Mutiny in Space – The 1973 Skylab Incident

In 1973, the three astronauts aboard Skylab 4 staged NASA’s first (and only) space mutiny, rebelling against an overwhelming workload and mission control’s rigid oversight. For one dramatic day, they cut off communications, taking time to enjoy the view of Earth and reset their own schedule. When contact was reestablished, tensions ran high—but what happened next changed how NASA handled astronaut workloads forever. In this episode, we tell the story and then chat with Comedian and Actor Elyssa Phillips!

Eight Days. That’s all it was supposed to be. Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore were on a mission to demonstrate the Boeing Strarliner’s ability to transport crews to and from the International Space Station. They weren’t on a mission to conduct research in space or do ISS repairs. It was a short stay because the act of traveling to and from the ISS was the test. That was June 5th of 2024. As of the release of this episode on March 10, 2025, they’re still up there – 278 days later. 

It all started because the S.S. Minnow, I mean the Boeing Starliner, encountered thruster problems. After several arduous days of testing both in space and on the ground back at the Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, it was determined that it wouldn’t be safe to return to Earth using the Starliner and a plan was launched to bring the stranded astronauts back using Space X’s Crew-9 Mission. This was a mission that put the Space-X aircraft at the ISS in September of 2024 with the astronaut’s return scheduled for February of 2025. But then that was delayed. Now the plan is to have them return with Space X’s Crew-10 Mission, which launches March 12 and returns to Earth on March 16th. 

Elon Musk, the man at the head of Space X claimed very publicly that the reason the Astronauts were stranded was due to politics.

Butch Wilmore, one of the stranded astronauts agreed with Musk, but Suni Williams, the other one, said they were always prepared for contingencies and that they don’t feel abandoned. She also publicly disagreed with Musk’s future plans for the Space Station – he wants to deorbit it within the next 5 years. The former ISS Commander, Andreas Mogensen, pushed back on Musk’s assertions and Musk returned fire, calling the man a slur on his platform, X. NASA’s reaction was to disagree with Musk, saying the extended stay was due to technical issues with Boeing’s Starliner and not political interference.

Assuming the Astronauts come back home on March 16, which is in about a week from now, they will have been in space for 285 days – 277 days longer than anticipated. This is still short of the record. Astronauts Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko had been on the ISS for 340 days when they returned in 2016. 

The reason I bring this up is due to some parallels to today’s story. Like the Boeing Starliner Test Flight Mission, the Skylab 4 mission ran longer than anticipated. They also both encountered technical mishaps once in space. And both the Skylab 4 crew and the Boeing Test Flight crew had to adapt to a new mission and do much more work than they signed up for. 

For the current Astronauts, they’ve worked hard to maintain their physical and mental health, following some well-established protocols and training for if this sort of thing happened. One of the reasons this training exists is because of what happened on Skylab 4 – where the mental health and attitude of the crew wasn’t as positive.

Skylab 4’s crew was the largest all-rookie crew in the history of NASA. All three Astronauts were first timers when it came to space flight. Gerald Carr was the Commander of the Mission, Edward Gibson the Science Pilot and William Pogue the Pilot. The Saturn 1B Launch Vehicle and Apollo Command Module took them to space on November 16th, 1973.  They docked with Skylab for what was planned to be a 56-day mission. 

Skylab was the United States’ very first Space Station, and to this day the only Space Station solely operated by the U.S. It had been launched earlier that year in 1973 and the Skylab 4 crew was the 3rd and final crew to ever work on board the station. 

They had several goals to conduct in those 56 days: 

1 – To conduct extensive experiments in space biology and human physiology to study the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human body.

2 – To perform solar observations using Skylab’s solar observatory. They aimed to study the Sun’s behavior, including its solar flares and sunspots.

3 – To conduct astronomy and space science experiments, including studying cosmic rays and other space phenomena.

And finally – 4 – To make Earth observations in order to monitor changes in the Earth’s atmosphere, weather, and surface, as well as environmental changes and effects from solar activity.

The mission got off to a bit of an ornery start. The previous Skylab Crew – Skylab 3 had left a surprise for the crew. When they arrived and docked, they were shocked to see 3 astronauts already standing in Skylab wearing flight suits. When they looked closer, they realized that they were dummies made up of spare parts and garbage bags and wearing spare flight suits. Just a little prank. 

But the first serious problem occurred when William Pogue got sick. He suffered from space sickness, which happens to quite a few astronauts as their body adjusts to weightlessness. It’s similar to the body’s reaction to motion sickness or sea sickness. While it’s quite common – about half of all people who have gone to space have experienced it – the crew chose to hide his illness from Mission Control. After downloading voice recordings, they heard the crew discussing Pogue’s sickness and they were reprimanded by Alan Shepard, the Astronaut Office Chief. The illness was a surprise to the crew in the first place, because Pogue’s nickname was “Iron Belly.” He was one of the only astronauts to never get sick in the spinning g-force trainer in Houston. Edward Gibson, the Science Pilot later recalled the blowback. “He got on the line and read us the riot act for not telling them immediately,” said Ed. “Al was OK, we just didn’t like being chewed out in front of the whole world.”

Part of the problem – and this has since been acknowledged by NASA, was that they didn’t allow enough of an adjustment period for the crew after they arrived in space. They had the three man crew of first-time space travelers working with an incredibly full schedule right away. They had added more projects, experiments and studies, and had doubled the amount of planned space-walks. 

This small indiscretion early in the mission laid a groundwork of tension between Mission Control and the Skylab 4 Crew. They had large shoes to fill. The previous Skylab Crew had completed their 59 and a half-day mission with great success and had been named the “150% crew” because of how much they had gotten done. It had been a record year for the U.S. Space Program and now this final mission of the year – and what would be the final mission of Skylab – was being jeopardized by a contentious work relationship between the astronauts and mission control. 

All of this was exacerbated by another fact. The mission was extended from 56 days to 84 – the longest space mission in history up to that point. The crew on the ground expected a lot of these astronauts – and because they were all new guys, the folks on the ground hadn’t established a great working relationship with them yet. Every time the station was contacted, it was preempted with a litany of requests, tests, checks and instructions from the ground. Those instructions usually arrived via the teleprinter onboard every morning and the crew felt micromanaged – every minute of every waking hour was being dictated and checked by mission control and Ed Gibson said “One morning we received about 60ft of instructions, which then needed to be understood and divided up before we even got to work.” In addition to additional hours, days, weeks, projects and tests that weren’t in the original flight plan, they were now being asked to research a comet.

The Comet Kohoutek had been discovered and, in another last-minute addition to their workload, they were given detailed instructions on research that needed to be conducted into the behavior of the comet. 

Part way into their mission, the astronauts were complaining. They felt they were being pushed too hard and there was too much mission creep and added responsibilities. They knew that they were being compared to Skylab 3 and were being asked to do too much of everything. Mission Control felt they weren’t getting enough work done. Just before the midpoint of the mission, a communications break occurred that – to this day – is often described as the first mutiny in space – others have called it a strike. As to whether it really happened, we’ll get to. But here’s what occurred.

Because they were tasked with doing so many jobs and daily briefings with ground control took so much time, they decided that only one crew member needed to be present for those briefings instead of all three – something that Houston was okay with. But on the morning of December 27th 1973, no one showed up for the briefing. The radios were off. The crew just skipped the meeting and so for that day, they did what they wanted. They took a day off. But is that the truth?

Well the first account of this wasn’t published until August of 1976 when the New Yorker ran a story by Henry S.F. Cooper about it. He referred to it as a strike in space. He also wrote a book that year about Skylab and made the same claim. In 1980, the Harvard Business School (HBS) developed a case study entitled “Strike in Space,” written by Michael B. McCaskey and E. Mary Lou Balbaky. But none of these authors ever gave a credible source as to where the claim originated. Regardless, the story stuck. 

Here’s what we know for certain. All of the contentious feelings were there. They’re evident in the transcripts of the communications from the mission. And There was one morning when the crew missed the briefing. But Ed Gibson says it was all a misunderstanding. There was a regularly scheduled day off – it wasn’t a strike or mutiny. And as for the briefing, apparently they had just forgotten whose turn it was to attend, so nobody did. And so for one full orbit around the Earth –  about 90 minutes – they weren’t in communication. Apparently some said that the word “strike” made its way through the control room and eventually out the doors to the media. And whatever the truth is – here’s something that happened about halfway into the mission that speaks to the collaborative spirit between the Astronauts and their counterparts back in Houston:

Flight Surgeons suggested increasing the astronaut’s exercise time from 60 to 90 minutes a day. This would help as a stress relief and break from the grueling schedule. On December 30th, Mission Control had a heart to heart with the Crew. Richard Truly was control capsule communicator in Houston and he decided to completely revisit and revise the daily schedule. The 14 to 16 hour work shifts were lightened and as a result of a lighter schedule, the crew’s productivity actually increased. Truly called it the first “sensitivity session in space.” 

The crew completed their record-setting 84 day mission, splashing down on February 8th of 1974. For the next 4 years, it would keep the record as the longest stay in space. And the result of the mission, other than a host of scientific research into the Earth, the comet, and the human body, was that a lot of consideration was given to the psyche of the astronaut during extended periods in space. It forced NASA to study more about space medicine, team management and psychology. It literally changed how they plan missions. 

So when we look at our current situation of astronauts that have been orbiting the Earth for 193 days LONGER than the crew of Skylab 4, perhaps we can credit their mental and physical well being to a mutiny that may or may not have happened in the winter of 1973. The Internet Says it’s True.

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