In 1973 , NASA made its first try at an orbital space station withSkylab . The labor , which had to eventually be abandoned before falling back to Earth , cost an estimated$2.2 billion , though one disbursal was left unpaid for over three decades : a $ 400 littering ticket put out by a park military service official in Western Australia .
The events that would conduct to this mulct were set into motion withSkylab’srockier - than - ask launchin 1973 , when the ( at the time remote-controlled ) research lab suffer severe damage to its meteorite shield and solar panel .
The first crew to visitSkylabspent their 28 - day missionary post behave repairs , and the post eventually managed to host two more teams of astronauts over the undermentioned year . Once the last squad returned to Earth in 1974,Skylabwas left unoccupied as in high spirits solar activity concentrate the post ’s orbital altitude . ineffectual to give it a boost in sentence , NASA planned to letSkylabreenter the atmospheric state and fall back to Earth in 1979 .
The plan worked . Debris that had n’t completely disintegrated during reentry scattered into the Indian Ocean and across a sparsely populated section of rural Australia . No one was hurt , but NASA was n’t all off the hook . When members of theSkylabinvestigation team confabulate the Shire of Esperance in Western Australia to audit the damage and collect the station end , they were greeted with a $ 400 ticket for littering .
The ticket was issued as a gag and in near play , and NASA never paid off the $ 400 amercement . In 2009 , 30 years afterSkylab ’s reentry , California radio disc jockey Scott Barley asked listeners to donate money so they couldfinally clear NASA ’s books . Though the mayor of Esperance secernate Barley the slate had been “ written off age ago , ” he and his attender cobbled together the $ 400 and sent it to the shire horse . For his efforts , Barley was invited to Esperance and received a key to the city .
NASA , to its deferred payment , has n’t littered in the Shire of Esperance since theSkylabincident .
