A Puzzle - Why are Space Pirates interested in Skylab?

[dans]

In E-Man #5, Charlton introduced Liberty Belle, Caroline Dean, the CEO of a fashion empire that included at least 2 modeling agencies, a martial arts instructor, trained as an astronaut, with a top secret security clearance, who was on a speaking terms with the President and on call to server her country in national emergencies.

In the story, a Russian spy has infiltrated the Skylab 3 mission - taken the place of one of the 3 astronauts about to launch to Skylab for an extended stay. Pretty sure they flew in an Apollo capsule up and back. Anyway, Belle took him out in a short fight, donned the special space suit NASA had stored away just in case she might need it, and joined the crew - assuring the other 2 crew members that she was well trained to carry out any of the duties the missing man would have done.

When she arrived at Skylab, she quickly proved she was adept at handling herself in the weightless environment. And she announced to the other crew members that they were about to encounter Space Pirates.

So... why would any Space Pirates want to attack Skylab when it was inhabited? Why didn't they just take it over a month earlier when there was nobody on board? Or wait a month or so for the current mission to end and the three astronauts left and it was empty again?

It must be that the mission brought something to the Skylab... And they expected their spy buddy to be there too, so it must have been something that involved him.

Any thoughts? Thanks!

[redsycorax]

-Perhaps orbital experiments could be about to lead to the synthesis of a rare but valuable element
-Perhaps they're in the employ of a repressive interstellar empire and want to interfere with Earth's space programmes as a result?
-Perhaps there's an alien artefact from a vanished civilisation that Skylab has unknowingly retrieved from Earth orbit
-Perhaps there's a hidden SP moonbase that they don't want detected from Earth orbit and Skylab is deploying a new Hubble type space telescope
-Perhaps there's a strong telepath onboard, unknown to her or him, theirs has just died and they need her or him for navigation through hyperspace
-Perhaps Earth-4 is slightly ahead of us insofar as its space programme is concerned and SKylab is involved in construction of a crewed Mars shot...and the pirates have been using
it as a storage depot.
-The space pirates are from dying Mars-4 and want a resource raid for their decaying infrastructure, as well as abduction of any crew with relevant expertise.

That's all I can think of for the moment, dans. Choose one or none.

[dans]

That is quite a list, thanks! I think I'll go with a variation on the first one. Thank you!