Warbird Information Exchange

A Jeff Bezos (AMAZON) funded exploration has recovered two APOLLO F-1 booster engines from the Atlantic and NASA is working to identify which mission(s) they were used on by searching for serial numbers on parts.

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

So who owns them? Are they abandoned? One of those would look great in my garden!!!!!

I believe the expedition to recover them was to put them on display, so I'm guessing even if Jeff's team could claim salvage rights that they aren't going to.

NASA retains ownership of the engines and all of the parts.



Enough major components have been recovered to rebuild two Apollo Saturn V F-1 engines. Once rebuilt, one will likely be offered to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. The remaining one will probably go on display at The Museum of Flight in Seattle, near where Amazon and Bezos' commercial spaceflight company, Blue Origin, are headquartered.

F-1 Engine Recovery

Anthony

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Some of the 'task completed'markings were made with Glossy Sea Blue paint, and they were in storage in salt water.................

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

from what i saw on the world news the engines look to be in very good shape. they were dropping the parts into a huge "shopping basket" via robotic arm, i had to laugh at the spectacle!! pretty ambitious recovery though!! i'm glad i wasn't the only one who wondered about submerged rocket parts, at least this group had the means to recover them successfully.

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

I find it interesting that NASA owns them or claims ownership. Seems to me that NASA threw them away in international waters 40 years ago and made no effort to find them. IMO, that should mean that whoever found them would be the new owner.

Actually Kyle, the team used data NASA had provided which included where they were pretty sure the parts came down. It's just that at the time, recovery of something like that wasn't practical with the technology and funding. I believe there was a push by some of the engineers to try and get one of the engines back for evaluation, but with them under 14,000+ feet of water, it was a very daunting task since it would have required manned submersibles and/or specialized deep-sea diver teams to do the job.

I posted over on the other one.

I think something is up! Last year they pulled a complete F-1 from a museum or storage and the engineers went throught it and did a test run!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OeRw234U9g

To go through all this to go in a museum????? Somethings up in NASA!

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Long Live the N3N-3 "The Last US Military Bi-Plane" 1940-1959
Badmouthing Stearmans on WIX since 2005

The stages for the supposedly upcoming ORION ('hey man! lemme have another hit on that willya') will be close to SATURN sized and if a base line for new engines can be gotten from 40+ year old technology using modern information gathering methods it cuts out all the 'start with blank paper and a pencil' stuff, and the F-1 was more reliable than a VW BEETLE.

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

Boy I hope so!!! I have always said that if I could go back in time, two things I would do is See a Jimi Hendrix concert and watch a Saturn V go up!!

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Long Live the N3N-3 "The Last US Military Bi-Plane" 1940-1959
Badmouthing Stearmans on WIX since 2005

nasa has been on a shoestring budget long before the sequestration castration whatever. i think the salvage & the un - mothballing & testing / firing of the other has merit to jeff's post.

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

Maybe, but I'll wager the decision to unmothball the F-1 was made somewhat longer ago than last week

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

The J-2X engine uses technology that was developed for both the J-2 and F-1 engines on the Saturn V. As there was an F-1 available within NASA for NASA to use and test, they chose to do that. I believe the only J-2's still "available" are on display rockets making it a much harder proposition to get one for testing. There was talk of potentially creating an F-1X engine as a future heavy-lift engine as well when Constellation was cancelled and SLS began re-work in its mission scope, so that also gave more impetus to test an existing F-1 after fully disassembling and fully understanding how it was built with modern instruments and techniques and then see how it can be re-engineered today to produce a "better" F-1 or J-2 using modern rapid-prototyping and rapid-manufacturing techniques.