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Jeff
Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, has raised a pair of Apollo moon
rocket engines from the sea floor. The Saturn V engines, which powered
the first stages in the 1960 Apollo mission, were thought to have been
lost forever at the bottom of the sea.
Apollo moon rocket engines raised from sea floor
NASA gets their engines back.
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| Photo credit: Bezos Expeditions |
Science Recorder | Delila James | Thursday, March 21, 2013
Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, has raised a pair of Apollo
moon rocket engines from the sea floor. The Saturn V engines, which
powered the first stages in the 1960 Apollo mission, were thought to
have been lost forever at the bottom of the sea.
“We found so much,” wrote Bezos in a post on the Bezos Expeditions website. “We have seen an underwater wonderland – an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program.”
Almost exactly one year ago, Bezos announced that his newly launched
company had located what his team believed to be the engines from the
1969 Apollo 11 mission. According to NASA administrator Charles Bolden,
the space agency was largely surprised by the finding, although Bezos
noted that he had kept NASA scientist up to date as the mission
progressed.
“We share the excitement expressed by Jeff and his team in announcing the recovery of two of the powerful Saturn V first-stage engines from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean,” said Bolden in a statement released Wednesday.
When Bezos first discovered the massive engines using state of the art deep-sea sonar, he was unsure of their condition. Using Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV), his team found a tangled pile of F-1 engine parts strewn across the deep sea floor. The twisted parts lay at a depth of more than 14,000 feet (4,270 meters).
“They hit the ocean at high velocity and have been in salt water for more than 40 years. On the other hand, they are made of tough stuff, so we’ll see,” the Amazon founder wrote.
“We photographed many beautiful objects in situ and have now recovered many prime pieces,” Bezos wrote in Wednesday’s update. “Each piece we bring on deck conjures for me the thousands of engineers who worked together back then to do what for all time had been thought surely impossible.”
Bezos described how the underwater scene evoked memories of the Apollo missions themselves.
“We on the team were often struck by poetic echoes of the lunar missions,” Bezos wrote. “The buoyancy of the ROVs looks every bit like microgravity. The blackness of the horizon. The gray and colorless ocean floor. Only the occasional deep sea fish broke the illusion.”
Although Bezos believed at the time that the engines came specifically from the Apollo 11 mission, he now says the history of the recovered engine parts may not be definitively known. He reports that many of original serial numbers are missing or partially missing, making identification difficult.
“We might see more during restoration,” Bezos wrote.
Once back on land, the engine parts will be restored in an effort to stabilize the hardware and prevent further corrosion from their long exposure to salt water. However, according to Bezos, the restoration may not return the engines to pristine condition.
“We want the hardware to tell its true story, including its 5,000 mile per hour re-entry and subsequent impact with the ocean surface,” Bezos stated. “We’re excited to get this hardware on display where just maybe it will inspire something amazing.”
NASA said it would likely offer one of the engines to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The space agency retains ownership of the engines and all their parts.
“We look forward to the restoration of these engines by the Bezos team and applaud Jeff’s desire to make these historic artifacts available for public display,” Bolden said.
Bezos has expressed wishes for one of the engines to go on display at The Museum of Flight in Seattle, located near the headquarters of Amazon and Bezos’ commercial spaceflight company, Blue Origin.
“We found so much,” wrote Bezos in a post on the Bezos Expeditions website. “We have seen an underwater wonderland – an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program.”
“We share the excitement expressed by Jeff and his team in announcing the recovery of two of the powerful Saturn V first-stage engines from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean,” said Bolden in a statement released Wednesday.
When Bezos first discovered the massive engines using state of the art deep-sea sonar, he was unsure of their condition. Using Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV), his team found a tangled pile of F-1 engine parts strewn across the deep sea floor. The twisted parts lay at a depth of more than 14,000 feet (4,270 meters).
“They hit the ocean at high velocity and have been in salt water for more than 40 years. On the other hand, they are made of tough stuff, so we’ll see,” the Amazon founder wrote.
“We photographed many beautiful objects in situ and have now recovered many prime pieces,” Bezos wrote in Wednesday’s update. “Each piece we bring on deck conjures for me the thousands of engineers who worked together back then to do what for all time had been thought surely impossible.”
Bezos described how the underwater scene evoked memories of the Apollo missions themselves.
“We on the team were often struck by poetic echoes of the lunar missions,” Bezos wrote. “The buoyancy of the ROVs looks every bit like microgravity. The blackness of the horizon. The gray and colorless ocean floor. Only the occasional deep sea fish broke the illusion.”
Although Bezos believed at the time that the engines came specifically from the Apollo 11 mission, he now says the history of the recovered engine parts may not be definitively known. He reports that many of original serial numbers are missing or partially missing, making identification difficult.
“We might see more during restoration,” Bezos wrote.
Once back on land, the engine parts will be restored in an effort to stabilize the hardware and prevent further corrosion from their long exposure to salt water. However, according to Bezos, the restoration may not return the engines to pristine condition.
“We want the hardware to tell its true story, including its 5,000 mile per hour re-entry and subsequent impact with the ocean surface,” Bezos stated. “We’re excited to get this hardware on display where just maybe it will inspire something amazing.”
NASA said it would likely offer one of the engines to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The space agency retains ownership of the engines and all their parts.
“We look forward to the restoration of these engines by the Bezos team and applaud Jeff’s desire to make these historic artifacts available for public display,” Bolden said.
Bezos has expressed wishes for one of the engines to go on display at The Museum of Flight in Seattle, located near the headquarters of Amazon and Bezos’ commercial spaceflight company, Blue Origin.
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