NASA’s first space station weighed 77 tons and its launch nearly destroyed it, but engineers saved the thing with an improvised parasol, and when it finally fell out of orbit in 1979 a small Australian town fined the agency $400 for littering.

NASA’s first space station weighed 77 tons and its launch nearly destroyed it, but engineers saved the thing with an improvised parasol, and when it finally fell out of orbit in 1979 a small Australian town fined the agency $400 for littering.

America's first space station was built out of leftover Apollo hardware — a modified Saturn V third stage, 77 tons and 118 feet long, the largest spacecraft ever launched at the time. It nearly died on the way up, when the ascent tore off its meteoroid shield and one solar wing and left it overheating with almost no power. NASA had eleven days to improvise a fix, and the crew that arrived deployed a parasol sunshade through a scientific airlock …