In 1973, Skylab, America's first space station, was launched aboard a two-stage Saturn V vehicle. Saturn IB rockets were used to launch three different three-man crews to the Skylab space station.

Today is the 32nd anniversary of the Challenger disaster. You’ve probably seen something in the news about it. I wrote this in the Summer of 2015 with the desire that some musician friend or other might set it to music, possibly in advance of the 30th anniversary. (One of these days maybe I’ll commission Unwoman when one of her Kickstarter bonuses is to arrange the poem of the funder’s choice.)

I Dreamt of Yuri Gagarin
Space Age Folk Songs #1

Gazing up at the moon
I dreamt of Yuri Gagarin (1)
Dreaming himself of lunar kolchazi (2)
The grand collective cocoon

Chorus:
This is the space age
And we are here to go (3)
Poyechali, Poyechali (4)
To the next rendez-vous

I dreamt of spinning space stations
Stepped from giants’ shoulders
Through solar paneled portals
Of interplanetary migrations

Of Mars and of Titan and Pluto
I dream of Sirius and Centauri
Goldilocks’ exoplanets
Of light speed and black holes

Of the ones who dared and knew,
Komarov (5) and Gargarin;
Gus Grissom (6), McAuliffe (7), McNair (8),
The dream was bigger than any shuttle or Soyuz

1. First human in space, died testing a MiG jet fighter.
2. Russian: Collective farm
3. William S. Burroughs at the first Nova Convention speaking about the space program
4. Russian: Let's go (Поехали - uttered when ground control indicated to Gagarin that Vostok 1 had lift off)
5. Soviet colleague of Gagarin - died in a crash after orbiting earth in a faulty ship
6. US astronaut who died in a pre-flight test of Apollo 1.
7 and 8. US astronauts who died in the Challenger disaster.