When?” - he kept saying.
I was working on a number of projects at the time which meant that I didn’t have a spare minute to help. Still, my company had a budget that seemed large enough at the time to absorb the costs of a small, independent movie production. I just wanted to ensure that this project would fit the mission statement and fit with the overall goals of the company.
In this case, I had an expert right in front of me. A film may not be the most digital tool I can think of, but digital education can’t evolve without well thought-through video and sound. In other words, I just found my next project. I had seen Dwight’s earliest productions and I knew how much natural talent he brings to the video production. His expert status on Skylab is unquestionably recognised even by the Skylab astronauts themselves.
Would this be enough to pitch his idea to a production studio and trust that Dwight would retain complete creative freedom? Would any production studio agree to a project like this at a drop of a hat? None of us believed they would. Instead, we both jumped into the film's production head first.
The movie was to turn 10 years of research into 1.5 hours of a powerful story for anyone interested in the subject of space.
We wanted the story of Skylab to share Dwight’s findings, but Skylab is about so much more than just a Space Station. We wanted to see the audience inspired by the story to look for more answers on their own. If a novice space fan happened to stumble upon our movie, we wanted to reward their curiosity. We have integrated the most jaw-dropping historical material into the movie to do just that!
4. Who Do You Think You Are?
We soon realised that doors were closing everywhere. film festivals, sponsors, distributors... Other independent filmmakers were cheering us on "Welcome to the world of independent film making. We've all been there." I decided to run a test to see what Google says about the best independent documentaries in 2019. Sorry Google, but the result was funny, "independent" clearly meant "backed by a major media mogul". I guess everyone is entitled to their own definition of "independent".
Nevertheless, the hardest lesson came from our naive thinking that space fans didn’t need to be marketed to.
Why did we ever believe that space enthusiasts would quickly understand the importance of Skylab just because we told them so? Why did we think that most would jump at the occasion to see historical video evidence so obscure, that not even NASA realised their importance? Because they were passionate about space?
The overwhelming positive reviews didn’t generate the wave of interest we were hoping for. Marketing now became key and one of us had to learn it from scratch. That someone had to be me.
You may find it strange coming from someone who runs their own business, but after 15 years in the corporate world of IT, I never had to market to clients before.
First I needed to get to know the story of Skylab much better. I realised that despite assisting with almost every interview, I never really understood what was being discussed until the day I saw the first completed version of the film. Finally all the curious pieces of the puzzle came together! Finally I had a clear picture of what the Skylab story was all about.
I understand the words of David Hitt, the co-author of the book “Homesteading Space” so much better today: “(…) this story really hadn’t been told in the way that I wanted to see it preserved to the world!”
I couldn't agree more. “Searching for Skylab” gave me the first glimpse into what this NASA program was all about.
For someone who isn’t a “space fan” to never grow tired of watching the same movie on that subject over and over again is rather surprising. To me in any case it is completely unexpected.
Given my growing fascination with the story of Skylab I sometimes wonder why "Searching for Skylab" is the first-ever feature film made on this subject? Is it because:
1. The Space Station crashed — and therefore - like Dwight says - until diving into the subject, you have the impression that it was a failure and is not worth looking up? A point of view perhaps confirmed because media overall rarely ever speak about Skylab?
Or because:
2. The science done on Skylab is so overwhelming, that the research alone would cost too much? Skylab required 1000 senior scientists and engineers to analyse its data at the time. Who today has the resources to seethe through so much data to understand a Space Station that was left to rot away in some space archives? Maybe people feel that it’s “a waste of time” and "too complex" to market the story altogether?
It makes me immensely proud to have been given the opportunity to produce such a unique documentary. One that is inspiring people like me, the curious ones, but no space fans.
I am most grateful to our Kickstarter backers, who believed in our skills to make this a great movie and made it possible for us to finalise its production.
The youngest fan of the movie we know of is an American girl who turned 11 shortly after watching the film at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL. Her passionate support confirms to me that we must have done a great job in sharing complex knowledge and entertaining the viewer at the same time. For a child to be interested enough to sit through an entire 95+ minutes of a documentary and then to become its fan makes me, the producer, feel very deeply honoured.
Marketing remains a work-in- progress however, so if you've never heard about this movie before, please accept my very personal apologies. You can read about it on our website or you can go directly to renting or downloading it from Vimeo.
We are working on releasing it on iTunes, Hulu, Google Play, Blu-ray and maybe DVD. However, these questions too are budget sensitive and likely to take a month or two to complete. What I know is that if you are into space exploration you will be delighted with the result!
Owen K. Garriott 1930-2019 ; Skylab SL-3 Shuttle STS-9
Written by Carl Alessi
As I look back on the events surrounding Dr. Garriott’s life, I’m struck by many of the “firsts” that could be attributed to his long and storied career. I’m also impressed by many of the in-flight problems that he and his crewmates encountered as they learned to live and work in that most rewarding and unforgiving of exploration environments, space.
The path to Owen Garriott’s career in NASA was paved with a remarkable first: he was among the first group of six science astronauts recruited by the program in 1965. Having earned a doctorate in electrical engineering, his assignment to the prime crew of Skylab 3 as a science pilot would be a natural fit for a man skilled in a broad array of technological and natural science skills. As a member of the Skylab 3 crew, Garriott and fellow astronauts Alan Bean and Jack Lousma would be the first humans to spend 59 days living and working in space. And his technical skills would be put to tests, in terms of both imagination and endurance, in ways that could scarcely be conceived of prior to the launch of the new orbital station.
It didn’t take long after Skylab 3’s launch for Garriott and his crewmates to realize that something had gone wrong with their Apollo spacecraft. Upon achieving orbit, a look through the right-most window revealed globules of frozen liquid drifting away into space, debris which was no doubt originating from their vehicle. At the very onset of the long-duration mission, they were confronted with a leak from a nozzle of one of their reaction control system thrusters. Six days later another leak from the opposite side of the spacecraft’s service module crippled another reaction control system quad. While docked with Skylab, a coolant leak developed inside the Command Module itself; still, another leak began in the primary coolant loop for Skylab’s Airlock Module. And along with the Apollo spacecraft manoeuvring thruster failures, Skylab itself suffered the failure of control moment gyros that were used to orient the entire complex in orbit.
You may be wondering at this point how Dr. Garriott, along with Al Bean and Jack Lousma, managed these problems, and how they impacted their productivity in what was planned to be an unprecedentedly long mission. Quite simply, they fixed what could be fixed, and worked around what they could not. And the net impact of all these fixes on the mission? By drastically cutting into everything from sleep time to mealtime to off-duty time, they exceeded their planned activity for experiments in the Apollo Telescope Mount by 54%, their medical experiments by 18% and earth studies by 43%…by those metrics making them the most productive crew up to that point in the history of spaceflight.
Dr Garriott contributed to another set of firsts as a member of Space Shuttle mission STS-9, the first six-person crew to fly into space. As a scientist aboard that first mission of Spacelab, the station mated within the payload bay of the shuttle Columbia, Garriott actually became the first man to ever transmit and receive broadcasts over a “ham” radio, which provided him with a platform to comment on the work his team was doing while studying plasma and solar physics, along with their many observations into geophysics. But challenges abounded once again, and this time they cascaded into frightening reality when Columbia prepared for entry at mission’s end: when Commander John Young pitched the Columbia into the proper attitude for entry, the abrupt impulse from the shuttle’s manoeuvring thrusters caused one of the ship’s general-purpose computers to crash. Shortly thereafter a second computer crashed as well, causing a landing delay of eight hours until that second computer could be reliably booted and checked out (it turned out later that the shock of from the firing of Columbia’s reaction control thrusters knocked solder loose in the first computer, causing a short). As if all that were not enough, the successful landing was followed by the discovery that two Auxiliary Power Units near Columbia’s tail had caught fire due to a propellant leak.
Why Are We Sharing This?
We believe that knowing Skylab today, can still lead to amazing projects tomorrow.
And maybe you are the one getting inspired?
In our view, you too deserve to know how Skylab initiated changes to our lives on Earth without having to research the NASA archives for decades in the process.
Having done the research, we were also able to speak with many of the astronauts in person and record their Skylab stories.
Today, we feel it is our duty to share with you what we found and bring you closer to the astronauts themselves, the true American heroes, who worked on what many consider "one of NASA's most important programmes ever".
To this day, arguably, up to 40% of data collected by Skylab has not been analysed due to the lack of scientists.
Are you the one who will contribute to another marvellous change in our world while standing on the shoulders of giants? Even if you "only" spread the Skylab stories, you might.
Thanks for sharing.
If this story makes you hungry for more, awesome! Join us on SKYLAB EXCLUSIVE today!
Did NASA's Existence Depend On Skylab?
Written by Carl Alessi
What would have happened to NASA had Skylab not been rescued?
64 seconds after the final launch of the Saturn V rocket carrying the unmanned space station Skylab, the micro-meteoroid shield, which would have also given thermal protection, was ripped off due to excessive aerodynamic forces. A series of other faults ripped off one solar wing and obstructed the other from opening. Skylab had come within seconds of being destroyed and was now essentially crippled.
The New York Times wrote on May 16, 1973,
“With Skylab suffering a partial power failure and a potentially dangerous buildup in internal temperature, even the advisability of sending up one group of three astronauts—let alone the three groups originally planned—is now in question.”
This would have been a major blow to NASA flying crews into space using an already limited budget. Some would argue that the Apollo missions were cut short precisely for fear of something going drastically wrong during the mission, as Apollo 13 had displayed just 3 years earlier.
At a bare minimum, there would have been an investigation, with several heads rolling. Space historian Sean Murphy speculates that “(...) NASA wouldn’t have been the flavour of the month for a short time but they would have picked themselves up, dusted themselves off and got on with the job of putting an Earth-orbiting work station into space.”
The question remains open as to how long it would have taken NASA to dust themselves off and would it have affected the shuttle program?
There is no doubt in my mind that every avenue would have been pursued in order to get Skylab working again. There was the second OWS, Skylab B which could have been potentially launched, but whether Congress would have allowed the budget for that following a failure of Skylab, remains an open question. Space Historian/Artist Brian Fiore speculates that “NASA would have come under even harsher scrutiny, especially from the "taxpayer watchdog" members of Congress (Proxmire, Pike, and Mondale).
The political climate in those days was not favourable to what the public was increasingly coming to see as a frivolous program, and funds for Skylab B could have been blocked. True, the Shuttle would have flown later, and ASTP would almost certainly have flown, but any other manned programs would have come under serious question. Nixon knew that his head was on the block in those days, and he probably would have not authorized funding for what he may have seen as a proven failure.”
History shows that Pete Conrad, Paul Weitz, and Joe Kerwin worked admirably to get Skylab back on its feet.
SL-2 Commander, Pete Conrad was well aware that the stakes were high, and that his crew had no choice but to save Skylab. He stated as the crew arrived back at Houston following the scrubbing of the next-day flight of SL-2,
“We’ve come home to regroup. I’m hopeful that in the next 5 days that we can’t figure out some way to figure out the problem of no-meteoroid-shield. We’ll be able to get 28 days out of it one way or another, and with any luck at all, we may get all 3 (missions) of them done."
For the rest of his life, Pete Conrad felt his work on Skylab to be above and beyond the feat of walking on the moon. NASA managed to have all 3 missions of Skylab completed successfully, and the missions of ASTP, Voyager, Viking and ultimately, the shuttle happened as they were supposed to.
The endeavours made in the understanding of our solar system, and of our planet thanks to NASA's ability to proceed with Skylab as planned were above and beyond expectations and maybe, like us, you too feel that they are worth celebrating? The film “Searching for Skylab” is all about that - celebrating the Skylab story.
Why? Because we believe that some stories are just worth searching for.
Why Are We Sharing This?
We believe that knowing Skylab today, can still lead to amazing projects tomorrow.
And maybe you are the one getting inspired?
In our view, you too deserve to know how Skylab initiated changes to our lives on Earth without having to research the NASA archives for decades in the process.
Having done the research, we were also able to speak with many of the astronauts in person and record their Skylab stories.
Today, we feel it is our duty to share with you what we found and bring you closer to the astronauts themselves, the true American heroes, who worked on what many consider "one of NASA's most important programmes ever".
To this day, arguably, up to 40% of data collected by Skylab has not been analysed due to the lack of scientists.
Are you the one who will contribute to another marvellous change in our world while standing on the shoulders of giants? Even if you "only" spread the Skylab stories, you might.
Thanks for sharing.
If this story makes you hungry for more, awesome! Join us on SKYLAB EXCLUSIVE today!
NASA'S SECRET TREASURE
Written by Dwight Steven-Boniecki
Skylab was – in my view – way more important for NASA than anything which came before or since.
But I didn’t always think that.
How My Adventure Began
When I was 10 years old, a poster that had been placed in the main window looking out into the schoolyard of our principal’s office detailed the impending doom of the Space Station. I can vividly recall the iconic “windmill” solar panel design, and the title of the poster: “Skylab is Falling!”
A few days later, on the evening of July 11, 1979 (Australian time), I went to bed terrified that Skylab would hit our house, and our house alone, in the suburbs of West Sydney. It was with much relief that I awoke the next morning to a fully intact house.
But that joy quickly turned to envy when I learned of a kid in Western Australia who had won $10,000 USD for being the first to bring in Skylab debris. How much Lego Space could I have bought with $10K?
And there began my assumption that Skylab was nothing but a failure. I learned how it was damaged upon launch, and how astronauts had to rescue it. A success? For my 10-year-old mind, hardly.
Discovering Skylab
It was when I was writing my first book, “Live TV From the Moon” that I started to hear about how great a project Skylab really was.
Stan Lebar, ex-Manager of the Westinghouse Lunar Surface Camera Division, and with whom I had telephoned every third day, would always relate the obligatory Apollo TV camera stories, but then would divert away by stating, “But Skylab is where we really started getting good!”
“Hmmm….” I thought, “why would the man in charge of the TV camera that recorded the first step of a human being on the lunar surface speak so highly of this Skylab thing?”
I would soon find out.
I acquired a series of telecasts made from Skylab, which were fortunately dated and labelled so as to ease my foray into assembling them chronologically.
When I started to watch the footage, my jaw dropped. At around the same time, I was in a Waterstones bookshop in Kingston, England.
Amidst all the Apollo books, one book stood alone: “Homesteading Space”, written by David Hitt, Joe Kerwin and Owen Garriott. Wanting a respite from reading about nothing but Apollo, I opted to purchase it.
And so began my love affair with Skylab.
Between the videos, “Homesteading Space”, and another book by David Shayler, “Skylab: America’s First Space Station” (which featured Jerry Carr’s autograph inside the front cover!!!) I began my quest to know all I could about Skylab.
Following Up Apollo
Following the success of “Live TV From the Moon”, Apogee Books CEO, Rob Godwin, gave me the green light to do the follow-up “Live TV From Orbit”, which detailed post-Apollo TV, and that included a big chunk of Skylab history. The more I delved, the more I wanted to know. I watched the videos. I read the books. I wrote more of my book. Then I repeated the cycle. Again, and again, and again.
I was impressed by the observations Skylab made of the sun. To quote Emily Carney in “Searching for Skylab”, “It re-wrote the book on solar physics!”
I wanted more. To drop another quote from “Searching for Skylab”, this one from Andrew Chaikin: “This was a whole new frontier!”
I learned about the daring rescue mission by the first crew, which managed to dislodge a jammed solar panel and deploy an emergency parasol to cool the station down after the micro-meteoroid shield had been ripped off the launch vehicle during launch. Had they not been successful, that would have been it for Skylab.
I read of the rescue plans for the second crew after the Control Thruster (RCS System) problems that threatened to hinder their safe return to earth. I was impressed with the long-duration missions, and I was humbled to learn that data from Skylab was still being used to plan ISS missions.
Then I joined a group on Facebook, called Space Hipsters, and found other people who loved Skylab as well. At the same time, I received the green light to compile the Skylab Mission Report series for Apogee books, and my knowledge of Skylab increased exponentially. Every anniversary I would post a snippet of Skylab mission footage to celebrate, until one day, someone suggested I turn all of that footage into a film about Skylab. I thought it was a great idea.
And so “Searching for Skylab” was born.
Searching for Skylab
On February 8, 2019, on the 45th anniversary of the splashdown of the last mission to the station, I presented to the world my greatest anniversary “video snippet” to date:
the feature-length film about Skylab, which looks for meaning in what Skylab actually brought humanity, as it seemed to have been forgotten in those 45 years.
And it appeared that the Gods of Space Travel were looking down on Searching for Skylab that day. Right before the film started, I was told that the ISS would fly directly over Huntsville. You cannot plan movie premieres any more spectacularly than that!
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