Jeff Bezos to recover lost Apollo rocket engines

Like many of you, I've grown tired of hearing about how super-rich plutocrats manipulate markets, flout regulations, and influence our political process from behind the scenes. And that's why I've especially enjoyed the recent spate of news stories in which super-rich people do really cool things. First, there was film director James Cameron, who designed his own state-of-the-art submarine and used it to travel to the ocean's deepest point, pushing submarine technology forward in the process. And now, Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos has used high-tech sonar technology to locate the huge F-1 rocket engines which powered the Apollo 11 moon shot, and which have been lost at sea without a trace since 1969. He plans to recover one and donate it to the Smithsonian. On the Bezos Expeditions (!) website, Bezos writes: I'm excited to report that, using state-of-the-art deep sea sonar, the team has found the Apollo 11 engines lying 14,000 feet below the surface, and we're making plans to attempt to raise one or more of them from the ocean floor. We don't know yet what condition these engines might be in - they hit the ocean at high velocity and have been in salt water for more than 40 years. On the other hand, they're made of tough stuff, so we'll see. Important note: The engines in question powered the huge Saturn V rockets. Bezos is not talking about the rockets, but about the engines, which were jettisoned once they were done with the first stage of the Apollo launch, at which point other engines took over.