Bezos Expeditions, operated by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, stated that they have recovered several Apollo F-1 rocket engines, as reported on their website.
The F-1 engine was the power for NASA’s Saturn V rockets that launched astronauts to the Moon during the late 1960’s and 70’s Apollo missions.
The Saturn V rockets had five F-1 engines that dropped into the Atlantic Ocean after lift-off from Cape Canaveral and were presumed lost forever.
Bezos has expressed a desire for the engines to be displayed, although where is the question. NASA retains ownership of the engines and all of the parts.
“We look forward to the restoration of these engines by the Bezos team and applaud Jeff’s desire to make these historic artifacts available for public display,” said Charles Bolden, NASA administrator.
For more info and photos, please visit Space.com or NASA.gov
Aside from the fact they were the actual rockets used during the launch, I really don’t see that much value in them since there are still plenty more around. They’re actually still looking at them in a slightly upgraded version for the possible use in the next generation heavy lift rockets.
Honestly I’m not sure that there are plenty of the engines around, how do you figure? Most were used for launch and there were only a few already constructed for the canceled missions.
There actually were quite a few remaining sections of the Saturn Fleet when it was announced that 17 would be the last. I don’t recall the numbers but during a few of my trips over to Canaveral and talking with some of the old Timer Astronauts who were around, there were quite a few. One of the stages was modified and became Skylab and the remainders were used to get them to it. Plus, they had quite a few spare engines around for testing and swap outs if need be.
Yeah Sal and I went there a number of years ago and did the tour. There are also the dissembled sections of the Saturn V launch gantry sitting in a lot rusting. I’m just not sure how many engines are _still_ around.
But like Keith said below it is probably more for the historical value, like a museum having an actual capsule on display not an unused or replica.
Actually, when I was researching this article, I discovered that the search was probably more of a nostalgic bent to recover and display. They were really wanting to find the actual engines for the Apollo 11 mission, but have found that most of the serial numbers have been compromised.