NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Seymour "Sy" Liebergot, NASA flight controller during the Apollo program, part 3 of 3

music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music music Feeling the pain. You know, I'm asked occasionally what would have happened if we didn't have the lunar module along on Apollo 13 or let's say during Apollo 8 that happened at the same time

of the mission 50 hours into the mission on a way to the moon and the answer is very simple they've been dead because when the tank blew, O2 tank 2 ruptured and tank 1 started leaking we had roughly three hours of oxygen left. That's it. Three hours and at the end of three hours that means that all fuel cell electrical power goes away there's there's probably a little breathing oxygen that it can get out from small bottles head on board the three little entry batteries which added up to about 120 amp hours which wasn't much like I said it's like one and a half car batteries and they would have perished. All right moving ahead to the latter part of our show science and scientists, the geologists and so forth. What was your impression? Was there gap between what was going on here and the need to do geology and how were the

geologists received? Well you know from from my perspective I had little to dinner face with the with the experiment operations and my my area of expertise was life support for the crew although we were quite aware that there was a al-SEP operation going on we had a whole room dedicated to the lunar surface experiment package. Can't believe I remembered that Paul lunar surface experiment package and I knew the guys that had a sit in their day after day hour after hour monitoring a seismograph and not much it was just something that we had to do the highlights when the crew got out on the surface and maybe board holes in the in the ground or went launching around as galeas they did on Apollo 17 Jack Schmidt being our first geologist and Gene Cerneman a great pair and they had a good time they really did. I wish we

had discovered a little more geology worthwhile on the moon than we did because maybe we could continue going back but now I think the demoker operations were a little detached from the science and geology that was going on we just you take me to good point going back to sum it up what did the Apollo program mean? Well what Apollo meant to me personally was the sense of accomplishment that we had done that we done something nobody else had done I mean that goes without saying as I have gone around the country in Europe giving speeches which I'm asked to do occasionally one of the things that I stress in my speech making is the importance of education which is because without education we'd never done

this thing the other thing is the sense of exploration that our country had if you look back over history the exploring nations colonialism aside all achieve greatness although on the backs of other people but they're all great nations a Portugal that little tiny country changed the language of one of the biggest countries in the world Brazil Spain England and even China I guess and without that exploration without that moving frontiers out without that and the infrastructure that brings with it a nation loses something and I'm and I move to say a move to observe that without expert without exploration many of those countries to become virtually third world countries and the United States is not a third world country because that it still explored either

explores technology or explore space and we can't give that up I think it's part of our our being and I'm just a little dismayed when I when I don't see that sense of exploration still there it's it's very important to keep pushing out what was when congress decided and the Apollo program it was what was pretty devastating does because all of a sudden we were cut loose with nothing to do essentially although we were working on shuttle and NASA didn't have a whole lot to do in between NASA was used to doing big programs and Congress said okay we've done that been there done that go away and gave NASA nothing to do so we NASA kind of mucked around and found Skylab and found a STP with

the Russians the Apollo Soyuz project and I moved to relate this to you that when we finished the Apollo Soyuz program with the Russians which was successful I mean it opened some doors and eyes on who had what kind of capability where I was a lead e-com on that and when we finished that they thumped down and we splashed down we had there are a lot of the colleagues were over here and we were over in the Gilbert Center kind of standing a little circular watches talking to each other and one of the one of the Russian engineers turned to me and he said this was July 75 and he said but now that this is over what do you what do you plan to do and I said well we're going to weld the factory door shut disperse the engineering team and start all over again on shuttle maybe five years from now and he said you're crazy we're gonna launch six more times this year and I

says we know that but our Congress is different than your government