Rocco Petrone

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Rocco Petrone
Rocco Petrone standing in front a Saturn V
Born	March 31, 1926 Amsterdam, New York
Died	August 24, 2006 Palos Verdes Estates, California
Spouse	Ruth Holley Petrone

Rocco Anthony Petrone (March 31, 1926 – August 24, 2006) was an American engineer who was the third director of the NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center from 1973 to 1974. Before that he was Director of Launch Operations at NASA's Kennedy Space Center from July 1966 until September 1969 and then Apollo Program Director.

The son of Italian immigrants and born in Amsterdam, New York, he attended the United States Military Academy at West Point. There he played defensive tackle in the 1945 national football championship winning team. Graduating in 1946, he served in Germany from 1947 to 1950. He would retire from the Army in 1966 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

He also earned a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1951 and received an honorary doctorate from Rollins College. During two decades with the U.S. Army, Petrone took part in developing the Redstone rocket, the first U.S. ballistic missile and the vehicle used to propel America's first astronauts, Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom on their suborbital missions.

In 1960, Petrone was transferred to NASA. There, Petrone presided over the development of the Saturn V launch vehicle and launch operations, what he dubbed the "five-month marathons," leading up to each launch. He oversaw construction of all the launch elements of the Apollo program, including the Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39, the Vertical Assembly Building and the Crawler-Transporter, all of which are still used for Space Shuttle operations. In 1972, he was assigned additional responsibilities as program director of the NASA portion of the U.S. and the Soviet Union joint Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

Petrone was described as demanding by his NASA colleagues. Humboldt C. Mandell, Jr. said that once:

NASA was grilling the contractor people on some program delays. Rocco … kept probing this one young contractor engineer, who quickly reached the limit of his knowledge. Instead of admitting it, he tried to bluff. Rocco took him physically off of the podium. He … told the boss that the young man was to be removed from the program.

Petrone served for one year as the first non-German administrator of the Marshall Space Flight Center, after Wernher von Braun and Eberhard Rees. At the time NASA was undergoing severe budget cutbacks, and his tenure was marked with many reassignments or firings. In 1974, Petrone left the Marshall Center to accept an appointment as the third highest ranking person in NASA as Associate Administrator.

In 1975, Petrone retired from NASA and became the president and chief executive officer of the National Center for Resource Recovery, a joint industry/labor effort to develop and encourage ways to recover materials and energy from solid waste. In the 1980s, Petrone held senior posts at Rockwell International, manufacturer of the Space Shuttle Orbiter.

Prior to the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger on STS-51-L, he advised the launch not take place. This was because he was worried the overnight freezing temperatures may have damaged to thermal protection system, however this was not the cause of the launch failure that killed seven astronauts.

He died on August 24, 2006 from complications related to diabetes in Palos Verdes Estates, California, aged 80.