‘Tally-Ho the Skylab’: The Mission to Save America’s Space Station, 45 Years On - AmericaSpace
Four decades have now passed since one of the most dramatic reversals in fortune in American space history: the salvation of Skylab. On 14 May 1973, America’s first space station was launched into orbit atop the final Saturn V booster, but an unfortunate sequence of events led to the premature...
www.americaspace.com
The above clearly shows how hard it was for Conrad and Kerwin to unstuck the solar array.
Whatif they had failed ?
Skylab A would remain a derelict, 150 000 pounds and $2.5 billion wreck.
Of course Skylab B could be launched: 10 months after May 1973, with some more margin to avoid another fiasco.
To simplify things let's say it launches exactly a year after Skylab A.
And then... shit hits the fan. As Skylab A; its S-II; and another S-II (from Skylab B !) now will all reenter. OTL nobody cared about Skylab A's S-II in January 1975. And Skylab A itself was manned and reboosted... yet we all know how it ended in July 1979.
So ITTL the situation is kind of thrice as worse: the derelict Skylab A trigger attention over it's S-II... and it's sister S-II.
And NASA takes a lot of heat in Congress and public opinion.
