This past weekend was the thirtieth anniversary of America's first space station coming
back to Earth, specifically over Australia.

I well remember the hoopla about Skylab's return. Later on someone (NASA?) was
parading parts of the space station around the nation, one of which came by as a
temporary exhibit to my local mall. It looked like a rusted piece of twisted metal about
the size of a tire.

Time magazine had a two-story cover piece about Skylab's premature return and what
was then the tenth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission - no doubt they "enjoyed"
comparing humanity great achievement with the only thing to remain after Apollo burning
up in Earth's atmosphere and leaving scraps across Australia (one of which killed a rabbit,
by the way).

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,947058,00.html

An article from Wired magazine on the subject:

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/07/dayintech_0711

Meanwhile, Skylab's backup station sits in the Smithsonian collecting dust and there is
recent talk again about scrapping the ISS in 2016.