9:31’50” The timetable is ticking. Rocco Petrone, almost silent, his voice broken by emotion, pronounces: “go” without taking his eyes off the monitor. That monster Saturn V begins to emit tongues of fire and clouds of smoke. Slowly the Saturn moves, rising, silently. Then suddenly, comes the roar, tremendous. At just 43 years old, Rocco Petrone directs one of the most extraordinary enterprises of humanity, leads a small army of scientists and engineers, manages billions of dollars, makes decisions on which depend the fate of the entire space program, the lives of astronauts and the prestige of the greatest world power. All this happened in a country where it is not forbidden to dream, and where, sometimes, dreams come true. But if Rocco Anthony Petrone had been born and raised in Sasso di Castalda, if his father Antonio, that morning of a freezing winter in 1921, had not left for America, what what fate would it have had?
