Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM
Monday, March 12, 2007 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium
Sy Liebergot
"Ethics in Engineering"
ABSTRACT -- Mr. Liebergot will speak about ethics in engineering, using the real examples of the Apollo 1 pad fire disaster and the Shuttle Challenger and Columbia space disasters as subjects for this presentation. He ties in how he and his fellow Apollo mission flight controllers approached their part in the successful lunar landings in an ethical manner. Sy's talk is not a dry, theoretical and esoteric ethics lecture, but one full of real-life examples that convey the topic in a way realistic and memorable enough to train engineers to deal with the heart-wrenching decisions some of them will have to make, particularly when they become managers. He examines how ethics (or the diminution of) played a role in the three tragedies of the U.S. space program: the Apollo 1 pad fire, and the in-flight destruction of Shuttle Orbiters Challenger and Columbia.
SPEAKER -- Sy Liebergot began his engineering career with North American Aviation before graduating from California State University-Los Angeles with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1963. His space career began at the very inception of the Apollo lunar program when he joined a newly formed Flight Operations Group. In 1964, he transferred to Houston, Texas in support of NASA Mission Operations at the Manned Spacecraft Center, which had just opened. Sy switched over to NASA after about a year to qualify for a "front room" flight controller position in the mission control center in order to "get in on the action."
Sy became a veteran flight controller, most notably the Lead EECOM (Electrical, Environmental, Consumables) Flight Controller throughout all Apollo manned missions and an EGIL (Skylab EECOM) for all of the Skylab program missions. On the international scene, Sy was the Lead EECOM for the American-Russian Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) mission. As EECOM in Mission Control on Apollo 13, Sy was at the focal point of the crisis when the spacecraft oxygen tank exploded. More recently, as a Senior Project Engineer, he directed the design and fabrication of the astronaut neutral buoyancy trainers for the International Space Station (ISS).
As part of the Apollo 13 Operations Team, Sy was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He also received the NASA Commendation Award for his leadership role in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project international space mission. He has advised and contributed to several books concerning Apollo 13 including the movie Apollo 13 (Sy was portrayed by actor Clint Howard), and has published his autobiography entitled Apollo EECOM: Journey Of A Lifetime. He remains an active booster and international public speaker of NASA's space accomplishments and the importance of a good education.