Jeff Bezos: A Small Step for a Man, A Deep Dive to Recover the Gear

Deep water exploration is the hip thing to do these days, whether you’re James Cameron hanging out with “extremophiles” in the deepest, darkest depths of the ocean, or if you’re Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who announced he’s discovered important Apollo 11 artifacts 14,000 feet below the surface. 

Bezos privately financed the so-called “F-1 Engine Recovery expedition.” His team used sonar to detect the five enormous engines that powered Apollo 11’s historic launch in July, 1969 that landed the first men on the moon. After launch, the rockets dropped to the bottom of the ocean and have been missing ever since. 

Bezos and his team hope to recover at least one of the rockets. Additional rockets could be put on display in a museum, he suggested. After all, the purpose for this endeavor, Bezos said, was to inspire young people to explore. 

“NASA is one of the few institutions I know that can inspire five-year-olds,” Bezos added. “It sure inspired me, and with this endeavor, maybe we can inspire a few more youth to invent and explore.”

This sentiment is shared by Big Think favorite Neil deGrasse Tyson, who calls this phenomenon the “NASA effect.” Tyson says all the tax dollars we have put into NASA have been worth it, and then some, and our commitment to NASA ought to be continued. “You will stoke a pipeline of engineers and scientists as never before,” he told Big Think.  

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