Jeff Bezos Finds Apollo 11 Rockets

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/amazons-jeff-bezos-discovers-historic-apollo-11-rocket-engines-at-the-bottom-of-the-sea/255190/

by josephmosby • 14 years ago

284 81 14 years ago

theatlantic.com

fmstephe• 14 years ago

I am glad that we have in this world at least a few rich people with uncontrollable curiosity. It seems like wealth is wasted on some.

siavosh• 14 years ago

Since I was a kid, space has always been a deep source of curiosity and wonder for me. With events like James Cameron's dive last week, Elon Musk's work, and this, it heartens me that private citizens are attempting rekindle the wonders they felt when they were younger for a new generation. All in reaction to the governments budget cuts and the limited ambitions of today's industry titans.

The longer term solution maybe showing tax payers scientific/statistical evidence that these sorts of 'stunts' really do yield an impressive ROI. It's a tough thing to do, but might be our way back to places like Mars.

sopooneo• 14 years ago

How strange that this amazing dream, now rekindled, was originally born of cold war.

ericd• 14 years ago

It's not that strange, competition breeds ambition and innovation. It's in humans' fundamental nature to compete by out-innovating, which is one of the strongest arguments for free markets. Since the fall of the USSR, more competition has been inward focusing, between companies. Most companies tend to compete at a lower level than nation-states, which is why you don't see as many of these huge projects. I think if the US became openly competitive with China, you'd start to see some very large projects again.

grecy• 14 years ago

I like where he says "I imagine that NASA would decide to make it available to the Smithsonian for all to see." - creating enough publicity around it's eventual public display that NASA will have no choice but to do just that.

josephmosby• 14 years ago

It does make sense - the Apollo 11 command module is already on display in the Air and Space Museum, as is one of the Saturn 5 rockets.

HCIdivision17• 14 years ago

I remember as a kid going to Space Academy in Huntsville, AL. A camp counselor told us how the engines came to find a home at the Rocket Park of the Alabama Space and Rocket Center. NASA had placed the Saturn V on tour to show off this amazing machine - this particular rocket never went in space, but it was a _functional_ vehicle. The story goes that once the rocket was set up, the governor rallied for the rocket to be labeled a historical landmark. And since it really is an incredible chunk of American history, the motion passed.

And, as it turns out, you can't move historical landmarks. Apparently NASA was furious, but played it cool.

Or so a museum counselor told a band of 7th graders.

More on this particular rocket: http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/butowsky4/sp...

stcredzero3• 14 years ago

This is what gets me about the moon-shot deniers. If NASA was motivated to save expense and risk, doesn't the act of launching the first stages of a bunch of Saturn rockets going to mostly squash any savings flat?

Those things are huge, their launch was witnessed by many 10's of thousands, and their flight was tracked by the USSR and anyone else with the technical capability to do so. (Admittedly, the latter is probably only sporadic, but still an effective deterrent.) The second stages -- also huge, also tracked by the USSR and anyone else with the technical capability to do so. The third stages: the same. Even the command module+LEM: freaking conspicuous. And it's not as if you can send them up there, then fake the thing coming back -- you had to actually bring the freaking things back so the USSR and everyone else could track it then too.

So, after going to all that trouble, exactly how much money is going to be saved? How much risk is going to be saved? If you're faking a flight to the moon, and your fake command module misses its burn and flies off into the void, you're going to have to fake the deaths or kill off those astronauts anyways. If anything, one has greatly increased the risks by engaging in a such a huge and technically challenging conspiracy.

Kudos to Bezos for finding the engine!

mindslight• 14 years ago

Maybe most moon landing deniers are actually just a conspiracy of scientists hoping to goad NASA into doing it again.

driverdan• 14 years ago

You give moon landing denier kooks too much credit. They don't care about the evidence.

conradfr• 14 years ago

Yes, the problem is never asking questions, it's not accepting the answers.

nitrogen• 14 years ago

Wouldn't the mirrors left behind by various missions be the most convincing evidence of all?

stcredzero3• 14 years ago

The problem is that one has to have research-grade equipment in order to make use of them. Whereas first-hand accounts eyewitnesses who saw the Saturn V rockets go up are available to those who want to do the legwork.

relix• 14 years ago

Reflectors, actually. While normally an irrelevant detail, the distinction is quite important here: lasers reflected on mirrors reflect at a complementary angle, lasers reflected on a reflector reflect right back at the source, allowing us to actually detect it.

droithomme• 14 years ago

The audacity of the Apollo program and the amazing engineering successes were so incredible that I am not surprised there are still skeptics lurking about. They are incorrect in their belief, but their doubt is reasonably based. Landing on the moon and returning safely only 66 years after the first powered flight and only a few years into the age of transistors and computers was to put it simply, a completely unbelievable accomplishment and without precedent in human history.

ComputerGuru• 14 years ago

I honestly cannot think of anything since that has rivaled it in terms of sheer audacity and a leap of pure faith.

You'd think with all our technical marvels now, we'd have something that can hold its own against the missions to the moon, but I'm honestly at a loss to suggest anything here.

stcredzero3• 14 years ago

but their doubt is reasonably based

Until you start looking at evidence you can publicly verify and start analyzing what it would cost to build what people and scientists actually observed, and the downside risks of the same. Really, what would be the worst-case downside for a Saturn 1B or Saturn V first stage? (Answer: a huge, spectacular explosion in front of thousands.) If you're trying to mitigate the costs and risk of failure with a hoax, why would you send up 9 of the former and 13 of the latter? Why would you do more than 1 manned mission?

It's much easier to preach to the choir.

lutorm• 14 years ago

Landing on the moon and returning safely only 66 years after the first powered flight and only a few years into the age of transistors and computers was to put it simply, a completely unbelievable accomplishment and without precedent in human history.

Actually, I just plotted the flight distance records from Wikipedia, starting with the Wright Flyer record of .279km in 1903, to 18000km in 1946, to John Glenn's 3 orbits (~120,000km) in 1962 and Apollo 11 distance (~800,000km) in 1969. While the spacecraft points are clearly above the exponential extrapolation of the flight records between 1910 to 1946, they are much less dramatic than the improvement from 1903 to 1915, where flight distance increased by about 4 orders of magnitude. So while the distance flown obviously was without precedent, the rate of improvement was nothing like that of the first decade of flying.

trothamel• 14 years ago

"doesn't the act of launching the first stages of a bunch of Saturn rockets going to mostly squash any savings flat?"

Well, you could save on the catering - maybe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw

Jun8• 14 years ago

"Though they've been on the ocean floor for a long time, the engines remain the property of NASA."

Interesting, I thought Law of Finds stated that abandoned property belongs to the person who salvages it (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6896645.stm), or maybe the engines were not abandoned?

swalsh• 14 years ago

Not a lawyer, but I would imagine the definition of abandoned has some sense of an indistinguishable owner. In the case of Apollo 11, the owner is quite clear.

On the other hand, if you consider the law of "Finders Keepers, losers weepers" It is clearly Bezos to do what he wants.

smackfu• 14 years ago

Well, I don't see how it differs from a sunken ship, really.

arjunnarayan• 14 years ago

I find it odd that it can be considered "not abandoned" when NASA didn't even _know_ where they were. I can understand if NASA said something of the sort "its at XX latitude and YY longitude and we're leaving it there but it's still ours", but I find "we don't know where it is and we aren't actively looking to find it, but if you find it it's ours", especially given the Law of Finds.

JumpCrisscross• 14 years ago

The American law of finds applies in only two situations: "(1) where the owners have expressly and publicly abandoned their property and (2) where items are recovered from an ancient shipwreck and no one comes forward to claim them" [1]. I don't think NASA ever satisfied 1.

In international waters it seems like the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea does "little to impinge on the applicability of the law of finds and the law of salvage," though "commentators have suggested that the law of finds is implied because there is no alternative ownership principle delineated in the provision" [2].

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer

[1] http://www.rms-republic.com/reference/Volume67No1Article6.pd...

[2] http://lawreview.wustl.edu/inprint/86/1/Curfman.pdf

lotharbot3• 14 years ago

government agencies do not relinquish their claims lightly. They don't consider their hardware to be "abandoned", merely "very hard to get to".

My ex-coworkers at the Museum of Flight (in Seattle, mentioned in this article) know the exact location of a WWII-era fighter aircraft that crashed in Lake Washington. They recovered and restored one aircraft from the crash site at least a decade ago, but the Navy will not let them touch the other one.

georgek• 14 years ago

this may be because there are human remains at the second site, which makes it a war grave. its against federal law to disturb those IIRC

MartinCron• 14 years ago

I was just reading about the Lake Washington corsair while I was at the museum lately. It's so cool To hear that there's another one down there.

ConnorWGarvey• 14 years ago

I like how Jeff Bezos talking about hiring a team that found the engines ends up with the headline, "Jeff Bezos Discovers ..."

mdonahoe• 14 years ago

Based on the title, I naively assumed it had more to do with his Blue Origin company.

He paid for the effort, so I see nothing wrong with the title. "Jeff Bezos' team" is certainly more accurate.

johngalt• 14 years ago

And Steve Jobs never wrote a line of code for the iphone. So he didn't create it right?

pavanky• 14 years ago

He did not.

leeoniya• 14 years ago

First James Cameron chills in Challenger Deep for 8 hrs solo, now this? What a week!

Maybe James can use his new toy to go down there and hook up the tow cables to bring the engines up!

ChuckMcM• 14 years ago

There is an interesting sub-text here which should probably get more attention. Jeff Bezos funded this effort.

Let that sink in for a moment.

When the CIA wanted to get a peak at a Soviet Era sub that sank to 17,000' they paid Howard Hughes to build the Glomar Explorer [1] to go retrieve it. It was a mammoth undertaking which required the financial assistance of a nation state to make it work.

In 1982 when Forbes first started listing the 400 richest people they had 13 billionaires and 75 million made the list [2], which is about 167 million in inflation adjusted dollars [3], and the current lists #400 is is $1.05B so a bit over 6x larger even after inflation is considered.

The interesting bit for me is that the cost of 'getting things done' has not been going up in pace with the 'money people have' so wealth in the private sector is enabling individuals to do what used to take governments. Worse governments are horribly inefficient at doing things that individuals are efficient at (given their fiduciary responsibility to the tax payers)

I talked with some folks at Scaled Composites a bit after their successful X-Prize bid. A common theme was that they could have been successful earlier if it had not been for the red tape put in their way by the government. (some estimated two years earlier but I think that was optimistic).

And you look at the world concerns that arise when North Korea tests 'long range' rockets because building a rocket that can get a meaningful payload into orbit is 98% of the way to being able to drop something out of orbit pretty much anywhere you want.

Its very different world, and I could imagine folks who would sign on for orbital 'work' or excursions knowing that 5 - 10% of them would end up dying horribly. Not something the government can generally tolerate but explorers can.

The risk though is that you end up with a corporation that is has the capability of exploiting space and corporations don't generally sign treaties. That makes for interesting times indeed.

[1] https://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/jennifer.htm

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes_400 (hopefully it is accurate)

[3] http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi

[4] http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/#p_40_s_arank_All%20industr...

mcantelon• 14 years ago

>The interesting bit for me is that the cost of 'getting things done' has not been going up in pace with the 'money people have' so wealth in the private sector is enabling individuals to do what used to take governments.

Wealth has been concentrating as well. If the rich continually get richer, it makes sense that at some point their capabilities become comparable to nation states.

seanp2k22• 14 years ago

Hundreds of greedy individuals with more power than some countries. What could possibly go wrong?

With barely any oversight, non-existent checks and balances, no social responsibility, an the power to sway the laws that the rest of us must live by, I urge you all to consider where we're headed. To me, at least, it seems that the age of kings is once again upon us.

Schultzy• 14 years ago

Care to cite your source?

EDIT: I'm sorry, but was my request for a source considered rude? I don't understand the knock. I would really like to see some data showing the consolidation of wealth, if it actually exists.

thematt• 14 years ago

Maybe it has, but the rich don't have infinite lifespans and the data indicates that their wealth doesn't survive past another generation or two.

See both: Beating the Midas Curse and The Millionaire Next Door

bdunbar2• 14 years ago

they paid Howard Hughes to build the Glomar Explorer

It does not take away from your point to point out that one of the reasons they paid Hughes - instead of just banging up Glomar Explorer themselves - was to provide a cover story for the salvage.

Sea-bed mining was where it was at, according to 'My Weekly Reader' from then.

Its very different world, and I could imagine folks who would sign on for orbital 'work' or excursions knowing that 5 - 10% of them would end up dying horribly.

Work, yes. I don't imagine too many honeymoon flights would be booked unless it was safer than that.

Younger Me would have signed up for working in orbit, given those odds. Probably not now - I'm married, have a mortgage, and kids.

Although the pay would be good and the death benefits would set my heirs up pretty well.

anamax2• 14 years ago

> Worse governments are horribly inefficient at doing things that individuals are efficient at (given their fiduciary responsibility to the tax payers)

Governments don't have fiduciary responsibility to tax payers.

Fiduciary responsibility has liability, as do all meaningful types of responsibility. Govts are liable for certain types of errors and omissions but other than that....

srl2• 14 years ago

Democratic governments are "liable" in the sense that they can loose their jobs for screwing up. Or looking like they screwed up. Or getting accused of screwing up. Or because they just got unlucky.

6ren• 14 years ago

In support: James Cameron's Challenger Deep dive (only the US Navy had before); and "only four entities have put a capsule into orbit and recovered it - US, China, Russia and Elon Musk."

samwillis• 14 years ago

and Europe (ESA)?

nikcub• 14 years ago

Nothing like the Glomar Explorer has ever been built or attempted since. This is just some surface sonar technology at a location that we sorta knew. Not to dilute what Bezos did, but Hughes was seriously crazy.

You can read about Project Azorian here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian

seany• 14 years ago

There's a decent documentary about it as well. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2042455/

xbryanx• 14 years ago

Privately funded geo-engineering projects here we come.

seclorum• 14 years ago

This is a very slippery path for us to be taking, however. Do we really want feudal lords to be the only ones with the power to get big things done? I'm not so sure I'm okay with that. It behooves us all to build, and properly support, better government so that we don't slip back into a world where entitled lords govern us.

ck2• 14 years ago

This is a waste of time. It's a wealthy man's playtime.

How about we kill the F35 and F22 planes entirely and make a Mars mission instead?

We're going to be neck deep in drones in this country and around the world within a few years, expensive fighter jets are now worthless.

dkokelley• 14 years ago

Your beef seems to be more with expensive fighter programs than expensive salvage efforts. I don't see how this really relates to the discussion.

Don't underestimate the power of icons. These are the rockets that put us on the moon, and a private citizen is planning on recovering them for posterity, using his own money. Hopefully future generations will be inspired to explore because of this wealthy man's efforts (or 'playtime', as you put it). This should be celebrated.

Cushman• 14 years ago

I know I say this a lot, but... a Mars mission would be a wealthy man's playtime, too.

Codhisattva• 14 years ago

Cute but silly really. If you want to see a genuine Saturn V rocket there is an actual one on display in the Apollo building at the Kennedy Space Center. It's open to the public and it's intact and it's amazing.

I think Bezos is just pulling a publicity stunt here as he makes no mention at all of the artifacts and treasures on display to the public at the inspiring Kennedy Space Center.

waterlesscloud• 14 years ago

There's one on display in Huntsville too.

joeblau• 14 years ago

"tough stuff" -- I love Bezos' technical terminology.

tocomment• 14 years ago

He say it's us government property but aren't there maritime laws related to salvaging ships that say whomever does the salvage owns it?

snorkel• 14 years ago

Ain't it sad that we are reduced to fishing for our own space trash remind us of when we used to go to the moon?

_rj• 14 years ago

What if Jeff Bezos took that funding how much ever that he used to find the rockets and used that on education. There are many in different countries who doesn't even have basic education needs. I am not saying Jeff is the doing the wrong thing, he worked hard, he earned it, he might have or might be doing charity work, but the satisfaction you get just by thinking that you can help some kid get educated is more than finding rockets. Just my thoughts.

bootload• 14 years ago

"... NASA is one of the few institutions I know that can inspire five-year-olds. ..."

Best quote.

mkopinsky• 14 years ago

Side note: How is it that the Atlantic, despite having excellent quality in their articles, manages to consistently attract crap in the comments section? This is almost youtube-eque... (Might need to expand my "hide comments from certain sites" greasemonkey script)

ars• 14 years ago

It's not just the Atlantic - it's every single site. The age of comments is just about finished, I expect more and more sites to remove them (unless the ad views are so high that it makes up for it).

My theory is that the only (or the majority) people who have the time to post are those too stupid to have anything else better to do. And once the majority is stupid it becomes too toxic for anyone else to bother.

Good forums (like this one) require very careful curating.

Jeff Bezos Finds Apollo 11 Rockets

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