Jeff Bezos remembers watching the launch of the Apollo 11 on television in July 1969. He was only five, but he can recall seeing the rocket’s five F-1 engines fire at once, each one wielding 32-million horsepower as it burned 6,000 lb. of rocket-grade kerosene and liquid oxygen every second.
Jeff Bezos remembers watching the launch of the Apollo 11 on television in July 1969. He was only five, but he can recall seeing the rocket’s five F-1 engines fire at once, each one wielding 32-million horsepower as it burned 6,000 lb. of rocket-grade kerosene and liquid oxygen every second.
Almost 43 years later, the founder of book-selling website Amazon says he has located the submerged engines that propelled that rocket into space before detaching and plummeting into the Atlantic Ocean. Apollo 11 was the first mission to land on the moon.
In a statement on his website, the billionaire space-flight enthusiast said he and his Bezos Expeditions team used advanced sonar scanning equipment to track down the five F-1 engines 4,300 m below the surface of the Atlantic. He plans to raise at least one of them out of the water.
“We don’t know yet what condition these engines might be in—they hit the ocean at high velocity and have been in salt water for more than 40 years. On the other hand, they’re made of tough stuff, so we’ll see,” Bezos wrote.