NASA was operating as an authoritarian and hierarchical organization.
Owen Garriot was an exception to the rule of regimentation in the sense that he brought a lighthearted attitude to the workplace environment. Garriot's "excitement," "enthusiasm" and "zealousness" made him a sort of unintentional leader for the Skylab 3 crew (p. 6). Thus, the astronauts were only able to create a circle network because of their extreme isolation -- from planet earth.
Unlike the second Skylab, the third was comprised of a team of rookies. Moreover, "none of the third crew shared any close personal connections with the first two crews," (p. 7). The problems in communication and lack of teamwork led the third crew to "play down the adverse effects of space travel to protect NASA's funding for future space programs," (p. 7). A lack of camaraderie solidified the wheel-chain combination strategy that NASA had come to rely upon as a means to control and monitor its employees.
The authoritarian nature of NASA leadership became...
Mission control on the ground had been monitoring the astronaut's conversations and they knew about the cover-up of the one team member's sickness. The reprimand "seriously strained the crew's relationship to mission control and made them feel defensive," (p. 8). The crew stopped following the rigid schedules set out for them, and exhibited "ridicule, exasperation, and hostility" as well as "unrestrained language" when talking with mission control (p. 8). Among themselves, the crew did not get along as well as the first two Skylabs, either.
The stowage problem aboard Skylab 3 revealed the lack of role clarity among astronauts. Roles were also not made clear by ground control at NASA. Neil Hutchinson "would have been happier if Skylab had been a mechanical unmanned satellite, a sentiment shared by many of the engineers and scientists," (p. 12). The flight surgeons understood, knowing that "poor communication between the engineers and themselves" was the root cause of…
