Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Gotta Spend It on Something...

So you're the founder of Amazon.com, which means you pretty much have a mint of money lost in your couch cushions, let alone in your bank account. What are you going to do with it?

Find the engines that launched Apollo 11, that's what.

Jeff Bezos financed an expedition that searched the Atlantic Ocean for parts of the Saturn V rocket that launched the first mission to land human beings on the moon. Searchers had a rough idea of where the first stage landed after burning out and being discarded, but it had never been located. The flight path had been designed so that the immense lower stages of the rocket would land in the ocean -- figuring that since the initial stage weighed in at 288,000 pounds after it had burned up all its fuel someone might get a little lawyery if it landed in their back yard.

Bezos reported the discovery in a note on his own Bezos Expeditions website, saying that the F-1 engines from the first stage had been found 14,000 feet below the surface, and that the team would now begin efforts to see if one could be raised.

No word on whether or not anyone's going to fine NASA for littering.

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