Rocco Petrone Rocco Anthony Petrone ( March 31 , 1926 – August 24 , 2006 ) was an Italian American engineer who was the third director of the NASA ' s Marshall Space Flight Center , from 1973 to 1974 . Petrone previously served as director of launch operations at NASA ' s Kennedy Space Center ( KSC ) from July 1966 until September 1969 , and then as Apollo program director at NASA Headquarters . Early life . The son of Italian immigrants , Petrone was raised Roman Catholic and 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 West Germany from 1947 to 1950 . 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 launch America ' s first astronauts , Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom on their suborbital missions . He retired from the Army in 1966 with the rank of lieutenant colonel . NASA career . 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 Launch Complex 39 , the Vertical Assembly Building and the Crawler - Transporter , all of which were modified for Space Shuttle operations . He retired from the Army in 1966 but continued at work at NASA sites , being promoted to director of launch operations at KSC that year . Shortly after the Apollo 11 mission , he was appointed director of the entire Apollo program . 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 : In a similar vein , Noel Hinners related the following : 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 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 NASA official as associate administrator . After NASA . 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 . 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 . He died on August 24 , 2006 from complications related to diabetes in Palos Verdes Estates , California , aged 80 .