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F-1 Engine Recovery
- miles932 14y agow00t. Nice work boss.
- publicfig 14y agoAt first I was thinking this was a headline from that Refrigerator Magnet App posted the other day (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5395348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5395348). edit: The original headline said "Jeff Bezos Recovers F-1 Engines from the Atlantic Ocean"
- jusben1369 14y agoSo I figured this was Formula One Engines......
- BrianEatWorld 14y agoAs did I, given its that time of year. I think the correct abbreviation of Formula One is F1 (no hyphen).
- ISL 14y agoInsightful and clever. Not only is it an intrinsically awesome thing to do for curiosity/posterity, but this way Blue Origin gets a look at real flight test data from real F-1s. The F-1 was an achievement. The turbopumps are of particular note. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketdyne_F-1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketdyne_F-1
- mikeash 14y agoHow much can really be usefully gleaned from an engine that's spent nearly half a century at the bottom of the ocean? It seems like the long-term salt water exposure would obliterate anything useful for actual engineering. However, I don't know this stuff well, and would love some details on why I'm wrong if I am.
- ISL 14y agoI'd bet that there's still stuff to be learned, especially in metallurgy. Some types of cracking, especially within the bulk of metal, should be well-preserved. Wear patterns should still be visible, even after corrosion. Some chemical changes only take place at high temperature. Furthermore, if any old NASA designs were lost (or if details are classified), salvaging the hardware guarantees you access to flight hardware.
- larrydag 14y agoFrom reading about the SpaceX program there are remarkably very little left of the Apollo program engines. Having a real model even in disarray would be a useful study.
- dasmoth 14y agoNo, there are complete F-1 engines in storage. They fired up the gas generator from one of them just a few months ago: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/f1_test.html There's a proposal to build new F-1B engines to power liquid boosters for the SLS (as a future replacement for the shuttle-derived boosters that will be used for the first few flights). Still awesome to get some of the old ones back, though!
- brc 14y agoHow so? There is an Apollo rocket at Kennedy Space Centre complete with engines. Surely there are others around?
- sswaner 14y agoI had the joy of seeing 2 F-1 engines in one week. The first is at the old RocketDyne (now Pratt & Whitney) facility in Woodland Hills, CA (on Canoga, I think), and the second at the NM Air and Space Museum in Alamogordo. http://campl.us/jisP4TQtMJg http://campl.us/jisP4TQtMJg (Alamogordo) http://campl.us/i26CYMtwf8K http://campl.us/i26CYMtwf8K (Woodland Hills)
- EEGuy 14y ago
- iseff 14y agoIs it just me, or is half the craziness of this that Jeff Bezos took off 3 weeks to be at sea?
- andyjohnson0 14y agoThe ship was at sea for three weeks. I doubt that Bezos was.
- CapitalistCartr 14y agoFrom the article: "While I spent a reasonable chunk of time in my cabin emailing and working, . . . " He worked from "home".
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- brianbreslin 14y agoAny idea how much this expedition cost him?
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoLess than an outage in AWS-US West will :-)
- hodgesmr 14y agoAt first I was thrown by the domain name.
- zerohm 14y agoI was totally looking forward to reading about the Bezo Sexpeditions.
- lifeisstillgood 14y agoOK, I am reminded of Steve Yegge's famous posts about Bezos (no. 7 - he really does not give a shit about your day). The Bezos I heard in this post is a very different beast from the one I heard in Yegge's writings. Maybe time at sea really does change a man, or more likely, there are many different sides to each of us. Either way, I love the way the new rich are making something interesting happen.
- rza 14y agoI thought the exact opposite while reading this. If Bezos is constantly thinking about ambitious projects such as this, it's easy to see why "he really does not give a shit about your day."
- EvanKelly 14y agoBezos spoke at my Baccalaureate in 2010 and I was seriously impressed with his talk. Addressing a chapel full of entitled, confident graduates, Bezos chose his points well. I haven't read the transcript of the speech, but the thesis stuck with me and I hope others. I'll paraphrase: "You're all incredibly bright. When given the opportunity, choose to be kind, rather than clever if those two come into conflict with each other." EDIT: Just glanced at the transcript, looks like my main takeaway was just a sub-point of his thesis, but it's what stuck with me.
- ciparis 14y agoFor anyone wondering the same thing I was: these F-1's were dropped into the Atlantic when Apollo 11 jettisoned its first stage.
- js2 14y agoFive F-1's per Saturn V, and there were 13 launched from Kennedy Space Center: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_(rocket_family)#Launch_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_(rocket_family)#Launch_h... So there's 65 first stages out in the Atlantic. The particular engines being recovered are from Apollo 11 as you say. A discussion from Dec 2006 discussing 1st stage re-entry, whether NASA knew/recorded the splashdown locations, etc: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=5881.0 http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=5881.0
- apaprocki 14y agoIt is not known yet that the located engines are from Apollo 11. "Many of the original serial numbers are missing or partially missing, which is going to make mission identification difficult."
- robomartin 14y agoOK, I'll be the nay-sayer in this thread. I love space and tech. Love it. We go to JPL every chance we get. My brother in law is a PhD Physicist who works there. Great stuff. Now, that said, I have to wonder how much time, effort, money and energy went into recovering junk from the ocean. And, I have to wonder what other project could have been undertaken that would have produced far greater benefits for society than being able to look at a mangled rocket engine at the Smithsonian. I get it. Guy with a ton of money playing with expensive toys. No problem. We all do that to some extent or another with our disposable income. The problem here, if there is one, is I don't really see much value from recovering this junk. I'd love to know how much the entire adventure (inception to engine-in-museum) will cost. It's probably an obscene amount of money that would have done far greater good elsewhere. <moron negative guy mode OFF>
- jlgreco 14y agoBezos is taxed, and I imagine gives to charity. Why do his other endeavors have to be charity as well? I cannot understand this mindset at all.
- jordan0day 14y agoWell, robomartin didn't say the money would be better spent on charity -- you're misstating the original comment. The problem you should have with robomartin's mindset is that they are saying "Rich person spent $Money on Cool Thing X, when I think it should have been spent on Cool Thing Y! Why would they ever pick X over Y?!", without recognizing that "better-ness" of Y over X is probably very subjective.
- jlgreco 14y agoIn my view, expecting people to spend their money on something that benefits society rather than on what they otherwise want to spend it on is expecting an informal sort of charity. If the view is that no person should have enough money after taxes to do this sort of thing, that I can understand. I wouldn't agree, but I would understand.
- larrydag 14y agoFor anyone wanting to get up close and personal to an F-1 Engine visit the Infinity Museum at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. They sit outside right at the entrance. It is truly a remarkable sight especially when you sit inside of the cone. http://www.visitinfinity.com/ http://www.visitinfinity.com/
- ColinWright 14y agoLast Saturday I met and spent a little time with one of the guys that rode one of these engines. Amazing. That's two I've met now - Charlie Duke (Apollo 16) and Al Worden (Apollo 15). They were charming men, and while it's true that they were "on duty" and hence it was their job to be nice to us, they also came across as rather straight-talking individuals. I don't think it was an act. Amazing men, amazing technology, amazing times. Inspiring.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- vmilner 14y agoWorden's episode in "From the Earth to the Moon" was my favourite. You can see his double act with Farouk El-Baz at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59HpmdIqI-g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59HpmdIqI-g
- davidroberts 14y agoI'm not an expert on the law of the sea, but it would seem that after NASA abandoned these engines in the ocean 50 years ago, they would belong now to whoever could salvage them.
- nikcub 14y agoIt depends. If Bezos was to sell the engines, or receive some financial gain, it would revert from being a salvage operation to being a treasure hunt, which has different rules. "Salvage" has a very specific legal definition, it means rescuing property that has been abandoned. NASA didn't abandon the engines, they could claim that it simply wasn't cost effective to retrieve them. A related case is the treasure hunters who discovered $500M worth of gold and silver coins on an old Spanish ship in the middle of the Atlantic. The Spanish government sued for recovery, and won: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/17/judge-rules-treasure-hunters-must-return-sunken-booty-to-spain/ http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/17/judge-rules-treasure-h... That case made it all the way to the US Supreme Court, who did not overrule an earlier court ruling that Spain had sovereignty and property rights over the treasure. In the case with the engines, Bezos' initiative is purely non-profit, so I doubt he and NASA will come into conflict. I believe he has said that the engines will be given to the Smithsonian. If, however, somebody were to retrieve the engines for financial gain, NASA would have a case against them, and it is much easier to asset ownership over something from 50 years ago than it is with a sunken vessel from 250+ years ago.
- fryguy 14y agoIt's interesting hearing about the thing my co-workers have been doing on the front page of HN before they tell me themselves.