Gaetano Crocco

Gaetano Arturo Crocco (1877 to 1968) was an Italian scientist and aeronautics pioneer, born in Naples, who founded the Italian Rocket Society and went on to become Italy's leading space scientist. From 1927 he worked on solid-propellant rockets, and in 1929 he designed and built the first liquid-propellant rocket motors made in Italy. From 1932 he explored monopropellants, in which fuel and oxidizer are combined in one liquid, which made him one of the first researchers in that field. As head of the School of Aeronautics of the University of Rome he studied flight mechanics, structural design and high-altitude flight alongside rocket propulsion. His early aeronautical efforts are credited as the reason Italian satellites could be launched from the 1960s, including under the San Marco programme, a cooperative effort of NASA and the Italian Space Commission.