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Topic: Nasa / Space

Bezos project finds space treasure at the bottom of the sea

Summary: Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos led an adventure to recover Saturn V engines, which may have propelled Apollo astronauts to the moon.

Andy Smith

By |

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(Image: NASA)

Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos led a "Bezos Expedition" that sent remotely operated vehicles (ROV) more than 14,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean to recover parts of two Saturn V F-1 rocket engines, which may have sent astronauts toward the moon.  Bezos claimed that the technology his crew used to recover the engines rivaled, in its own way, that of the Apollo technology itself.

Bezos originally thought that his crew had located engines from the Apollo 11 launch, which propelled astrounauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on their journey to become the first men to walk on the moon. But Bezos' crew was not able to make a positive identification of the engine parts since the original serial numbers were either missing or partially missing.

Bezos is also CEO of Blue Origin, a private company that is working on projects designed to launch humans into space at "dramatically lower costs and increased reliability".

In this gallery, we'll take a look at what Bezos Expeditions found and some of the photos and details about the Saturn V F-1 engines. Here we see the F-1 engines working at full force to lift off Apollo 11.

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Topic: Nasa / Space

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20 comments
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  • Treasure?

    First of all, it's common knowledge rocket engines are dumped into the ocean after takeoff, and it helps for rocket launch sites to be located near oceans (if spatial timing is a concern)...
    HypnoToad72
    Reply 1 Vote

    • pt two

      I wholly and truly appreciate the headline being accurate. Some media outlets spin it as Mr. Bezos doing all the work - "rocket engines raised from seafloor by Amazon CEO", which is a tad misleading
      HypnoToad72
      Reply Vote

      • Huh?

        You mean Mr Bezos didn't don a wetsuit and scuba tank, swim to the bottom of the ocean and lift those engines to the surface by himself??
        Maha888
        Reply 1 Vote

      • Wow...

        Pedantic much?
        Andre Richards
        Reply Vote

    • pt three

      And the components are still government-owned property...
      HypnoToad72
      Reply Vote

      • conclusion

        But does an official doc claim they became public domain?
        HypnoToad72
        Reply 1 Vote

        • Flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict, oh my!

          Seems to me that they could be considered as "derelict," and claimed as salvage under maritime laws.
          RangerJimK
          Reply Vote

      • Wow

        Love my job, since I've been bringing in $5600… I sit at home, music playing while I work in front of my new iMac that I got now that I'm making it online.(Click Home information)
        http://goo.gl/NTm69
        MatthewZizz
        Reply 1 Vote

    • Good point, but...

      Well now, we and the French/EU can do that because our launch sites are on a coast line but the Russians (and the former USSR) launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where "Downrange from the launchpad, spent launch equipment is dropped directly on the ground where it is salvaged by the workers and the local population." [per Wikipedia ]. And I believe that the Chinese (PRC) launch sites are in the desert regions of western China.
      RangerJimK
      Reply Vote

  • Beautiful Design

    Moving away from the Saturn V heavy lift platform for the space shuttle was a huge mistake. The F1 simple yet effective design and doesn't need an F2 revision even after all these years IMHO.
    ammohunt
    Reply 1 Vote

  • Nozzle Speed?

    The caption under the 2nd photo says the "nozzles fell back into the ocean at 5000 mph". Since Felix Baumgartner set the human terminal velocity record of 843.6mph when he jumped out of the Red Bull capsule, I think the author added an extra zero to his speed number.
    blowboat2001
    Reply 2 Votes

    • Return-to-Earth speed

      I picked up this tidbit from Jeff Bezos' blog: "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." It did drop 35 miles whereas Baumgartner's jump was from 24 miles. And you are correct on Baumgartner's speed. Thanks for reading.
      andy7720
      Reply 1 Vote

      • Re-entry speed:

        The number quoted is probably the maximum velocity BEFORE being slowed down by atmospheric drag. After being jettisoned by the third stage while ascending at 5000 mph, gravity would pull it into a portion of an elliptical "orbit" heading down at the same speed, then it would hit the atmosphere and be severely charred before slowing down to terminal velocity and hitting the ocean. In other words, just like a meteorite.
        jallan32
        Reply 1 Vote

    • Um

      human terminal velocity != F1 nozzle
      ammohunt
      Reply 1 Vote

    • ...

      Terminal velocity is relative to mass and area, so comparing a human's terminal velocity to that of a large shuttle nozzle just doesn't work.
      jhnnybgood
      Reply Vote

  • in the ocean?

    I thought all the F-1s would be squirreled away in some props archive at Warner Bros studios.
    frylock
    Reply 2 Votes

    • The Hoax Theory Again?

      Hoax conspiracy theorists have totally ignored the most obvious debunking FACT: the NASA television network feed was not the only means of watching the Apollo launches. The spacecraft were visible through optical telescopes as they were launched, and again every time they spun around to reflect sunlight, all the way to the moon and back. They were detectable via radar as well, and their own radio emissions were detectable by radio telescopes (telemetry data on spacecraft status and astronaut vital signs; voice communications between astronauts and Houston; and, during the telecasts, audio and video). When reflecting sunlight, optical telescopes could determine position very accurately. Otherwise, radio telescopes could determine position less accurately, and in addition, measuring the Doppler shift of the radio carrier waves determines velocity toward or away from the antenna with EXTREME accuracy (remember your last speeding ticket?).

      Observers around the globe had the ability to track all three parts of the Apollo spacecraft for the entire mission, and one nation in particular, the Soviet Union, whose OWN space program was being shown up by US achievements, had a VERY GOOD MOTIVE to catch us in a hoax, and the equipment and expertise to compare the "official" live feed from NASA with their own observations and detect the slightest discrepancy. Any such evidence of a hoax would have interrupted ANY program on Radio Moscow, and would have pushed ANY other story off the front page of Pravda the next day. Politically, being caught publicly in a hoax would have been WORSE than the possible loss of the crew; although of course, NASA made every effort to avoid losing the crew anyway.

      Incidentally, the most crucial video was picked up not by NASA, but by a private university radio telescope in Australia under contract to NASA. Rent the movie "The Dish" for more information; the tracking station that was PLANNED to pick up the first landing video went down, and the Australians had to aim their antenna and relay the video signal to NASA.

      The only reasonable conclusion is that it was easier to put three men on the moon than to put robotic spacecraft into the same trajectory, playing back recordings to any earth station that was listening, IN SYNC with the recordings fed to television networks. Even today such a hoax mission would be unfeasible.
      jallan32
      Reply 1 Vote

  • Operation Paperclip

    Our Nazis were better than the Soviets Nazis.
    gfinms
    Reply Vote

    • Operation Paperclip

      Well, it's debatable. We got the scientists, the USSR got the engineers.

      So which is a better deal? The "rocket scientists" with the ideas, or the engineers who had to put those ideas to work...or be sent to the camps to build them. And Stalin did have the Gulag, eh?
      RangerJimK
      Reply Vote

  • May have... ?

    What do you mean 'May have..' - you mean its a hoax? Pfffttt..
    Mr Sensible
    Reply Vote
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