Jeff Bezos recovers an Apollo rocket from the bottom of the Atlantic
Amazon founder and space travel startup entrepreneur Jeff Bezos recently completed a fishing expedition in the Atlantic, where he managed to pull up an old, rusty rocket that had been sitting on the seafloor since 1969, when they were jettisoned from the rocket that took Neil Armstrong and co to the moon.
The engines were jettisoned after providing the initial liftoff for the Apollo 11 mission, which took Neil Armstrong to the moon in 1969. Bezos last year said that watching the mission on TV as a 5-year-old “was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering and exploration.”
NASA owns the engines but has supported Bezos’ project effort to recover them and put them on display. His plan was to get one into the Smithsonian and, if more than one was found, display another at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden endorsed the plan last year.
The Seattle museum is planning to display the engine in its Charles Simonyi Space Gallery, alongside the Space Shuttle Trainer and the Charon, a takeoff and landing platform built and tested by Blue Origin, a Kent-based space company financed by Bezos.
NASA has agreed to the plan, according to Mike Bush, the museum’s marketing director, who was more thrilled than most when Bezos posted the update from his expedition this morning.
“We haven’t heard back from him yet, but we’re pretty excited at the news,” he said.
The expedition used remotely controlled underwater vehicles, with experts who worked on recovering parts of the Titanic. Bezos has been aboard the recovery ship, though he spent a significant part of the trip doing work and email in his cabin.
The update was posted as the recovery ship headed toward Cape Canaveral in Florida.
“We’ve 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,” Bezos wrote.
Submitted by Delsyd
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