NASA Skylab News Reference

THIS IS A GREAT BOOK FOR SKYLAB. IT HAS A LOT OF TECHNICAL DIAGRAMS AND INFORMATION AND ALSO HASABOUT THE CREW AND THE MISSIONS I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK FOR ANYONE INTERESTED IN SKYLAB PROGRAM ITS FULL OF INFORMATION AND DETAILS!

I purchased this book with some trepidation because the only other Periscope Films reprint I've owned (their Fleet Submarine manual) was terrible. I'm happy to say the reprint quality is substantially better here; although many of the photographs have a murky Xeroxed look, the diagrams are pretty sharp, the text is readable, and there are no compression artifacts to be found.The majority of this book is a facsimile reprint of a 362-page document published by the NASA Public Affairs Office two months before the launch of Skylab. The Skylab News Reference was intended to provide a definitive sourcebook on Skylab hardware, systems, operations, crew training, and ground facilities for members of the press. As such, it's a VERY in-depth work; there are diagrams showing the location of every EVA handrail, stowage locker, and internal light, detailed explanations of every scientific experiment, numerous specification tables and block diagrams, biographies of each prime, backup and support astronaut...you get the picture. The last third of the book consists of three NASA press releases for the Skylab 1/2, 3, and 4 flights, each between 30 and 45 pages long. These are moderately interesting in that they describe these missions as they were originally intended to be flown, but none are anywhere near as detailed as the press kits NASA released prior to Apollo missions.Although this isn't a perfect reprint, it's great that someone out there is republishing these vintage technical documents for us hardcore space geeks. Haynes will be publishing a Skylab "workshop manual" this coming February, and while the samples I've seen so far look excellent, the wealth of detail here makes it worth hunting down.