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[i]The principal reason for the OWS meteoroid shield was to decrease the probability of meteoroids penetrating the OWS... The probability of such a penetration during the planned overall Skylab Program was only 0.995 (five out of 1000 programs) with the shield but it is up to about 0.95 without the shield... It would have been ten times as safe with the shield." The meteoroid shield was designed basically as an 0.025 inch thick aluminum band fitted tightly around the outside of the OWS for launch, and then deployed to a 5-inch stand-off position in orbit. As such a tight band, the shield was not a flimsy device and actually added strength to the stage tank-wall. There were flanges fore and aft to provide support and keep out the slipstream. It was an oversight of design detail that allowed airflow to occur in the auxiliary tunnel that induced a pressure differential that raised the shield into the airstream where it was torn off. We do not consider that our micrometeoroid shield failure was due to "wrong decisions" but rather to lapse in communication between the structural designers and the aerodynamicists.[/i]
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