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- [00:00]
Dana Schwartz
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
- [00:06]
Jeff Jarvis
So let me get this straight. Your company has data here, there and everywhere, but your AI can't use the data because it's here, there and everywhere? Seems like something's missing. Every business has unique data. IBM helps your AI access your data wherever it lives to change how you do business. Lets create Smile to business IBM.
- [00:35]
Sophie Cunningham
This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snored loudly, or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues, it may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don'tsleep on OSA.com this information is provided by Lily, a medicine company.
- [01:13]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
What's up everyone? This is Angel, Diego and Jason and we're at gusto about Podcast Siemporciento Musica Regional Mexicana proves holiday season's here and the studio is feeling festive. We we got the tracks, the exclusives Yes's Bright Winter Spice Cranberry Bien Frio that refreshing cranberry flavor hits just right. A seasonal favorite but limited time only, so don't sleep on it to keep your fiestas festive. Adarle Flo Frio Cons Prite Winter Spice Cranberry Obey your thirst.
- [01:44]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. The holiday season can be exhausting with all the parties and the end of year celebrations, but don't forget to take care of yourself by stocking up on your favorite nutritional products. Now through December 30th. Shop in store and online and save on items like Cliff Snack Bars, Luna Bars, Boost Nutritional Energy Drinks, Premier Protein Shakes, Z bar variety packs, open nature powder and body fortress protein powder offers end December 30th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
- [02:18]
Dana Schwartz
The people of Esperance, Australia will be the first to tell you that not a whole lot happens there. It's a quiet farming and fishing town where the sheep you outnumber the people. But in the chilly early hours of July 12, 1979, at around midnight, a handful of locals crane their necks up to the sky and see something they've never seen before that no one has ever seen before. Not in Esperance, not anywhere. A pyrotechnics show among the stars or full of flashing, pulsating lights and sounds that reverberate so deeply you can feel it in your shoes.
- [03:05]
Jo Norman
It was like. It was like fireworks. But it was the noise that came with it.
- [03:11]
Dana Schwartz
Jo Norman is among those gathered on a high bluff overlooking Esperance Bay. She was barely 17 years old then, witnessing what looks like the Apocalypse. Another observer would later describe it as a train falling out of the sky while on fire.
- [03:31]
Jo Norman
It was like, oh, my God, way louder than thunder. And that's when everyone, we all thought, oh, holy crap, this is actually going to fall on us. You felt like you could just reach up and touch it. That's how close it felt.
- [03:48]
Dana Schwartz
What Jo sees that night is a spectacle that the entire world has been anticipating with a combination of amusement and fear, the fall of Skylab, a space station nine stories tall and weighing over 77 tons, plummeting from its orbit and re entering the Earth's atmosphere. Even after burning up, hundreds or even thousands of flaming metal chunks rain down upon the planet. What Jo doesn't know is that this shower of superheated space debris will soon steer her life in a very unexpected direction. Because for once, Chicken Little is right. The sky really is falling. This is Very special episodes, an iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Dana Schwartz, and this is Skylab is Falling.
- [04:56]
Jason English
Welcome back to Very Special Episodes. I'm Jason English. She's Dana Schwartz.
- [05:00]
Jo Norman
Hey.
- [05:00]
Jason English
He's Aaron Burnett.
- [05:01]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
Yo.
- [05:02]
Jason English
And now, as someone who lived through the New Jersey drone invasion last year, I can't imagine what would happen if what happened in 1979 were to happen today.
- [05:13]
Dana Schwartz
But imagine what it would be like on Twitter. Remember, like the peak Twitter era, like, back when Twitter was good. Imagine that day would be on Twitter if everyone thought that they might be about to be crushed by a piece of a space station.
- [05:27]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
Also, the amount of like, because we have all the cameras on phones now, the amount of video we would have seen of this, because all the descriptions sound incredible. I would love to see this film from all these different locations.
- [05:37]
Jason English
Now. No spoilers, but there is a fun newspaper subplot coming to this one. We love our legacy media stories here, so look out for that.
- [05:47]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
Yes. Respect.
- [05:48]
Dana Schwartz
I mean, this really is sort of like all the President's Men if it involved a publicity scheme, if instead of investigating Watergate, it was just having fun.
- [05:59]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
I love that it was like a branded stunt PR event, like we would recognize today, but so pure, so quaint.
- [06:04]
Dana Schwartz
Yeah.
- [06:04]
Jason English
This is either gonna kill you or you're gonna Win a cash prize.
- [06:10]
Dana Schwartz
But either way, it's gonna be fun. If the US was intoxicated by the accomplishments of space travel in the 19, by the late 1970s, it had hit the hangover stage. Up until this point, the space race had brought mostly positive things. Bragging rights, technological advancements, moon boots, and even the dustbuster. But now our ambitions were threatening to drop a 2 ton lead lined vault on someone's head. A piece of space junk traveling so fast that that NASA estimated it could create a hole in the ground 100ft deep. The vault was part of skylab, an ambitious $2.6 billion galactic laboratory launched by NASA in 1973. In addition to experiments, it was also a chance to see how humans would respond to extended stays in outer space where. Where travel could be measured in weeks instead of days. Think of it as a kind of Cosmic Motel 6.
- [07:28]
Dr. Bonnie Dunbar
We used it as a platform for designing our future space stations as well. That was the first time we learned that if you're up there for about 30 days, or 90 days actually, is that healthy young men would start to lose bone mass, lose calcium.
- [07:45]
Dana Schwartz
Dr. Bonnie Dunbar is a professor of aerospace engineering as well as an astronaut with several shuttle missions under her belt. Growing up on a cattle ranch in Washington, Dr. Dunbar didn't have a TV, just one radio station, books, and the wide skies to stir her imagination. As a kid, she saw the Soviet satellite Sputnik, her flicker among the stars and was hooked. Dr. Dunbar went on to join NASA. To her, Skylab was a major step forward in space exploration. It was the bridge between the Apollo missions, which put humans on the moon, and the space shuttle missions which sent crews up for advanced explorations. Skylab informed those later missions, giving us what remains some of the most valuable information about how we endure zero gravity. To NASA, Skylab could help us go beyond, way beyond where humankind had ever been.
- [08:51]
Dr. Bonnie Dunbar
We could study technology and people in a weightless environment and understand it well enough to eventually send people not just to the moon for long periods of time, but to Mars.
- [09:02]
Dana Schwartz
Though it was the site of three successful missions, by the mid-1970s, Skylab was becoming a headache. It was damaged during launch when part of its heat shield tore off, compromising its solar energy capacity and making it prone to overheating. Repairs were made, though one solar wing was permanently lost. Lacking thrusters, it couldn't propel itself. Skylab began drifting out of orbit faster than anticipated. It was NASA's version of a janky car, one without brakes that just keeps rolling downhill.
- [09:45]
Dr. Bonnie Dunbar
Because when you're in Earth orbit. Orbit continues to degrade because it's not a perfect vacuum. There's a few, I call them random molecules out there that create drag. And as you increase the drag, you decrease velocity. And when you decrease velocity, you start to fall back into the Earth. So that's what Skylab was doing.
- [10:06]
Dana Schwartz
Unable to take control of Skylab, NASA did the next best thing it could. It powered Skylab down with Skylab essentially in extended stay parking. For the next several years, talk at NASA turned to how to deal with its inevitable re entry. For a time that seemed a long way off. Some estimates pegged it as late as 1983. But Skylab kept descending. By 1978, it became clear that Skylab was coming home. Which led to a series of, well, let's call it creative problem solving. Proposal one, nuke Skylab into oblivion. Rendering it harmless. A bad idea for any number of reasons. The major one being that launching a nuke even at our own technology was in gross violation of international treaties. Proposal two, send an F15 jet controlled by a computer into a supersonic climb to 80,000ft, high enough to launch a non nuclear rocket. Would that have been awesome? Yeah, sure. But also pointless since you'd simply be creating more debris falling onto Earth. Proposal three, use another vessel like the space shuttle to reboost it back into orbit. Like a dog nudging a ball with its nose. But NASA budget issues had hampered the shuttle's schedule. A joint rescue mission with the Soviet Union was discussed, but there simply wasn't enough time to match Russia's space tech with America's. It's sort of like trying to fit a Lego in with a mega blocks. That left just one other option. Accept Skylab was coming back and do everything possible to mitigate the damage. So in late 1978, the agency announced they would permit Skylab to fall back to Earth. To the layperson, hearing that a 77 ton projectile would smack into Earth prompts some questions. The first are we doomed? NASA crunched some numbers. While there were plenty of variables, it looked as though there would be a 1 in 7 chance at least one piece of Skylab would land on a major city. A 1 in 152 chance of it striking a random person, and a 1 in 6600 billion chance of a piece of the debris striking any one specific person. Even so, the US government went so far as to make plans for mass casualties out of an abundance of caution. While some were justifiably unnerved by those numbers, others had a different reaction. They turned Skylab's return into a party. As word spread of Skylab's looming arrival, some painted bullseyes on their roofs. A giant baseball glove was constructed in Cape Canaveral in Missouri. A one time fallout shelter with cold war canned food was converted to a falling space lab refuge. A couple in India named their newborn, you guessed it, Skylab. And of course there was merch T shirts and survival kits for sale in Times Square. A New York eatery offered free meals for life to anyone struck presuming they lived. At least one person hosted a Skylab party with cocktails and protective helmets. It was doomsday. With a mostly smiley face. While the national media breathlessly covered this story in San Francisco, the examiner and the Chronicle saw an opening. Two rival dailies, desperate for readers, seized on Skylab for a late space age publicity stunt.
- [14:33]
Jeff Jarvis
San Francisco was reminiscent of the dying embers of good old style competitive newspapering.
- [14:40]
Dana Schwartz
That's Jeff Jarvis, currently a visiting professor at Stony Brook University. Jeff is the author of the Gutenberg, a look at how storytelling has evolved from the early days of print to digital media. Back in the late 1970s, though, Jeff was a 23 year old just getting started in the newspaper game. It was not going well.
- [15:04]
Jeff Jarvis
I had gone to a Frank Sinatra benefit concert. I didn't think it was so hot. I said so in my column. And the next night or the night after at the Circle Star Theater in San Carlos, California, he stopped singing my way to call me a bum. I wasn't there to witness this momentous event. I heard about it on the radio the next morning and damn near crashed my car.
- [15:25]
Dana Schwartz
When not being heckled by Frank Sinatra, the rookie columnist at the San Francisco examiner was in hot competition with with legendary gossip writer Herb Kane.
- [15:36]
Jeff Jarvis
At the Chronicle, he was king of the town. Every bit of gossip went to him. And I was the 57th sacrificial lamb in the examiner against Herb Kane, known.
- [15:47]
Dana Schwartz
As Mr. San Francisco. The future Pulitzer Prize winning Kane was generally beloved. Heck, even the Zodiac killer once called Herb out by name in one of the letters he sent to the Chronicles. No serial murderers were writing to Jeff, which meant he had to come up with material on his own.
- [16:06]
Jeff Jarvis
I was going to be the young guy who was going to write a column six days a week, but all the gossip went to her. But I only got the droppings. And so I ended up having to find ways to write features six days a week, 1500 words a day.
- [16:18]
Dana Schwartz
The examiner and the Chronicle shared a composing room, printing press, even a Sunday paper. But they were still mortal enemies. Every headline, every penny in the corner news box mattered. So when Skylab fever hit the front pages, the Chronicle fired the first shot.
- [16:38]
Jeff Jarvis
And so one day, I went out in the composing room, and I saw that the Chronicle, a week hence, was going to offer Skylab insurance to its readers. You had to die. You had to lose a limb, but if you did, the Chronicle would pay off. I came back in the newsroom and I told my colleagues what they were doing, and we immediately started brainstorming about what we could do in response. The key here was that the Chronicles offer was going to be about a week in the future. We decided we could rush, and we could get something in sooner.
- [17:15]
Dana Schwartz
The chronicle was promised $100,000 to anyone maimed by Skylab. Presuming you were a Chronicle subscriber, Jeff's editors wanted to top it by essentially saying you didn't need to be dismembered to win.
- [17:31]
Jeff Jarvis
And we scratched our heads and figured out what we could do. And one of us suggested that, well, maybe we could give it a reward if somebody actually delivered a piece of Skylab to the office.
- [17:40]
Dana Schwartz
Their idea? Skip the insurance. Offer a bounty. $10,000 to the first person who could bring an actual piece of Skylab to the newsroom within 72 hours of its crash. That's the equivalent of roughly $45,000 today. A lot of money, and a real risky stunt for the examiner. But the paper's editor didn't think he'd ever have to pay out.
- [18:08]
Jeff Jarvis
I was tasked with calling NASA, and NASA absolutely assured me that this was going to fall in the ocean.
- [18:15]
Dana Schwartz
No problem, unless someone was willing to wade into the ocean. It sounded like the paper would get a whole lot of publicity for very little risk. The examiner went all in, setting up a Skylab desk in the lobby.
- [18:31]
Jeff Jarvis
The publicity person, who at the time was married to the publisher, put up a big check over it and Skylab and put somebody, some poor soul. I don't remember who, into an alien costume.
- [18:43]
Dana Schwartz
Almost immediately, people began fishing for the reward. One guy presented a Nerf ball with an obvious coat of silver spray paint. Someone mailed Jeff a tire iron with a handwritten label saying it was Skylab Part 334-45-66662A. A woman phoned saying she found a piece of yellow metal in her yard. Maybe, she said with a trace of hope in her voice, it had fallen off Skylab early. Attracting pranksters and would be fraudsters was a feature, not a bug. The examiner wanted people talking about the contest, and it also gave Jeff plenty of fodder for his column.
- [19:28]
Jeff Jarvis
This was the last gasp of a good old fashioned competitive newspaper fight. It was nothing but fun, but we had fun with it.
- [19:38]
Dana Schwartz
While Jeff kept filing columns on the increasing weirdness, Washington made plans. NASA urged people to duck into basements at the first strange sound. Across the country, medical teams, firefighters, even lawyers were on standby. NASA's crash team was ready to chase the world's biggest piece of litter wherever it fell. But this wasn't just cleanup. It was history. No one had ever watched a space station come home in flames. And now it was on its way fast.
- [20:18]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. The holiday season can be exhausting with all the parties and the end of year celebrations, but don't forget to take care of yourself by stocking up on your favorite nutritional products. Now through December 30, shop in store and online and save on items like Cliff Snack Bars, Luna Bars, Boost Nutritional Energy Drinks, Premier Protein Shakes, Z Bar Variety Packs, Open Nature Powder and Body Fortress Protein powder offers end December 30th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
- [20:49]
Dana Schwartz
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- [20:53]
Sophie Cunningham
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- [20:55]
Dana Schwartz
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- [21:00]
Sophie Cunningham
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- [21:02]
Dana Schwartz
Zofluza.Com 10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000.
- [21:23]
Jo Norman
This is where mindset comes in.
- [21:25]
Sophie Cunningham
Someone will be eliminated.
- [21:27]
Dana Schwartz
Pressure is coming down. This is Trainer Games.
- [21:32]
Ryan Seacrest
Watch it on prime video starting January 8th.
- [21:37]
Dana Schwartz
Skylab has long been idling 270 miles above Earth. But by June of 1979, it's down to 163 miles and growing closer by the day. By this point, Dr. Dunbar is a flight controller at NASA. She's tasked with monitoring Skylab from a small control room at Johnson Space center in Houston, Texas. For Dr. Dunbar and her colleagues, this accelerating descent means keeping track of its movements around the clock, which is tricky. On average, NASA can connect to Skylab for only a few minutes out of every hour and a half. During those brief contacts, the station would report on its vital systems, and NASA could give it instructions. In engineering terms, ask how it's doing and record the answers.
- [22:31]
Dr. Bonnie Dunbar
We were seven days on and then two days off. And we would rotate shifts. So one shift you might be on from, you know, 8 to 4 and the next shift from, you know, 4 to midnight and then so forth. So for nine months I was in this rotating shift flight controller mode. Make sure I could sleep during the day. I put tin foil on my bedroom windows.
- [22:54]
Dana Schwartz
Keep in mind Dr. Dunbar and her colleagues are trying to influence the station's movement while it's hundreds of miles up in space. All this using 1979 technology match. Conversions are mostly done on paper. There's no sophisticated hardware, just the world's highest stakes video game.
- [23:19]
Dr. Bonnie Dunbar
You think of a pencil, if you've got the pointy end facing the direction it's going. There's less surface area there and less drag. So if you could change the drag of Skylab by changing its orientation, then you could kind of manage its altitude, if you will. But you had to balance that against the fact that its power source was its solar rays. You gotta point them to the sun, right? So if you always pointed the solar rays to the sun, then you might not be in the best attitude for managing the drag.
- [23:52]
Dana Schwartz
That was the trick. Balance both or Skylab drops sooner. At first, NASA predicted the orbiter would break up over an ocean. But as the hours ticket down, new calculations show something alarming. It might pass over Canada, maybe even Maine. The Skylab team has to make decisions on the fly, Digging up old tech manuals that hadn't been opened in years.
- [24:22]
Dr. Bonnie Dunbar
We didn't know this was still all a learning environment for us. First time we deorbited a big mass like this.
- [24:30]
Dana Schwartz
Then comes the final transmission. Skylab was entering Earth's atmosphere. Speed hundreds of miles an hour, destination still unknown. The FAA and NORADs scramble to keep tabs on signals going offline. Not because of technical problems, but because systems are literally being incinerated.
- [24:54]
Dr. Bonnie Dunbar
And then you hear people saying, well, I just lost data from this solar array, that type of thing. So you know where it is. You've got radar, ground, radar contact. You're watching to see what systems are disappearing because they're actually disintegrating in the Earth's atmosphere.
- [25:10]
Dana Schwartz
The mammoth station begins burning up in a multi million dollar fireworks show. It's windmill shaped solar wings torn away like the wings of a fly. The telescope mount rips free. Then the control center, the docking port. Each piece vanishing in flames within minutes. 77 tons of metal becomes light and smoke falling toward Earth. It's enough to make even the calculating methodical crew at NASA feel Moved.
- [25:44]
Dr. Bonnie Dunbar
I actually saw the last pass from the roof of the mission control center, but it went over Houston. And so it was starting to get a little bright. You know, all of the airspace had been cleared around the globe on its orbit trajectory. And I will tell you that it was a little bit emotional on that last pass.
- [26:06]
Dana Schwartz
There was a sense of melancholy that maybe Skylab wasn't the only thing winding down.
- [26:12]
Dr. Bonnie Dunbar
There was a feeling there that, boy, is this the end. We've canceled the Apollo program prematurely because they thought the public wasn't interested. And so there was this sense, boy, I hope this is not the end.
- [26:28]
Dana Schwartz
Half a world away from Bonnie and her crew, 17 year old Jo Norman and her boyfriend, truck driver Stan Thornton, drive to a hilltop over the bay in Esperance in Western Australia and join a crowd staring up at the cold July sky.
- [26:47]
Jo Norman
Quite a group of us all decided to go up there and wait to see if we could see anything. Not thinking that we ever would, but we sure did. There were so many people up there waiting.
- [26:59]
Dana Schwartz
Around midnight Australian time on July 11, 1979, houses begin to shake, windows rattle and horses scamper. Frightened dogs circle and howl as Skylab makes its unlikely entrance. NASA had originally put the odds of hitting Australia at just 2%, but Skylab was nothing if not unpredictable.
- [27:28]
Jo Norman
Yeah, it was. It was so beautiful. It was really, really pretty. I guess not like a shooting star because there were millions and millions of little pieces breaking up. Yeah, was very spectacular.
- [27:40]
Dana Schwartz
From the hilltop, they watched as giant balls of fire turned to smaller balls of fire as white light turns red, as pieces of a $2.6 billion engineering marvel burn into ash. NASA later estimates that about 500 pieces fell to earth from tiny clothes chunks to an oxygen tank the size of a truck. By 12:37am it's over. The sky goes dark again. Joe and Stan drive back down the hill thinking that was more or less the end of it.
- [28:18]
Jo Norman
After we all calmed down and thought, okay, that's it now. And then we all just dissipated. Went home. I went home to my place. Stan went home to his.
- [28:30]
Dana Schwartz
The next morning, Stan Thornton walks into his backyard to find dozens of charred bits scattered in the grass. About coin sized, just a couple inches or less in diameter. Stan knows that whatever this is, it just got here. The yard had been cleaned the day before.
- [28:50]
Jo Norman
They were all, you know, very excited because on the back lawn they had found the little pieces of charcoal, which I don't know how many there were altogether because I didn't see it before they collected it.
- [29:02]
Dana Schwartz
All local officials Confirm debris has landed near Esperance. Radio stations buzz with rumors of wreckage in the desert. Could these pieces really be from Skylab? Stan is only sure about one thing. He has to go to work. And so a friend volunteers to take the chunks to a chemist for further investigation. The good news? The pieces aren't radioactive. But that was about all he could say, not knowing what kind of materials NASA used to construct Skylab. Searching for more information, Stan contacts local emergency services. They don't have a lot of advice to offer either, but they do tell Stan that a newspaper in San Francisco is offering $10,000 for a real piece of Skylab. Stan delivers beer for a living. 10 grand could be more than a year's salary. But he's never been out of the country before. He now has what amounts to $10,000 in casino chips in his proverbial pocket. But he has to get to a casino window thousands of miles away. Stan is in luck. A local radio station helps him get an expedited passport overnight. And by morning, Stan's on a swanky Qantas plane with a bag full of burnt metal and a toothbrush.
- [30:35]
Jo Norman
He sort of got whisked away. It was very surreal. You just kept thinking, watch. They actually sent a Learjet down from Perth. We hadn't even heard of what a Learjet was.
- [30:47]
Dana Schwartz
Back in San Francisco, the examiner office is buzzing with news about Aussie treasure hunters combing for scraps. Some are reportedly headed to San Francisco to claim the reward. But Stan's early start has him leading the pack. When he lands in San Francisco, he breathes his first sigh of relief. He's the first and only person to show. Reporters swarm around the shaggy, wide eyed teenager. A limo, courtesy of Qantas, whisks Stan to the offices of the examiner, where he hands over a brown leather shaving bag full of what could be worth more than gold by the ounce. Jeff gets his first look at the source of all the hysteria. He's not impressed.
- [31:40]
Jeff Jarvis
They looked like charcoal briquettes after doing the steak.
- [31:45]
Dana Schwartz
That tracks.
- [31:47]
Jo Norman
Yes, it just looked like it's the charcoal from the barbecue. Really? And we did joke about it, saying that old Ernie Abbott, the next door neighbor's, just thrown his charcoal over the fence.
- [31:59]
Dana Schwartz
Still, this wasn't a beauty contest for rocks. With a theatrical flourish, the 12 lumps are moved to an armored suitcase and whisked off to a NASA lab in Huntsville, Alabama, for extensive testing. And that's going to take some time. And now it's up to Jeff and the examiner to chaperone the kid.
- [32:22]
Jeff Jarvis
And so there's going to be a waiting period while that goes on. And so we realized that we had in our care a teenager who was far away from home, no escort at all. He came with, at most, a gym bag. He had no clothes to speak of, certainly no suitcase, and was in a very unfamiliar environment.
- [32:46]
Dana Schwartz
Stan being a fish out of water is good for Jeff, whose primary job was to ratchet up suspense for his readers. No easy feat. Stan is a nice guy and all, just not what you'd call charismatic.
- [33:01]
Jeff Jarvis
He didn't ever have much to say, and I had. While the whole time we're waiting for the artifact to be verified by NASA, I had to get daily columns out of him. Stan was delightful, wonderful kid, but the longest sentences he tended to use were yep and nope.
- [33:19]
Dana Schwartz
Jeff takes him to see the San Jose Earthquakes pro soccer team. He loads Stan on a helicopter tour of San Francisco. Mayor Dianne Feinstein gives him the key to the city. He has his first big Mac from McDonald's. Stan even gets to hold a monkey being used in the filming of a movie. Jeff takes him to see a movie, too. Of course, it's Moonraker, and he went along with it.
- [33:47]
Jeff Jarvis
He was get along Stan. He was great. But it was milking a dead cow trying to get any quotes out of him to fill a column. Well, Stan did this today, and Stan had nothing to say. And that's kind of how I had to live that week or so.
- [34:00]
Dana Schwartz
While Stan calls his parents, who worry that he might be the victim of random violence in the U.S. jeff keeps calling NASA, hoping for any updates. Stan likes James Bond. He didn't mind the monkey, but what he really wants is to get his money and go home.
- [34:20]
Jeff Jarvis
I was calling Huntsville, Alabama, to find out, is this thing certified yet? What's taking so long?
- [34:27]
Dana Schwartz
After a week of gamma rays and X rays and treating the barbecued briquettes like the charred scrolls of Vesuvius, Jeff's office phone rings. NASA finally has news.
- [34:41]
Jeff Jarvis
NASA was scratching its collective head over what Stan had brought because it had carbon. That is to say, something from a life form. And Skylab was metal. Skylab was plastic carbon.
- [34:57]
Dana Schwartz
That was weird. No astronauts had been on board at Skylab when it plummeted to Earth. And presumably no aliens either, though you can probably find a YouTube video saying otherwise. Jeff didn't believe Stan was a grifter trying to pass off a painted Nerf ball. He was an earnest, quiet kid who had traveled a long way.
- [35:20]
Jeff Jarvis
No, our worst fear was that, what if Stan had been taken by somebody. Stan was an innocent. But what if somebody had slipped Dan counterfeit Skylab bits?
- [35:35]
Dana Schwartz
So what did NASA think?
- [35:37]
Jeff Jarvis
There was one theory for a time that this might have been astronaut poop.
- [35:44]
Ryan Seacrest
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons N. Safeway. Flu season is here, and the in store pharmacy has you covered with a free flu shot with most insurance plans. And as a thank you, get up to $20 off your grocery purchase. Plus it's cough and cold season. Stock up on all the season's essentials and get ready for relief with discounts on items like Halls, Menthol cough Drops, Tylenol Cold and Flu, and Mucinex Fast Max products. Offer ends December 30th. Restrictions apply, and offers may vary by location. Visit Albertsons or Safeway.com for more details.
- [36:14]
Sophie Cunningham
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Dana Schwartz
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Sophie Cunningham
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- [36:29]
Dana Schwartz
10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000.
- [36:48]
Jo Norman
This is when mindset comes in.
- [36:50]
Sophie Cunningham
Someone will be eliminated.
- [36:52]
Dana Schwartz
Pressure is coming down. This is Trainer Games.
- [36:57]
Ryan Seacrest
Watch it on Prime Video starting January 8th.
- [37:02]
Dana Schwartz
Fortunately, NASA ran more tests, and soon they called Jeff with better news. Stan had not traveled 7,000 miles to deliver a stool sample.
- [37:14]
Jeff Jarvis
They finally concluded that there was balsa wood insulation in Skylab and that that's what these black pieces were. They were inside. So they'd been kind of the last to burn up.
- [37:26]
Dana Schwartz
Yes, this $2.6 billion space station used wood for thermal insulation. Even better, it was a type of wood that didn't grow in Australia, meaning it couldn't have come from anywhere but space.
- [37:42]
Jeff Jarvis
And I don't think NASA was necessarily 100% scientific. Sure. But at that point, I think they were sick of it, and our guy in Huntsville was sick of it, and we were ready to move on. And so NASA said, yeah, we certify it.
- [37:55]
Dana Schwartz
So after days of waiting, the San Francisco examiner cuts Stan Thornton a check for $10,000. Cash in hand, Stan wants to make a beeline back to Esperance. But the contagious weirdness of Skylab isn't quite Over. While idling in San Francisco, Stan meets Dennis Satter, a furniture salesman from Philly with grand aspirations. Satter pitches Stan a tour across America to show off his space debris. He'd even fly Stan's parents over, along with one other special guest.
- [38:36]
Jo Norman
A telegram came, which I've still got, saying they would like to invite me and his mum and dad to come over to the States because Stan was missing us all.
- [38:49]
Dana Schwartz
For his role as space ambassador, stan would get $10,000 in home furnishings and a chance to earn a little scratch through additional endorsements. A spokesperson for Qantas speculates that Stan's 15 minutes could net him over $100,000 of 1979 cash. All this for a quiet Australian with space coal in his pockets. Stan agrees and soon finds himself in Philadelphia with Joe, posing in a shop window with some end tables in what Satter thought would be a fun photo shoot for his store.
- [39:30]
Jo Norman
At one stage, we were standing in the front of the window settings, me laying on a chaise, being a model, you know, just showing off some of his furniture. It was very weird. Very weird.
- [39:47]
Dana Schwartz
Stan hops on his overnight celebrity, touring the US with his mom, dad, and Joe by his side. They meet mayors, appear on talk shows, even visit the White House, though President Jimmy Carter couldn't make it.
- [40:02]
Jo Norman
No, the President didn't meet with us, so we got a packet of his peanuts instead, and an ashtray, I think, and a couple of spoons to say that we'd visited the White House. Where now I think back and I think, oh, my God, this is. That was huge.
- [40:19]
Dana Schwartz
They visit the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington and a NASA facility in Virginia. Stan sometimes doling out bits of Skylab like a sprinkling of magic dust. At the National Air and Space Museum, they see a full scale backup of Skylab's orbital workshop. At a towering 48ft, it puts the whole excursion in perspective. Skylab had been abstract, its tangible pieces little more than some peculiar looking bits of coal. But this, this was what had actually come from space.
- [40:58]
Jo Norman
It actually gave me the heebie duties because I kept thinking, oh, my God, one of the wings does not even fit in a four story building. And this is what has fallen on us all. And I did remember saying, I said, oh, my God, if people knew the size of this, we would never have gone and stood out and watched it go over, thinking, you know, nothing's gonna happen to us.
- [41:26]
Dana Schwartz
Finally, Stan's patience runs out, his status as spaceboy tiresome, and the whole group leaves for home.
- [41:34]
Jo Norman
We were over it by then, because the cameras would just follow you everywhere and everything you said was up on some TV show on. Yeah, it was quite bizarre.
- [41:47]
Dana Schwartz
Back home, Stan buys a car and a little land. He doles out some of his winnings to his parents and his friend Ray, who carried the Skylab bits to the chemist. When Jeff Jarvis followed up with Stan a year later, he had about $2,000 left. Unfortunately, the promised home furnishings never arrived.
- [42:09]
Jo Norman
We picked it all out. We went to the warehouse, and he let us chew whatever we wanted. They said, yep, yep, we'll ship that out to you. But we never heard from him after we left. I think he was a bit of a con artist myself.
- [42:25]
Dana Schwartz
Jeff reached out to Satter on their behalf to ask about the goods, only to find that he was heavily in debt and had fled town.
- [42:33]
Jeff Jarvis
Well, the problem for the furniture guy was that he thought that he was going to get barrels of publicity just like we did. But the story was over once Stan got the check. He won the $10,000. Kid makes good. That was the end of the narrative. And in our attention deficit disorder industry that we call media and journalism, everybody was on to the next story. It was forgotten, so he didn't get out of it what he had anticipated.
- [42:58]
Dana Schwartz
So after all that, did the Skylab contest actually result in. In more readers of the examiner?
- [43:06]
Jeff Jarvis
This was a good old time publicity trick, but it made no real business difference. It gave everybody a lot of fun for a few weeks.
- [43:16]
Dana Schwartz
As for the famous Chronicle columnist Herb Kane, Jeff Jarvis, arch newspaper nemesis, he was on vacation for most of that June and July, missing virtually all of the excitement. So why did Skylab capture so much of the public's imagination? The closest thing we can compare it to is a horror movie. When we watch a teenager getting chased through the woods by a psychotic killer, we feel a kind of relief that we're not them, that things might be bad, but not. Machete through the neck, but bad. It's a way to grapple with our fear of death without getting too close to it. Maybe Skylab was a kind of rehearsal for doomsday. Something enormous was about to fall from the sky, and for a moment, we lost the illusion of control and got a small taste of what it might feel like to face the end of everything. Some people coped by making light of it, painting targets on roofs and selling helmets. Others fled for cover. We probably got curious how it would feel to face our mortality, and it turned out to be mostly okay American.
- [44:39]
Jeff Jarvis
News, especially in the days since radio and tv, but also in print has long been about the hot story. We think that the Internet invented trending and memes. No. That's been the essence of journalism and news since the steam powered press and scale came to press. So this was a story that was bound to get attention. Thank God it didn't. The satellite didn't kill anybody or injure anybody so we could have fun with it. Couldn't we use more stories like that these days? I think we could.
- [45:14]
Dana Schwartz
We too long for the days when the worst of thing imaginable was merely a superheated lead vault falling on us. Of course we wanted to talk to Stan Thornton, but he's as media averse as he was in 1979 and didn't respond to our requests. Jeff Jarvis tried to reach him a few years ago. He finally made a connection via email. Was he doing well?
- [45:41]
Jo Norman
Yep.
- [45:43]
Dana Schwartz
Anything else to say? Nope.
- [45:45]
Jeff Jarvis
So it was good to just say, how you doing? And great to talk after all these years. And so I was glad to close the loop there.
- [45:53]
Dana Schwartz
As for Joe and Stan, they kept dating after getting back to Australia, got engaged at 18 and then drifted apart. Joe eventually moved to Perth, got married and pursued a career in education. She keeps a small chunk of Skylab, a souvenir of when the sky fell.
- [46:15]
Jo Norman
When I think of Skylab, the thing that I remember is seeing it, the actual witnessing of it was something out of this world that I don't think anyone will ever experience again because they would never let it happen again. It would be blown out of the atmosphere before it could even happen.
- [46:33]
Dana Schwartz
There are are, of course, conspiracy theories that NASA had intentionally steered Skylab over soil in Australia so they could retrieve whatever pieces they could. A pretty lousy conspiracy, as a lot of it landed in the Indian Ocean. Other scraps wound up in a local Esperance museum. Another in nearby Kalgoorlie. Town hall was so big at over 6ft long, workers had to take the front doors off to get it inside. The mayor thought it would be good for tourism. One piece even wound up on stage at the Miss Universe pageant in Perth next to Donny Osmond. President Carter did eventually acknowledge the inconvenience to Australia, apologizing to the country's prime minister. In a nod of the good humor of Australians, an Esperance official fined NASA $400 for littering. Unlike the examiner, the space agency never paid up.
- [47:43]
Jason English
So I love stories where some random thing happens and just changes the trajectory of someone's life. And this, the thing literally crashes into Stan's yard and look what he got to do he got to go tour the US Win cash prizes? That's not a bad day.
- [48:00]
Dana Schwartz
There's something sort of sweet about this, like, main character energy that, like, he gets to go on an old fashioned, like, whistle stop tour and gets a little publicity and taste of glamour before he goes back to his normal life.
- [48:13]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
I mean, also, for a beer truck driver in Australia to end up, like, all around America and then getting swindled by a furniture salesman, I just love it. It's such a pure story in that regard, too.
- [48:22]
Dana Schwartz
The villain of this story really is the furniture salesman.
- [48:25]
Jason English
Oh, my God, Yes.
- [48:28]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
Also, though, how about NASA's like, cavalier attitude of, look, look, we have a one in seven chance. We may hit a city with this, but we're going for it. We're gonna let this baby cook.
- [48:36]
Dana Schwartz
It's really a classic case of we're gonna do the best we can.
- [48:40]
Jason English
Yeah, exactly.
- [48:42]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
Did you guys have, like, a very special character in this one? Cause there were so many good ones.
- [48:46]
Dana Schwartz
I like Jo. I like that sort of pragmatism. The love story.
- [48:51]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
Yes.
- [48:51]
Dana Schwartz
I do wish they ended up together just for my own, like, mental movie. I feel like in the movie they will. Unless it's all just a bittersweet sort of saga about how nothing lasts and everything falls apart, which kind of makes sense because, you know, the fame and publicity sort of dries up. So maybe relationships do too. This just made me sad.
- [49:11]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
Yeah. Also, they're such a cute couple. You're really pulling for them. Like, oh, I want these crazy kids to get together.
- [49:17]
Jason English
My very special moment is when the town decides to find NASA $400 for littering. I think that was a good. Stick it to him.
- [49:26]
Dana Schwartz
Yes.
- [49:27]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
My very special moment has to be when Jeff Jarvis, our journalist, when he has Frank Sinatritz take time out of singing my way just to diss him and call him a bum. I mean, how great is that? You got bragging rights forever. Frank Sinatra. Stop the show just to diss me.
- [49:41]
Jason English
Zarin, did you happen to cast this one?
- [49:44]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
I did. I did my best. I went through and I thought about it and like, okay, I tried to get an Australian actress for Joe Norman and I went with Angori Rice. She played Ryan Gosling's daughter in the Nice Guys, the movie with Russell Crowe. So I thought she'd be good as a 17 year old for her boyfriend. I had a hard time with this one, so forgive me if I went with a guy who I dislike and he's all over the news right now. Jacob Elordi. I thought you know, he could do it, right.
- [50:08]
Dana Schwartz
I love Jacob Elordi. He's so tall.
- [50:11]
Jason English
Yeah.
- [50:11]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
And for some reason I got the idea that Stan was tall. So I was like, okay, that could be fun. And then for Dr. Bonnie Dunbar. Right. The professor of aerospace and engineering, I was like, okay, maybe I've watched too many, like, sci fi movies, but I'm thinking Dakota Johnson. It just felt right. Now for Jeff Jarvis, the rookie columnist at the San Francisco Examiner, I think I've mentioned the show before, Masters of Air. Well, I went with a different actor, Anthony Boyle, who he played Harry Crosby, the navigator in Masters of Air. I thought he would be great. He has that same type of energy. And for Dennis Sater, the furniture salesman from Philly, the one with grand aspirations, who was heavily in debt, had to flee town. I liked Calum Turner, also from Masters of Air. I thought he would be good. He can play smarmy, but also kind of like, oh, yeah, he could be a con man. There we go.
- [50:56]
Dana Schwartz
Yeah, he's great. He's also dating or engaged to or married to Dua Lipa, which I just want to shout out. That's just the fun fact.
- [51:03]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
Did you see how they met? They were reading the same book and they were apparently on the same page.
- [51:07]
Jeff Jarvis
Yeah, they were in public.
- [51:08]
Dana Schwartz
Oh, cute.
- [51:09]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
Yeah.
- [51:12]
Jason English
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people. Today's episode was produced in partnership with School of Humans. The show is hosted by directed by Dana Schwartz, Zarin Burnett and Jason English. Our senior producer is Josh Fisher. Today's episode was written by Jake Rawson. Our story editor is Virginia Prescott from School of Humans. Producers are Amelia Brock and Edeliz Perez. Editing and sound design by Jonathan Washington. Mixing and mastering by Josh Fisher. Research and fact checking by Jake Rawson, Virginia Prescott and Austin Thompson. Original Music by Elise McCoy. Show logo by Lucy Quintanilla. Social clips by Yarbery Media. Executive producers of today's episode are Virginia Prescott and Jason English. Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart podcasts.
- [52:08]
Dana Schwartz
Amazon Five Star Theater presents real customer.
- [52:12]
Jeff Jarvis
Reviews performed by Ed Helms. Tonight's review, Tactical jacket.
- [52:18]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
I was living a simple life.
- [52:19]
Jeff Jarvis
Didn't get out much. Then I bought this jacket and everything changed. Women came flocking to me from lands domestic and foreign.
- [52:30]
Dana Schwartz
On the 245 day sailboat voyage home.
- [52:33]
Jeff Jarvis
I was attacked by a shark. I knew it was the jacket he was after giving up the jacket in.
- [52:41]
Dana Schwartz
Exchange for my life.
- [52:42]
Jeff Jarvis
5 stars. Amazon Customer 69 Shop the perfect gift this holiday on Amazon.
- [52:49]
Sophie Cunningham
This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snored loudly, or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues, it may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don'tsleep onosa.com this information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company. Okay, only 10 more presents to wrap.
- [53:31]
Dana Schwartz
You're almost at the finish line. But first, There the last one. Enjoy a Coca Cola for a pause that refreshes. You know what a girl's best friend.
- [54:00]
Dr. Bonnie Dunbar
Is not diamonds her lawyers.
- [54:02]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
From executive producer Ryan Murphy comes a flash fiery new legal drama.
- [54:06]
Dana Schwartz
It's our own boutique women representing women.
- [54:09]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
You can't afford to miss.
- [54:11]
Dana Schwartz
Make it Ray Showtime, ladies. Stand up straight and breeze into that room like a storm no one saw coming.
- [54:21]
Angel, Diego, and Jason (Gusto About Podcast)
Hulu Original Series All's Fair now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney for.
- [54:26]
Jeff Jarvis
Bundle subscribers terms apply.
- [54:29]
Dana Schwartz
Hear that? It's holiday cheer arriving at Ulta Beauty with gifts for everyone on your list. Treat them to fan favorite gift sets from Charlotte, Tilbury and Peach and Lily. Go all out with timeless fragrances from ysl, Ariana Grande and Carolina Herrera. And you can never go wrong with an Ulta Beauty gift card. Head to Ulta Beauty for gifts that make the holidays brighter and even more beautiful. Ulta Beauty gifting happens here. This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.