Rocco Petrone

Rocco A. Petrone ( born March 31, 1926 in Amsterdam, New York; † August 24, 2006 in Palos Verdes Estates, California ) was an American engineer (NASA).

Petrone graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1946 and entered the U.S. Army and one, most recently with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. After a master's degree in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) him an honorary doctorate was awarded in 1951 by Rollins College.

In the U.S. Army Petrone worked as an engineer in various missile programs, including also at the Redstone project, the first ballistic missile of the armed forces.

In 1960 he transferred to NASA and worked later in Kennedy Space Center (KSC ) in Florida in the development of Saturn. In particular, he was involved in the development of the Saturn launch device that was used in the later 1960s / early 1970s for the Apollo Misson. He was from 1966 to 1969 as director responsible for the entire launchers. After that, he was director of the Apollo program at NASA Headquarters; He became the Director of the Apollo - Soyuz Test Project in 1972. 1973/1974 he became director of the Marshall Space Flight Center ( MSFC ) in Alabama. In 1974, he joined as an official NASA representatives to Washington, DC. With his retirement in 1975, he was CEO of the National Center for Resource Recovery.

He was married and had four children.