Beyond the Stars –NASA’s 50 Years of Manned Space Flight - Part 9 - Skylab

The idea of placing a vehicle with a human crew into Earth orbit first appeared in 1869 when an American, Edward Everett Hale, wrote a short story about launching a brick structure large enough to house a crew of thirty-seven into outer space. During the first half of the twentieth century individuals from the scientific community, including Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Hermann Oberth, took up the subject. The possibility of placing such an object into orbit seemed remote at that time, however, due to the absence of a practical launch vehicle...
Launch of the unoccupied Skylab, designated Skylab 1 took place on May 14, 1973, and problems set in early. Shortly after achieving orbit, telemetry from the unmanned Skylab indicated that one of the two wings of solar panels was missing and the other had not deployed. In addition, the gyros were drifting and the thermal shield was damaged. One minute and three seconds into launch, aerodynamic forces had torn the meteorite shield/sunshade loose and destroyed one of the solar arrays and seriously damaging the other. Skylab was in serious trouble.