Bob McCafferty (1926-1994) spent most of his career in aerospace as an engineer for Thiokol Corp., where he was responsible for design and development engineering for the retro rockets that brought the Project Mercury astronauts back to Earth. Bob also designed the retrograde motors for the Discoverer series of satellites and the Surveyor moon lander.

In the early days of the space program, Bob participated in the Air Force Project Farside in the South Pacific. Later, he supervised the design effort of 156-in. and 260-in. diameter booster prototypes, the largest monolithic motors built at that time.

Bob also designed motors for the Phoenix missile, the Stencil man-rated escape seat, and ZAP, and participated in design and development of Cajun, Recruit, and Sandhawk rockets, BKEP, SFW and ACM (which used his patented nozzle configuration). Bob received the SRTC Recognition Award from the Solid Rocket Technical Committee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1990.