Recovered F-1 Engine Conservation

In March 2013, Bezos Expeditions recovered parts from a number of F-1 rocket engines which launched several of the Apollo missions (including Apollo 11) from the bottom of the Atlantic. The parts were sent to the SpaceWorks division of the Kansas Cosmosphere for conservation.

I visited SpaceWorks in December 2013, while conservation was underway, and a second time in April 2016, after conservation was completed.

During my first visit, nearly all of the components were in baths to help stabilize them after decades of saltwater immersion. Most or all of the tubs had pumps running to circulate this solution, and the staff was kind enough to turn the pumps off to avoid perturbations in the water's surface while I was trying to photograph the components.

Some photos turned out great, almost as though there was no water between the camera lens and the artifact. Other artifacts photographed poorly, the water causing fuzziness or strange colors.

By the time of my second visit, the parts allocated to Seattle's Museum of Flight and to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center had already been shipped out, with the thrust chamber granted to the Cosmosphere and the parts allocated to the National Air & Space Museum still at SpaceWorks.

A number of the people who worked on the project wrote an academic paper on this conservation effort, and I have a number of F-1-related resources.