What are my bids for this 25 feet tall, 160 feet long and 135 feet wide and weigh around 8.2 million pound launcher?

What is are 25 feet tall,  160 feet long and 135 feet wide and weigh around 8.2 million pounds?

NASA's historic mobile launch platform, or MLPs, famous for holding Saturn 5s and the Shuttle as they made their way from the VAB to the launch area.  

 NASA presently owns 3 of these behemoths.  The agency is entertaining concepts for the potential use or divestment of three historic launch platforms that are not needed for the agency's current or planned future missions.  

Are you reading this correctly?  Key words.....Saturn, Shuttle.   I would add in unique and historic.

Can you say short sighted?  Irreplaceable?  Of course we have seen what Nasa considers mothballing or storage....

Read the NASA post here

Apollo Era Engines Recovered from the Depths?

From the Miami Herald via Xnewsman and others, is word that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has made good on his promise and has raised an engine thought to be from the Apollo Saturn rocket that launched American astronauts towards the moon. Bezos and NASA on Wednesday that the rusty relics fished from the bottom of the Atlantic may well be parts to two Saturn V F-1 engines of which the Saturn main stage had 5. Bezos says it is difficult to determine which mission they came from, as the serial numbers have corroded off most of the exposed surfaces. NASA is helping track down the information on the engines.

 NASA's Saturn V still holds the record for the only rocket to take humans beyond earth orbit as well as holding the record for largest payload. Fully fueled, the Saturn tipped the scale a 6.5 million pounds. It could loft 260,000 pounds to low Earth orbit (leo) of which 90,000 could be delivered to Moon orbit.

Read more at the WIKI site here And the Miami Herald here

Thanks to Xnewsman for the info

Apollo 11's Saturn V F1 Engine(s) Found!

The F-1 rocket engine designed in the 60s is still able to amaze and out perform engines far far younger. Consider it could produce one and a half million pounds of thrust, 32 million horsepower, and it was capable of gulping down 6,000 pounds of rocket fuel consisting of rocket grade kerosene and liquid oxygen every second. The huge Saturn V launcher fielded five of these behemoths! What many have forgotten is that the Saturn V was ONLY the first stage! On launch, the Saturn Vs main engines fired all at once, burned for about 2 minutes and 41 seconds. This would lift the whole stack to an altitude of 42 miles. The first stage was then jettisoned, where it fell back to Earth into the ocean.

Amazon founder and space entrepreneur Jeff Bezos has announced that the Apollo 11 rocket engines have been found on the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. They are now lying laying in water 14,000 feet deep.

Bezos says:

• 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

Bezos points out that the engines are still the property of NASA and they will make the final decision as to where the recovered engines go, however he hopes that if there is more than one recovered, NASA would be gracious enough to allow one to go to the Seattle Museum of Flight.

Saturn V wiki  

Bezos Expeditions

Video of Steve Eves Saturn V model launch

Remember the earlier article about Steve Eves who built and planed to launch the world's largest model rockt? Well Steve's model of the Saturn V did in fact have a successful launch and here is the video!

World's Largest Saturn V Model's Maiden Flight Flawless!

The world's largest Saturn V "model" rocket leaped off the pad and into the record books on April 25th . The 36 foot tall model was custom built by Steve Eves. Here is an earlier Gizmodo article about Eves project


Saturn V Model Rocket from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

Model Builder Creates 3 Story Model of Saturn V - That Flies!

Here is a really interesting story in Rocketry Planet which concerns a man's fascination with the
Apollo space program. In particular the largest rocket NASA ever built - the massive Saturn lifting system commonly known as Saturn V. Steve Eves has been interested in rockets since astronauts first stepped onto the Moons surface. This lead him to experiment with model rockets and will cumulate in the near future with the launch of the largest model rocket ever built. Eves has built a 1/10 scale model of the Saturn V that stands over 3 stories in height and weighs in at almost a ton and when all the engines are installed, the model will have eight thousand pounds of static thrust. This certainly isn't the type of rocket you launched as a child.

Check out Eves story in Rocketry Planet - it really is a fun read.