Amazon boss finds Apollo 11 engines on seabed Jeff Bezos, Amazon's adventurous CEO, says his organization has found the F-1 rockets used briefly by Apollo 11 and he wants to salvage them for American museums. "A year or so ago, I started to wonder, with the right team of undersea pros, could we find and potentially recover the F-1 engines that started mankind's mission to …
I suspect you're thinking of hydrazine, which is used as a rocket fuel (possibly because it contains its own oxidizer?) which is massively toxic, but these engines ran from hydrogen and oxygen IIRC.
Either was, if it were covered in hydrazine, you wouldn't want to leave it in the sea. Or take it out...
Hydrazine - actually unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine (UDMH) - is used as a rocket fuel for space-based firings (ie, not for lift-off) because it has a very low freezing point (-57C), is a liquid at normal earth temperatures and is hypergolic with both IFRNA and MON oxidizers.
If you haven't read it, Ignition is available on-line here: http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf
If you know any chemistry (O-level would be enough) then this history of the chemistry of rocket fuel is a stunning piece of history.
I'm not sure this is correct - Liberty Bell (Liberty 7) is owned by the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space center, and is, in fact, the only flown, manned US space capsule NOT owned by the Smithsonian, precisely because KCSC and Discovery Channel salvaged it from the ocean.
Given that we've not been to the moon since these missions, this project will hopefully inspire the human race to do bigger better things. There are plenty of people funding research into diseases such as Bill Gates. There comes a point where more cash won't help to cure the diseases anyway but ultimately it's his money and he can do as he pleases.
You can't spend the same money twice. Choosing to spend a few million quid means that you can't spend that particular few million quid on something else, so to that extent, they appear to be mutually exclusive.
Of course, you could argue that investing a few million quid in something that gives a return potentially enables everyone to be better off in the long term, but I think that's a very hard argument to make for something that appears to be so totally pointless. The National Air and Space Museum already has a display with an F1 engine and a load of mirrors as I recall. Pretty impressive. I can't see that it would be more interesting to look at an engine that had hit the sea it high speed and then been left to corrode for n number of years.
The NASM has 1/4 of an F-1 mockup, set into a mirrored corner in a lame attempt to make it look like the real thing. Having also seen the real thing, I think it's a major ripoff and rather surprised they'd do such a poor exhibit.
If you think that's impressive, you should see the real thing.
I've been there, and seen it. It's actually one complete engine, and a quarter cutaway, with mirrors arranged to show the array of five.
I'm sure the real Saturn V, with real engines, looks more impressive, but they also exist on dry land, so I can't see why it's worth recovering this one.
Having said that, it's his money - he can do what he likes with it. I suppose when you are that wealthy, you get to indulge your more frivolous inclinations. I can't help thinking there are better ways to spend the dosh (unless he's already got a bevy of beautiful ladies on tap).
"I'm sure the real Saturn V, with real engines, looks more impressive, but they also exist on dry land, so I can't see why it's worth recovering this one."
It's worth doing because, unlike the ones already on show, this one was an integral part of an Apollo mission, giving it a historical attachment which raises it above merely being "yet another Saturn V first stage rocket engine". Even if the impact with the ocean and the subsequent passage of time submerged in the briny has left it little more than a twisted lump of rusted metal, it's still a historically significant artifact worthy of at least as much attention as any of the existing Saturn V exhibits. Even if it turns out not to have the particular significance of having formed part of the Apollo 11 mission, it's still something we'll be able to look at and say "that helped send so and so to the moon".
I can see the argument, but I don't agree. A corroded, twisted ball of mess is more interesting because it once formed part of these missions, but that doesn't mean I think it's worthwhile to recover it.
Lots of people seem to agree that it is worthwhile, so perhaps I'm in the minority (on this website).
Having said that I love the space exhibits at the National Air and Space Museum - especially the LM they've got there and command module (and I think one of the very early US manned satellites). They were really pushing it.
Well actually its not as if he's burning dollar bills. The money 'spent' will buy stuff and pay wages, and the people who sold the stuff or got the wages will pay taxes, and buy more stuff and pay more wages, and so the wheels of capitalism grind round.
if we are going to whinge about pointless expenditure I think there's quite a long list before you get to this - i would start at nuclear weapons and work down the list, through TV reality shows, past designer handbags and personalised number-plates before i carped at spending that celebrates heritage, arts and achievement.
One motive for this kind of effort is that it this particular vehicle is regarded with reverance as an ancient artefact of America's finest hour. Recovery of a holy object such as this will appeal to a rich guy who wants everyone to think he's important, generous, whatever.
They view it as historic like the Mary Rose.
"... why can't you do something worthwhile with it, like funding cures to diseases etc"
I am assuming then that you do not have a television, since that is obviously not worthwile compared to curing diseases, etc. You also therefore spend all the money you earn (except for buying food and renting a room) on said causes?
Blackadder: If you'd like to help yourself to a legacy- I mean a chair!
Lady Whiteadder: Chair!? You have chairs in your house!?
Blackadder: Oh yes.
Lady Whiteadder: [slaps him twice] Wicked child! Chairs are an invention of Satan! In our house, Nathaniel sits on a spike!
Blackadder: And yourself?
Lady Whiteadder: [with a malicious smile] I sit on Nathaniel. Two spikes would be an extravagance! I will suffer comfort this once; we shall just have to stick forks in our legs between courses!
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I visited the Saturn V exhibit at Kennedy Space Center (Cape Canaveral) just after they opened it hmm must of been 13-14 years ago.
You walk in on the business end of the first stage. I was suitably stunned by just how big the engines are - I knew their dimensions as a kid but to see them in real life was something else. Words still fail me.
My GF of the time was very understanding, and let me geek out and drool on myself for a while, and then helped guide me through the rest of the exhibit.
To think they almost let that history go. Any engines they can retrieve to get the word out on what they came up with *50* years ago is good news.
I saw that immediately and wondered how they knew. There were at least 8 moon-bound apollo missions that could reasonable be expected to have that trajectory, so who is to say they are from 11? Hell, there were hundreds of missions nasa flew from canaveral that could have ended up there.
Considering how much effort was put into tracking the Saturn V throughout its ascent into orbit, I'm thinking its unlikely the S1C stages weren't similarly tracked during their descent back to the ocean surface. The S1C page at Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-IC) gives locations for each of the stages, and there seems to be sufficient distance between the Apollo 11 stage and its nearest neighbour to suggest that any debris found at that location probably was part of 11.
..had a multi chamber/nozzle rocket powered by LOX and heavily refined Kerosene which had more power than the F-1, buuuut..this rocket engine certainly was the most powerful single nozzle engine lying at the bottom of the sea for sure! (i forget the name of the Russian engine, but have info on it in a hardback book at home somewhere which the geek in me will be digging out the moment i get home from work tonight!).
both had similar thrust to weight ratios IIRC, so the F-1 is still a cool mac-daddy!
anything capable of almost 7 megaNewton of thrust deserves better than a Paris icon IMO.
Probably a silly question... but there were 6 moon landings plus a couple of other apollo trips that orbited the moon without landing.
I imagine all of them used similar rocket engines, and all would have taken a similar launch path and dumped their first stages in roughly the same place. But these guys seem pretty certain that sonar readings identify these as Apollo 11 engines (since they don't suggest they've looked at them yet or know the condition of them). If they're going on sonar readings, then they cannot have observed serial numbers yet. So presumably it is location alone they are going on. How close are the other moonshot rocket engines? How accurately do they know where each first stage came down?
Genuinely interested...
They have likley examined the specifics of the trajectory for that particular Apollo 11 moon shot to follow the debris path.
No rocket trajectory is exactly the same as they all change due to time of day, year, weather etc.
Radar tracking data would have helped them narrow down the search.
Looking at some of these comments, it strikes me that many commentards recognise the price of everything and the value of nothing (Oscar Wilde's definition of a cynic). Why not spend money on curing diseases etc - sure, but I suspect Jeff Bezos has enough he could still spare a few million for those purposes if he wanted to. However, what would be remembered more in future, and would inspire more people to do innovative and adventurous things - going 5% towards 'curing' some unspecified disease, or recovering the engines that first sent humanity beyond the earth.
given that we should be curing diseases etc (sure) why go to the moon in the first place, why look at galaxies billions of years away, why spend money in unwinnable wars etc etc.
When I saw the piccie here (on the article), with what looks like an alien trying to shove a spawn into its mouth at the top, and a 'Hutt' - like tail at the bottom, the only words out of my mouth were..
"FUCK. ME. SIDEWAYS!!!"
Oh, man that's impressive for 50 years' ago, let alone now
If you ever get the chance you have to stand next to the real thing - a picture just doesn't truly communicate the scale. And if you're looking for the best geek out of all, go to Canaveral to see the whole Saturn V. They've got it laying on its side and you get to walk the length of it.
My buddies and I had to go three times before we'd actually finished the tour. Every time we'd geek out at the Saturn V display and have to skip a different part of the tour because of other things we'd put on the schedule like IMAX shows.
I've always wanted to see the Saturn V there. Unfortunately for me when I was there in late 1996, it wasn't on display as they where busy stuffing it into it's current home. Similarly after many years of wanting to go on the 20000 Leagues Under The Sea ride at MouseWorld, when I got there it was closed never to return.
I think the AJ-260-2 is the biggest rocket engine ever built, although it never flew. It was a 260 inch solid rocket motor built to determine if they could replace the Saturn V first stage with a single solid booster. The motors tested were half the height of the real ones but still produced over 17000kN of thrust the full size motor would produce twice as much thust. Apparently when they test fired it you could see the flame 50 miles away. The link below tells more, the astronautix website has everything you need to know about space flight.
http://www.astronautix.com/engines/aj2602.htm
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