Thursday, March 21, 2013

Recovering Apollo

Apollo went to the Moon on a Saturn V booster whose first stage was powered by five Rocketdyne F-1 engines, the most powerful engines ever flown.  These were dumped in the Atlantic Ocean 580 km from shore in water 4.35 km deep. They were forgotten by NASA - but not by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.  Bezos funded a year-long effort to recover the F-1s. It's not yet certain that these are from Apollo 11 - it will take some study of serial numbers and other information - but it's a great day for space historians.

COMMENT: I watched Apollo 11 from a Piper plane my Dad flew up for a good look.  I can still picture it.  Dad, that was the coolest thing you ever did. 

... Picture Gallery - Manned Systems/NASA Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch
Apollo 11 launch, 1969 (NASA)
I was there, but my amateur photo attempts were, shall we say, not very successful.

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