space station Skylab

thingiverse

This is Skylab, the very first US space station. It holds a special place in my heart, as I had the privilege of working on it with my father when I was an engineer at McDonald Douglass. This project marks the last time we collaborated together - and what a momentous occasion it turned out to be. You'll notice that both solar panels are depicted prominently, which is exactly how they were intended to deploy. Unfortunately, one panel failed to deploy due to a critical oversight on the part of the manufacturers. I still get frustrated thinking about it - we engineers specifically warned them not to apply grease to the deployment mechanism, but they chose to ignore our advice and proceeded with greasing it anyway. It's truly remarkable that, through sheer determination and coaxing, we were able to get one panel deployed successfully. As a testament to the importance of listening to your engineers, I'm reminded of the phrase: "PEPPOL LISTEN TO YOUR ENGINEERS!" To build this model, please head over to Thingiverse and check out the design at http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1629138. When printing, be sure to set the supports to "on" for only the first half - just two small spots under the radio dish on the command module will suffice. You won't even need to clean up after the print.