1 INTRODUCTION

Popular histories of America's space program describe the decade of the 1970s as a fallow period. Missions to the Moon were canceled after 1972. NASA's next spaceship, the Space Shuttle, was delayed by problems with its engines and heat-resistant tiles. Skylab, a space station built from surplus Apollo hardware, fell back to Earth in 1979, sooner than planned.
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The euphoria that accompanied the first human explorations in 1969 gave way to a cultural and economic shock over shortage of gasoline brought on by a cartel of oil-producing countries in 1973.