L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2014 www.italoamericano.com L'Italo-Americano 3 Rocco Petrone: the Italian engineer who took the U.S. to the Moon and back gram, between 1969 and 1972 the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) succeeded in taking a total of 12 men to the Earth's only natural satellite. Among those who pulled the strings behind the scenes of 6 Apollo missions was Italian American engineer Rocco Petrone, program director at NASA headquarters. The son of Italian immigrants from Sasso di Castalda, in Basilicata region, Rocco Petrone attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, from which he graduated in 1946. After serving in West Germany in the aftermath of World War II, he returned to the U.S. and earned a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT in 1951. Throughout his career with the U.S. Army and NASA, Lt. Col. Petrone also participated in the development of the first American ballistic missile, used in the first launch of American astronauts in a suborbital flight in 1961, as well as in the con- struction of all launch elements to be employed in the Apollo missions. He retired from the Army in 1966, but continued to work at NASA for another 10 years. Thanks to his experience and technical knowledge, the Italian American engineer was appoint- ed director of launch operations at Kennedy Space Center and then, right after the successful lunar landing, of the whole Apollo program. For one year, in 1973, he also served as administrator of the Marshall Space Flight Center, before accepting the third-highest posi- Continued from page 1 Three young Italian men liv- ing in San Francisco have just begun to create an investment firm called Mission and Market. These men are Francesco Simoneschi, Simone Brunozzi, and Stefano Bernardi. Their Italian investment firm is the first of its kind located in the United States. The name of their company originated from two streets in San Francisco, "Mission" and "Market." It is also based on the idea that busi- nesses that are starting up need to have a mission and a market to work with. Simoneschi, Brunozzi, and Bernardi are pri- marily concerning themselves with the Silicon Valley area due to the technological advance- ment that has taken place there. The goal of Mission and Market is not to fund new up and coming businesses but to make investments in them from a third party. Francesco, Simone, and Stefano do not intend to charge a fee for their investors because they value integrity and only ask for the amount of money that the investors would like to invest. These three intelligent business- men also have a European con- nection in that they can bring investors from Italy to help companies here in the United States. Francesco Simoneschi has been the product manager at UpSight, which was established in 2007 in San Francisco. His company has gained more than 50 million dollars in venture capital. Simone Brunozzi is the Vice President and Chief Technologist at VMware, Inc., a company involved with net- working. Simone has co-written two novels and a few books on technical information. Stefano Bernardi helped the business Betable make over 20 million dollars in venture capital. He has also worked in Milan at dPixel, which also dealt with venture capital. Stefano began the FaceBook group, Italian Startup Scene. Each of these men have a lot to offer and the fact that they are working together makes Mission and Market a firm that will be hard to beat. With their experience and insight, they are sure to make quite a profit for their investors and themselves while helping businesses that are starting up take off and suc- ceed. Mission and Market: Investing with Italians tion in NASA, as associate administrator in Washington D.C. He was well known for his discipline, accuracy, and deter- mination, which earned him the nickname "Tiger" and helped him handle both the pressure of the space race during the Cold War and the inevitable setbacks he encountered along the way. Allegedly, he managed to keep his composure even while a brand new page of human histo- ry was written under his direc- tion. Despite retiring from NASA in the mid-1970s, Rocco Petrone remained active by working as president and CEO of the National Center for Resource Recovery, and as head of the space transportation divi- sion at Rockwell International, manufacturer of the Space Shuttle Orbiter. He died in 2006 in Palos Verdes Estates, California, at the age of 80, and in 2012 the Italian Space Agency (ASI) established a special award in his honor. The annual "Rocco Petrone" award recognizes the best final dissertations on lunar or planetary exploration written by Master's graduates in Engineering or Physics from an Italian university. Furthermore, last year Basilicata region cele- brated the 30 th anniversary of the local science center for Earth observation from Space by affixing a new plaque bear- ing the engineer's name. Rocco Petrone was instru- mental in the development of United States' space program, and he is an example of the con- tribution provided to the Country by many talents of Italian origin employed at NASA and other agencies. Discovering the mysteries of the Universe is a common challenge that requires us to work together if we want to succeed. Rocco Petrone, director of launch operations at the space complex in Cape Kennedy, Fla., pointed out the spot on the moon the Apollo 11 astronauts were aiming for on July 12, 1969 Stefano Bernardi, Simone Brunozzi and Francesco Simoneschi founders of "Mission and Market" STEPHANIE FRuSTACI

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