NOVA; To the Moon; Interview with Seymour "Sy" Liebergot, NASA flight controller during the Apollo program, part 2 of 3

Oh, Apollo 7, boy, there's a bunch of firsts there. We had an experienced, fairly experienced crew we were flying. We felt we were flying a bunch of test pilots. I was working in a kind of a backroom program office management position and so I was kind of part of everything that was going on and it was in the systems world so I was still supporting the e-commerce effort and we had a lot of things we didn't know about then. We had a brand new spacecraft with brand new air conditioning or cooling system. We were flying batteries, backup batteries that behaved in ways we didn't really think they should have behaved. In fact, they looked like they were failing and they weren't. They were just going through a kind of a chemical change with a voltage change and

God, there was people saying, hey, we got to abort and bring the crew down because the batteries are failing and those are the ones that allow you to enter without the fuel cells. There was a lot of that going on. There was problems with the cooling system and what we call the water boiler which was a supplementary cooling and we had to use the backup system and it wasn't a true backup. It was really a simple minded little water boiler thing and so the procedures that we sent up to the crew to affect were pretty simple minded and Cunningham objected because they looked, as he said, pretty Mickey Mouse. Well, we were all learning. We were test pilots on the ground. They were test pilots in the air and somehow we stopped really communicating and we had problems with cooperation on what we thought over a bunch of test pilots on Apollo 7 and we got through it.

We didn't hurt anybody and they didn't hurt themselves and we learned a whole lot from that. That was a very important flight for us. What was your impression of Wally during that? Wally was pretty self-assured, he's one of the original and some of the original astronauts were a little bit too self-assured. It kind of got in their way a little bit but test pilots feel like they're hot stuff and we thought we knew what we were doing on the ground too but we had less hubris than they had, we were just trying to feel our way along and learn what we could. That was last time Wally flew and Walter Cunningham and Don Isley unfortunately mainly because it was a cooperation thing and a misconception of what their role was and what our role was on the ground. I think all the subsequent astronauts learned a lesson from that which was most important at each flight we learned lessons from regardless of what we lead behind.

You were your first mission on EECOMLIS 12? No. No. What was it? What was the atmosphere like in here? What was Cranis like? Oh, Apollo 11. There was a lot of tension in the room but an outsider couldn't tell if there was any tension in the room. Everybody was just absolutely zeroed in on their information displays and the job at hand during the actual descent, let me back up. During my phase of it or our phase of the EECOMLIS concern was during the undocking sequence of the lunar module from the CSM from the command service module. We were quite concerned of the docking system working properly, both undocking and docking. We watched that happen fine and the lunar module systems guys were quite concerned about

how their bird was going to perform on the way down. The tension shifted down the row from the CSM guys to the lunar module guys and they had a tell me which was the equivalent of the lunar module EECOM and the control guy who was the equivalent of the GNC guy for the CSM. Once we separated from the CSM the tension really lessened for us but then as we began the actual power descent I think everybody was sitting on the edge of their seats. It was the first for the end of our charge to landmen on the moon. Sometimes ever the general savage was in total control and as the reports came in they were crisp and he got what he wanted and of course craft is sitting right behind him in the management row trying to stay out of his business that was always good to see.

And each of the events got ticked off as we went down and we got down to the point where the computer lunar module computer apparently got overloaded and I guess we got these 1208 alarms which turned out to be nothing and that really got things exciting in here when Steve Bale start yelling and you know and but as it turned out in retrospect it was okay just his back room guy was very much on the spot and said hey your go don't worry about it. Well I got to tell you there wasn't a whole lot of opportunity during Apollo to meet and deal with the Apollo crews. They were busy I think in general they were a little bit aloof to everybody else. Not that they were Armstrong was certainly an arrogant was not an arrogant man. He had a job to do he was totally focused on it and he did the astronaut thing.

Aldrin was the same way Aldrin was a little quieter as we know he's a very bright guy but when it came to dealing with the systems guys like myself not a whole lot they were mostly involved in the mission the trajectory and stuff like that. I think they figured that the systems guys would make sure they were taken care of. You know most of these astronauts were engineers. Did you have respect for them as engineers? We never thought of I should say I never thought of them as engineers. In fact I only thought of them as the pilots going to fly the spacecraft and there was not in a denigrating manner they were astronauts and I was the engineer and that's a good point. As engineers just the end implement of all the planning and all of the capability we had in the systems of the spacecraft and built into the mission.

Apollo 12, let me think about Apollo 12 I was the pre-launch e-com and it was my job to carry the countdown through to the point where the launch team came in and took over from that point we had I think Apollo 12 was, Apollo 13 was the first time we dedicated launch teams but I handed over the console to John Aaron who was my version of Esteli I had misaligned and John was quite bright said little did it all and he was probably the most experienced e-com we had had at the time. And John like I said didn't say much and we had a back room support team we had two guys in the back room that were more specialized in the systems that we were responsible for. Anyway what happened was as we handed over and went through the launch sequence and at

some point during the launch there was a loud crack and the data went static. All the displays and I'm looking at it with John because I'm still sitting by him and all of our display data went static. Fortunately we had the three entry batteries, three small batteries that were strictly for entry we put them online with electrical power fuel cells just in case we needed the extra power or something happened like one would trip off line well in this case all three tripped off line all three fuel cell power plants tripped off line and now the full electrical load fell on the little three batteries just small in your car battery all together. And that was the only active data on the screen and John kind of looked at that and looked at the data didn't say much and my heart's in my throat you know because I don't know what the hell is going on and John said flight let's have SCE to ox and the Capcom relayed that up to to the crew and L being calls down he says SBE to what?

So that was finally explained to him and he flipped it to an auxiliary power supply for the data is what it was. It was a signal condition equipment for all the data coming down and then all the data came back and John just kind of sat there and kind of looked at the data and he says okay flight we put the fuel cells back online now it's all he said and Jerry Griffin was sitting there as a flight director was hand on the abort switch ready to tell the crew to abort he was that close if John had said abort we would have aborted heavy stuff that was really heavy and John had seen the failure before as he as he told us during a pantist and he's seen that kind of thing and then what really did it though was when Pete Conrad blesses all call down hey gang I think we've been hit by lightning and that did it you know this that reverse current thing and the trip the fuel cells off and I'm looking there and looking at the data John was cool

good correct it changed max great description second step to women quick how how how's the job you were doing oh okay let's see Apollo 13 by time a lot of us got to Apollo 13 we're all feeling pretty pretty good about ourselves in our knowledge and our experience and pretty comfortable we knew the spacecraft pretty well as during our training simulations the the training guys with throw more and more complex of failures at us and we would we would handle them and they would write down the history on it so we'd be ready for the next time if ever happened so we and we were getting history on how the spacecraft systems worked so we could predict

their operation if they ever got off nominal we could say oh that's getting off nominal a little bit let's keep watching that so we were feeling pretty good going Apollo 13 and I certainly was I was not cocky feeling okay feeling comfortable having a good time and so when we had that problem we had a problem with one of the cryogenic oxygen tanks on the liquid oxygen tanks one of the quantity sensors one of the temperature sensors had the quantity sensor had decided to act erratically we didn't care about that because we always fed the two tanks simultaneously so that if something happened with the the gauge on one we could infer the quantity from the other one because they both came down simultaneously and then we we plan to do it that way and the only problem and and part of the system operation was when the crew woke up in the morning they had to do certain things post-sleep among the things we wanted to do was the that phrase stir the cries and the way the stir the cries was accomplished was was your two little

fans in the tank in a tube turned fans on and it would circulate this liquefied heavy fog stuff called cryogenics and we there were two oxygen tanks two hydrogen tanks and we'd have them do both or all four tanks in the morning since we had had a problem with the quantity gauge on one tank I decided that I wanted to have the crew give me an extra stir before they went to bed that night so it was no big deal the crew did their TV thing which as we know now the the the networks nobody carried it because Paul 13 was ho hum to the moon already after only two two or three flights and we so gene crans went around the room says the crew to bed is there anything you want the crew to do shut down for the night and I said okay when I need him to stop charging one of the batteries and give me a crowd stir all four tanks four switches all 14 no big deal

and we had no information on the ground that they did that except the crew call and we could see the the pressures in the tanks kind of mess around some and we watched it see if we could see that now on the shuttle they they we know every crew switch position everything we don't have they asked the crew so what happened was is that okay the and and it it the crew call down that they would do that and it got done and I'm being we're all looking to see what was going on and unfortunately oxygen pressure in tank two shot up within four seconds blew the top of the tank off and Paul 13 went downhill from that point even though we were going uphill to the moon but what went through your mind well when I looked at it I said oh no problem it's a polish well all over again and I'm cool because it's probably the signal conditioning equipment

I can just have him flipped in the auxiliary back back a power supply and we're back that wasn't the case and in order to and Koreans wanted to know what what I was saying and I didn't know and I had the only thing I could say was I think we've had an instrumentation problem which was the furthest from the truth we had a real problem and it took about 20 minutes to finally sort out that we indeed did have a failure the nature of which didn't make any sense because it was a huge what we call cascading failure well one just a bunch of dominoes the tank blue took out two fuel cells blew off the side of the spacecraft sent spacecraft into gyrations and you know all that and you're all said we have to sort this mess out and it took about 20 minutes to figure I had a real problem my hand and I got to tell you the the panic did come up it was not a good time to be sitting at decom console and I guess within another 20 minutes I

I when we figured out that there was not recoverable that we had an hour and 54 minutes left on the remaining oxygen tank I told crans that we better get into the limb and you know a couple hours later the command module is dead not a good time to be a e-com yeah why didn't you nobody has really said this clearly and I think the answer is we never seemed for that kind of thing because you at that point you figure that catastrophic there's nothing to send for you know that has gone over the edge but I need somebody to say clearly like you seemed for everything that's probably the way I marked it oh you roll it now it's like mark why didn't you simply well this this particular failure was so massive that we didn't simulate our any training for

this because there really was no way out of it I mean in in most of time I mean we had we had considered in past simulation using the lunar module as a lifeboat but no one well let me tell you this there are things we don't try to fail during training one is structure structure has a 1.0 reliability you can I mean if structure fails you're dead the other thing you don't fail for is quadruple failures they don't mean a lot you don't get a lot of training out that you don't have to work the problem who would have guessed we would have to work this problem but this was this is virtually a quadruple failure and we didn't we just didn't train for that because we didn't believe having triple and quadruple failures provided in a real training that led to

real competency was a waste of time in shuttles a matter of fact they have redundancy five deep and and to run training simulations for failures that go five levels deep takes forever and the permutations are so enormous that you probably never get it all done anyway so they don't do that we would fail during training maybe during Apollo maybe one maybe two fuel cells but not not three I mean it didn't prove it didn't do anything for our for our training how did level having such much pressure level from that day to this day is is a cool customer he's probably epitomizes a lot of them epitomized real professional pilots really professional he was he had the experience to be a genuine commander he affected his his command he cooperated with the ground nobody complained and nobody whined he was what we needed it as a matter of fact

it's been said that you couldn't have asked for better people to be part of that failure than that crew and the flight directors crayons and lunty that we had to handle the immediacy of the problem couldn't have done better the crew let me let me I'll go down through it the best among the best you couldn't have asked for a better crew to to be on board that time because they were professional and they were experienced and for example jack swagger was an experienced systems guy he was the command module pilot he knew the command module service module systems cold he knew the malfunction procedures he knew he knew he knew it so he was the best guy for the systems guys I have on board although the systems broke after three hours they were dead Fred Hayes was always a professional pilot in terms of how we approach people and approach

problems and Jim level was so experienced he amused a proven product as far as cooperating with the ground operations and doing his pilot duties flawlessly with respect to the flight directors you could probably interchange crayons and lunty I mean crayons was there to sort out the problems immediately and keep everybody playing forward not playing backwards lunty had to handle the the transition from the command module to the lunar module the power up the transfer of the information from one to the other credible amount of pressure and many people don't appreciate what happened in just three or four hours it was astonishing what got done lunty had had to battle his systems guys the the tell me who was the lunar module econ at Merlin Merit was standing up telling him he's got to power the lunar module down they had fully powered and they're sucking up the battery he says if you don't power down you're not

getting home unless I can't power down I need to keep the navigation system up so I can tell it where it is and I and Merit and there was not a screaming match but a lot of strong talk between the two where the systems guys trying to tell me he's going to die if he doesn't power down and the flight director has to make things happen so you can get home navigationally and they it it worked out they but they were they were no melee mouth like controllers back in those days when did you know you were out of the woods I never think I never thought we were ever in the woods and never thought we were we would not get home I don't think any of us ever thought we would get you know it wasn't phony positive thinking it was just that or success oriented thinking we we just we had something that that went wrong we had a certain amount of time to work it and we worked the problem I mean I miss some very strong near panic feelings my case but

we worked the problem once once we methodically got the lunar module powered up and then powered down to a safe level so we would suck the batteries up too quickly things were then we could decide what are we going to do