IIRC (from what I read somewhere, I wasn't alive at the time), the
original plan was for the Shuttle to have been done in time to reboost
Skylab from its rapidly decaying orbit, but delays and physics
eventually doomed the idea.

IMHO, having both Shuttle AND Skylab right away could have saved us
nearly a decade of BS. The station could be a veritable 'Cosmograd' by now.

-Jonathan

--
Jonathan Drake, '04
Physics and Astronomy
Dickinson College