Amazon founder finds Apollo engines in the ocean

[The Boston Dangler]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17544565

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos says he has located the long-submerged F-1 engines that blasted the Apollo 11 Moon mission into space.

In a blog post, Mr Bezos said the five engines were found using advanced sonar scanning some 14,000ft (4,300m) below the Atlantic Ocean's surface.

Mr Bezos, a billionaire bookseller and space-flight enthusiast, said he was making plans to raise one or more.

Apollo 11 carried astronauts on the first Moon landing mission in 1969.

The F-1 engines were used on the giant Saturn V rocket that carried the Apollo landing module out of the Earth's atmosphere and towards the Moon.

They burned for just a few minutes before separating from the second stage module and falling to Earth somewhere in the Atlantic.

Mr Bezos' announcement comes days after film director James Cameron succeeded in his own deep-sea expedition, reaching the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on the planet.

He said he planned to ask Nasa - which still owns the rockets - for permission to display one in the Museum of Flight in his home city of Seattle.

Nasa said it looked forward to hearing more about the recovery, the Associated Press reports.

how are they not considered salvage up for grabs?

 

[Wreckem]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17544565






how are they not considered salvage up for grabs?

The same way most(if not all) ship wrecks aren't just up for grabs.

 

[ussfletcher]

Government.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

You think that laws apply to the government? lol.

ron paul 2012

 

[SunnyD]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17544565






how are they not considered salvage up for grabs?

If they're in international waters, they ARE salvage. Unfortunately you have to fight governments and their (infinite) resources to get a judge to rule that way.

 

[dennilfloss]

Maybe it's like a military ship, which remains the property of its country even after it sinks.

 

[PingSpike]

If they're in international waters, they ARE salvage. Unfortunately you have to fight governments and their (infinite) resources to get a judge to rule that way.

Yeah, if you found a bunch of spanish gold coins in a sunken ship or something and wanted to get some money for them I think the easiest route would probably be to just quietly melt them all down and sell the gold. Governments are to lazy/cheap to pick up their own trash but if some one goes sifting through it and finds something they starts screaming "Hey, that's mine!" Its particularly hilarious when the wrecks are hundreds of years old.

 

[Bignate603]

Maybe it's like a military ship, which remains the property of its country even after it sinks.

This is very possible.

It's really a moot point though, the guy wants to pay to raise one and put it in a museum for public viewing. I bet NASA will sign off on that.

 

[Nintendesert]

Maybe we should reverse engineer it so we can go to space again.

 

[TheAdvocate]

According to international law, shipwrecks, etc are salvage. Aside from not technically being a shipwreck, I'm not sure what NASA's ownership angle would be? Some kind of state secret (almost 45 year old engines)?

 

[ichy]

Maybe we should reverse engineer it so we can go to space again.

Rocketdyne preserved several fully built F-1 engines. They also made sure to keep all the documentation about how they were built (contrary to popular myth all of the blueprints for the Saturn V were not destroyed) and they did extensive work, including hours of tape recorded interviews with engineers, to preserve as much institutional knowledge as possible. It's not a lack of know-how that's stopping us, it's a lack of political will.

 

[ichy]

According to international law, shipwrecks, etc are salvage. Aside from not technically being a shipwreck, I'm not sure what NASA's ownership angle would be? Some kind of state secret (almost 45 year old engines)?

There's nothing secret about the F-1 engine design (or anything else on the Saturn V.) Apollo was a civilian program conducted in the open.

 

[Wreckem]

If they're in international waters, they ARE salvage. Unfortunately you have to fight governments and their (infinite) resources to get a judge to rule that way.

Its far from that simple.

 

[Wreckem]

And in this instance the US still owns it because any type of military craft remains property of the country that lost it, unless it was sunk by an enemy in the enemies own territorial waters.

 

[ichy]

And in this instance the US still owns it because any type of military craft remains property of the country that lost it, unless it was sunk by an enemy in the enemies own territorial waters.

NASA is not the military.