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Blogs by Ann Massey
The Day Sky Lab fell to Earth Inspired Saboteur 6/23/2020 1:24:47 AM
I was working as a governess on Minilya, a sheep and cattle station in Western Australia when I got the idea to write SABOTEUR,my new novel coming out on July 1st. It's proximity to Carnarvon Tracking Station built in 1963 for use by NASA in 1963 for the Gemini program, the second step in NASA's plan to put a man on the moon was one of the influences that inspired me to write an action packed thriller set on a remote sheep station.
The second happened in 1979 when the Space Lab, a reusable laboratory used on space flights flown by the Space Shuttle was found to be decaying. On July 11, 1979 with Skylab rapidly descending from orbit, engineers fired the station's booster rockets, sending it into a tumble that they hoped would bring it down in the Indian Ocean. In fact, it fell somewhere in Western Australia's desert.
The San Francisco Examiner offered a $10,000 prize to the first person to deliver a piece of Skylab debris to its office within 72 hours of the crash. Knowing the orbiter wasn’t coming down anywhere near the United States, the newspaper felt it was making a safe bet. It didn’t count on news of the bounty traveling all the way to Australia.
There, 17-year-old Stan Thornton of tiny Esperance awoke to commotion when Skylab broke apart in the atmosphere and pelted his house with space station fragments. Thinking quickly, he grabbed a few charred bits of material from his yard, hopped on a plane without so much as a passport or suitcase and made it to the Examiner’s office before the deadline. The newspaper good-naturedly paid out the award.
In Saboteur, a young tearaway sent to work on a sheep station similar to Minilya, finds the wreckage of the International Space Station and a secret that NASA will stop at nothing to keep hidden. The novel will be on sale from July 1st. 2020.
