"Thunderbirds are GO!!!" |
You'll remember Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos financing the successful deep-sea search for the engines of the Saturn V rocket that sent astronauts to space during the Apollo era. And remember the speculation: wouldn't it be great if...
Now it's been confirmed. Conservators have found on the wreckage the serial numbers of the actual Apollo 11 rocket engines! Bezos has verified that these are engines from the first mission that took astronauts to the moon. And oh, what a coincidence: today marks the 44th anniversary of the 1969 moon landing.
"F.A.B., Mr.Tracey!" |
Each of the engines weighs nearly 9 tons, and they came in a cluster of five. They provided 32 million horsepower by burning 6,000 pounds of fuel every second, and together they lifted the largest rocket in history 38 miles above the Earth in less than three minutes. After separation, the rocket engines made their re-entry at 5,000 miles per hour, and then plummeted into the ocean. That's where they remained, undiscovered for decades, until Bezos' team found them last March, using sophisticated sonar.
1 comment:
Cool!
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