Jeff Bezos, billionaire founder of Amazon.com has announced that he has located the F-1 engines which powered the Apollo 11. For those of you who don’t know about Apollo 11, it is the spacecraft that was used by Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr and Michael Collins to travel to the moon. It was just a few days after that when the most iconic and historical event took place as the first man; Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon for the first time.
When Bezos says that he has located the F-1 engines, he means that a team of scientists in his employment have located the F-1 engines 14,000 feet below the surface using a state-of-the-art-sonar technology paid for by Bezos personally. On his blog, the Amazon founder explained that the project was inspired by his memory of watching the rocket launch on TV.
He wrote,” I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering and exploration… NASA is one of the few institutions I know that can inspire 5-year olds. It sure inspired me, and with this endeavor, maybe we can inspire a few more youth to invent and explore.
Bezos also acknowledges that the engines salvaged by his team and him are by no means his property. He reiterates that he will be asking NASA to display the engine at the Smithsonian Museum and if he does succeed in getting a second one, he would want that one to go to Seattle’s Museum of Flight.
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