EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009 - 10

In t h e t r e n c h e s controllers took over from the Kennedy Space Center once Apollo Saturn V rockets cleared the tower. The hierarchy in the Mission Operation Control Room (MOCR) led up to the flight director, known simply as Flight. The three flight engineers interviewed here held two of the dozen or so controller positions that had direct responsibility to the flight director. While there was some “backroom” engineering support, each flight controller was essentially responsible for his system. Jerry Bostick oversaw Apollo flight guidance and navigation. John Aaron and Sy Liebergot were responsible for spacecraft power, life support and communications, but on different teams. The three controllers were part of the MOCR team that took the audacious Apollo program to the moon and back by the end of the 1960s, meeting the goal that President John F. Kennedy had set in 10 EE Times | Apollo | July 20, 2009 1961, at the dawn of the space race. All three men were very young during the Apollo years. Like most of their peers, they were somewhat inexperienced engineers who were tossed into a program of immense technical sophistication. Each thrived under the circumstances. Further, all three possess a strong thirst for knowledge and curiosity about how things work. While at NASA, they developed a deep understanding of the systems they were expected to control, and of those systems’ relationships to the whole. Finally, all three remained at NASA long after Apollo. Each, it seems, was hooked on space flight and hard-pressed to duplicate the rush outside of NASA. To fulfill JFK’s objective of beating the Soviets to the moon by the end of the 1960s, an unprecedented U.S. scientific and engineering infrastructure was created from scratch. The effort gave the world a new perspective on Earth as well as the moon. Thanks to Aaron, Bostick and Liebergot for taking the time to discuss the arcs of their careers, which passed through what is often referred to as “man’s greatest adventure.”p Photos: Scott Schneeweis, John Fongheiser and David Carey

EETimes - Apollo - July 20, 2009

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