Mr. Sieck's aerospace career began in 1960 when he was a Lieutenant in the Air Forceassigned to missile operations in Arizona and Florida. He joined NASA at KSC in 1964as a manned spacecraft test and launch operations engineer, responsible for prelaunchcheckout and servicing of Gemini and Apollo spacecraft systems. He held this positionfor all the manned Gemini and Apollo missions. After Apollo he was transferred to theSpace Shuttle development program and was appointed ground operations EngineeringManager for the Shuttle Approach and Landing Tests at Dryden Flight Research Center.Returning to KSC in 1978, he became Chief Shuttle Project Engineer responsible forKSC Shuttle processing integrated tests and procedures. Subsequently he was appointedDirector of Launch and Landing Operations and served as Launch Director for 11missions. In 1985 he became Shuttle Operations Director. In 1986 he was againappointed Launch Director for return to flight and held this position for STS 26R and allsubsequent missions thru STS 63. He was Launch Director for 52 space shuttle missions.Mr. Sieck completed his career at NASA as Director of Shuttle Processing where hemanaged the transition of the KSC ground operations to the Spaceflight OperationsContractor. In 1999 he retired from NASA and was appointed to the Aerospace SafetyAdvisory Panel where he served until 2003. He is currently a member of the Stafford-Covey Shuttle Return to Flight Task Group.
Mr. Sieck received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia in1960 and did post graduate work at Texas A & M and the Florida Institute ofTechnology.
From an engineer's perspective my real contribution was developing the integratedground operation's procedures and software for the first shuttle launch count, which areessentially still in place today. My toughest job was managing the transition of KSCground operations responsibility from NASA to USA, and of course the best job waswhen I was launch director.