Unloading the Skylab Orbital Workshop

This photograph was taken at the Redstone airfield, Huntsville, Alabama, during the unloading of the Saturn V S-IVB stage that housed the Orbital Workshop (OWS) from the Super Guppy, the NASA plane that was specially built to carry oversized cargo. The OWS measured 22 feet (6.7 m) in diameter, and 48 feet (14.6 m) in length. The Saturn V S-IVB stage was modified at the McDornell Douglas facility at Huntington Beach, California, for a new role, which was to house the OWS. In addition to the test articles, engineering mockups, and flight equipment, both McDonnell Douglas and Martin Marietta built 0-G trainers, neutral buoyancy trainers, and high-fidelity mockups for the 1-G trainer to be used in the KC-135 aircraft. The Marshall Space Flight Center had program management responsibility for the development of Skylab hardware and experiments.