Freed from the Ocean Floor, Restoration of NASA's F-1 Engines Is About To Begin

The big new in space last week came from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos put at least some of his millions towards recovering more than 25,000 pounds of Apollo-era F-1 rocket-engine parts. But the recovery was just the beginning. The twisted, rusted, remnants of the most powerful engines ever built have arrived at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center’s internationally acclaimed SpaceWorks conservation and restoration division where the real work is about to begin.

The F-1 engine was the brainchild of German rocket engineer Wernher von Braun. Five of these massive engines generated 7.5 million pounds of thrust to power the first stage of the massive Saturn V rocket, the one that took Apollo astronauts to the Moon. In the early 1960s when NASA imagines Apollo as the first step to a long-term lunar exploration program, it explored ways of recovering the Saturn V’s first stage with a deployable glider wing, but it proved infeasible given the end of decade lunar landing deadline. And so the first stage was left to fall into the Atlantic, jettisoned less than two minutes and 45 seconds after launch. Since the first Saturn V launched in 1967, every flown F-1s has stayed lost under three miles of water. That is, until Bezos decided to go down and check them out.

What Bezos and his team found was a twisted garden of metal that speaks to the F-1’s brief but violent life and death. The team scoped out the ocean scene using Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) tethered to a mothership by fiberoptic cables for a real-time view. It looked, Bezos commented on the Bezos Expedition website, like an echo of the Moon. Lunar technology spread on a dusty gray and colourless scene set against the blackness of the ocean. The buoyant movements of the ROVs was eerily similar to the gentle movements of the Apollo astronauts bouncing across the Moon. Fish occasionally swam into sight to break the illusion.

From this underwater trove Bezos’ team recovered enough material to fashion displays of two full flown F-1s. But there’s a lot of work to be done on the engines before they will be display ready. And it’s all up to the Smithsonian-affiliated Cosmosphere, which houses the largest collection of U.S. space artifacts outside Washington’s National Air and Space Museum.

To restore the F-1s, conservators, artisans, craftsmen, and engineers will painstakingly separate the recovered pieces. Each will then be flushed continually in 15x20-foot basin with a solution of water and anti-corrosion agents to remove as much ocean debris as possible and limit further decay. Once stabilized, a piece by piece conservation process will begin: thorough cleaning, detailed photography, and a meticulously documented provenance of its components, manufacture, and use. The engines’ engineering designs will be analyzed with modern scanners and technology.

Cosmosphere’s SpaceWorks’ 20,000-square-foot facility is no stranger to restoring space age artifacts. Its done more than 100 major conservation, restoration, fabrication, and replication projects for NASA, including restoration of Gus Grissom’s Liberty Bell 7 capsule. After the hatch opened mid-way through post-flight recovery operations in July of 1961, the capsule sank. It was recovered in 1999 through a Discovery Channel expedition.

For Liberty Bell’s recovery, Spaceworks aimed to reintegrate as many original parts as possible into the final exhibit. Where original parts were missing, similar-looking parts were made using new materials. The final effect is a capsule that looks as close as possible to the original.

The F-1 conservation will be on a similar scale but much more complicated. It will also have a different goal. Spaceworks isn’t endeavouring to recreate an F-1 in looks, it’s working to conserve the artifacts as they are, to preserve the integrity and original materials of the engines and prevent any further damage from corrosion or age. The engines will not be rebuilt with new materials or replicated in any way. One of the key things conservationists will be looking for are serial numbers. If any are still legible on pieces of hardware, it will tell historians exactly what mission the recovered engines launched. And that will really give the artifacts some life.

Before they make their way to museums, the recovered F-1s will be visible in a public gallery throughout the conservation process. And if you can’t get to Kansas but are dying to see restoration in realtime, the museum is working on setting up a website with live conservation webcams.