Rocco Petrone

Rocco Petrone was an American rocket engineer and US Army officer who served as Apollo Launch Director at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, personally giving the final go-ahead for the launch of every crewed Apollo mission from the firing room during the countdown, including Apollo 11 in July 1969. He had earlier directed heavy construction of the Launch Complex 39 facilities used for the Saturn V rocket, including the Vehicle Assembly Building and the crawler-transporter system, after joining NASA from a US Army career at the Redstone Arsenal, where he worked alongside Wernher von Braun's rocket team. Following the Apollo program he became director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama and later served as NASA's Associate Administrator overseeing the early Space Shuttle program, before leaving the agency in 1975 to become an executive at Rockwell International, the Space Shuttle orbiter's prime contractor. He was known within NASA for his exacting, hands-on management style and was widely regarded as one of the most demanding launch officials of the Apollo era.