Set the Wayback machine for 1979 Guise and Let's Blast Off!
Compare & Contrast;
1979:
"
Skylab was made to go up but not to come back down.
The space Junk formerly known as Skylab was designed as a temporary orbiting workshop supposedly intended for "research on scientific matters, such as the effects of prolonged weightlessness on the human body."
NASA eagerly sent Skylab in orbit. However, NASA was not so eager to spend the time or the effort to plot a re-entry - or to even plan for such an event, despite the admittedly temporary nature of its, shall we say, "endeavor". Devised for just a nine-year lifespan, NASA failed to build in any control or navigation mechanisms to return the Space Junk formerly known as Skylab back to terra firma.
To do so would have “cost too much,” Robert Frosch, NASA administrator at the time, stated.
This lack of planning and a fundamental ability to not care about the consequences of ones' actions led, naturally, to the uncontrolled descent of the largest piece of space-junk to ever touch down on terra-firma. Note that I stated "terra firma" as, unlike the Long March rocket boosters, Good Old Star Spangled SpaceJunk - in true American fashion - made an unscheduled arrival on the shores of Australia. No records remain whether the illegal immigrant/space junk decided to bring a passport with it as it flew in.
Meanwhile, "Back at the Raunch" as they say in Hollywood, what do you suppose the people of the USA were doing? Lamenting the possible deaths of millions, or celebrating and turning the whole thing into a big celebratory media event?
I'll give you two guesses and the first one's on the house:
Naw. Just kidding. Let me save ya the effort:
"In the United States, people tended to treat Skylab’s return as an excuse to party. Skylab parties were held all over the United States, t-shirts with big bulls-eyes printed on them and cans of Skylab repellant were sold." ( source:
https://sciencenotes.org/today-in-science-history-july-11/ )