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Rocco Anthony Petrone (March 31, 1926 – August 24, 2006) was an American mechanical engineer, U.S. Army officer and NASA official. He served as director of launch operations at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) from 1966 to 1969, as Apollo program director at NASA Headquarters from 1969 to 1973, as third director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center from 1973 to 1974, and as NASA Associate Administrator from 1974 until his retirement from NASA in 1975.
He also earned a master's degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1951, and later received an Honorary degree 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 launch America's first astronauts, Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom on their suborbital missions. He retired from the U.S. Army in 1966 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
From 1973 to 1974, Petrone served 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 budget cutbacks, and his tenure was marked with many reassignments or firings.Georg von Tiesenhausen MSFC History Project Georg Von Tiesenhausen Conducted by A. Dunar and S. Waring 29 November 1988
In 1974, Petrone left the Marshall Center to accept an appointment at NASA headquarters, assuming the post of NASA Associate Administrator, the third-highest-ranking official within the agency.
In the 1980s, Petrone held senior posts at Rockwell International, the manufacturer of the Space Shuttle Orbiter. He eventually rose to become head of Rockwell's space transportation division.
On the morning that the Space Shuttle Challenger was due to launch on STS-51-L, Petrone and several of his colleagues were alarmed at the massive amount of ice that had built up overnight on the Orbiter due to unseasonably cold temperatures. Petrone feared that the ice could seriously damage the shuttle's thermal protection system when it struck the tiles during launch. He told his managers at Cape Canaveral that Rockwell could not support launching because it viewed the amount of ice on the orbiter as a launch constraint. This was not the cause, however, of the launch failure that killed seven astronauts.
Petrone died on August 24, 2006, from complications related to diabetes in Palos Verdes Estates, California, aged 80. In February 2022, NASA renamed the Launch Control Center in Florida to the "Rocco A. Petrone Launch Control Center" in his honor.
In a similar vein, Noel Hinners related the following:
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