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From Bezos Expeditions
 

The F-1 rocket engine is still a modern wonder — one and a half million pounds of thrust, 32 million horsepower, and burning 6,000 pounds of rocket grade kerosene and liquid oxygen every second.

On July 16, 1969, the world watched as five particular F-1 engines fired in concert, beginning the historic Apollo 11 mission.

Those five F-1s burned for just a few minutes, and then plunged back to Earth into the Atlantic Ocean, just as NASA planned. A few days later, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon.

Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration.

A year or so ago, I started to wonder, with the right team of undersea pros, could we find and potentially recover the F-1 engines that started mankind's mission to the moon?

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.
 

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From En Ria

The Titanic shipwreck has generated a great deal of myths and legends. Some are humorous, and others chilling. But almost all of them suggest that the sinking of the ill-fated luxury liner was destined to be.

A builder trapped in the hull

Sinister rumors emerged while the liner was still under construction. According to one such rumor, the builder team could hear a repetitive tapping noise coming from the Titanic’s second bottom shortly before her completion. It was suggested one or several of the builders may have been trapped in the tank, which served as the inner bottom.

Was Titanic’s hull number anti-Catholic?

After the Titanic disaster, rumors began to spread that the ship’s hull number, 390904, was a secret code used by Irish Protestant builders to express their animosity toward the Roman Catholic Church. It was suggested that if handwritten on paper and viewed through a mirror, the number would read “No Pope.”

“Divine retribution” was not long in coming. The Titanic sank during her maiden voyage, following a fatal collision with an iceberg.

Prophetic dreams

Some of those who booked tickets for the Titanic’s maiden voyage are said to have cancelled their reservations at the last minute after foreseeing the wreck in their sleep.

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By Don Gardner - Macomb Daily

Ross Richardson has spent the last decade searching for and documenting shipwrecks off the coast of west Michigan.

His hobby has been made much easier with recent advancements in side-scan sonar technology. But that technology, Richardson fears, may, 10 years from now, render his hobby obsolete.

The Lake Ann resident discovered three still unidentified wrecks off Sleeping Bear Point, near the Sleeping Bear Dunes in 2011.

They were all discovered about one-half mile from each other in 12-20 feet of water fairly close to the shoreline.

He believes the wrecks were recently uncovered due to shifting sands in the area that were uncovered during a storm, and he happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Sleeping Bear Point is subject to numerous landslides, which probably helped bury the wrecks for years. He believes they all wrecked in the area sometime in the 1850s to the 1890s.

Richardson has not found any cargo at any of the sites, but because the wrecks are in such shallow water, salvagers probably recovered the cargo a long time ago.

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From RT

James Cameron has released the footage of his solo dive to the deepest point in the world's oceans. The world-famous director said he had visited “another planet” – desolate, foreboding and moon-like – and it felt a bit lonely.

“My feeling was one of complete isolation from all of humanity,” he said after returning from the Pacific Ocean’s deepest point, where he traveled alone in a specially designed submarine.

The acclaimed film producer and director, who has created a number of astonishing worlds for millions of viewers all over the world, was amazed by what he saw in the Mariana Trench, even though the view was not nearly as picturesque as his movie-realities.

“There had to be a moment where I just stopped, and took it in, and said, ‘This is where I am; I’m at the bottom of the ocean, the deepest place on Earth. What does that mean ?’” Cameron said after spending three hours at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, nearly seven miles below the surface.

“I just sat there looking out the window, looking at this barren, desolate lunar plain, appreciating it,” Cameron confessed.

Perhaps the only disappointment for the film director was that he did not see any strange deepwater creatures. All those he did encounter were small, but voracious shrimp-like critters not bigger than an inch (2.5 centimeters) in length. 

Cameron says next time he’ll bring “bait” – like chicken. 

There was also one technical malfunction. Just as Cameron was about to collect his first samples of rocks and critters, a leak in the hydraulic fluid sprayed into the water, rendering it impossible to bring anything back. 

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From Calgary Herald
 

Five more bodies have been found in the half-submerged wreck of the Costa Concordia cruise liner, bringing the number of confirmed dead to 30, Italy's Civil Protection agency said on Thursday.

The giant vessel capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio after hitting rocks on Jan. 13. Two people are still unaccounted for.

A spokeswoman for the agency said all the bodies were discovered at the rear of the vessel. It would probably be several days before they could be removed as it would be a complicated operation using robots, she said.

Prosecutors have accused captain Francesco Schettino of causing the accident by bringing the multi-storey Costa Concordia, which was carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew, too close to the shore.

The ship's owner, Costa Cruises, said salvagers would complete operations to pump more than 2,300 tonnes of fuel out of the capsized vessel to-day, removing the threat of an oil spill in the surrounding marine reserve.

"The fuel problem is re-solved," the head of the Civil Protection Agency Franco Ga-brielli told a news conference on the island of Giglio.

By Leanne Smith - Mlive

On Thursday, eight Stockbridge High School students leave for the trip of a lifetime and the ultimate test for the underwater robot they’ve designed, built and tweaked since last September.

The group heads to the Micronesian island chain of Palau where its custom-built robot will dive 125 feet below the ocean surface to search for a B-24 bomber shot down in August 1944 during World War II.

“This will be the ultimate test,” said Buck Poszywak, a junior on the team. “It’s really exciting. “We’ve already been successful in building the robot and raising the money for the trip, but it would be sweet to find that plane.”

The students and their teacher, Bob Richards, are assisting the BentProp Project, which searches for wreckage containing the remains of servicemen still listed as missing in action.

Richards, who spent a 20-year career as a full-time member of the Michigan Army National Guard, knows how important the group’s mission is.

“As a service member, you understand that if you fall in combat you won’t be left behind,” he said. “I’m proud that our students have used their skill in building a robot that could help find missing men.”

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By Troy Patterson - Kincardine News
 

Marine heritage experts are looking at the condition of two local shipwrecks as an opportunity for their host communities to act and prevent further degradation of the sites that claimed lives over a century ago.

The clear, calm and significantly low Lake Huron water levels last week revealed a far greater amount of the shipwreck Ann Maria on Kincardine’s Station Beach than had been in recent years, while increasingly landlocking the Erie Belle boiler on Boiler Beach down the shore in Huron-Kinloss.

The Ann Maria was an American schooner that missed the harbour entrance on Oct. 7, 1902 and was smashed by waves in the shallows off of Kincardine’s beach.

It has been visible for years as water levels have receded. Most of the time, the keel is visible as waves lap at its rusting hull spikes and the massive timber that has weathered winters for over 106 years.

A combination of the lack of ice cover this past winter and wave action has uncovered even more of the ship, with a large portion of the Ann Maria’s hull ribbing visible and over 12 feet of the keel visible just under the waterline and another eight feet on shore, with spikes sticking up out of the sand.

The Walker House Museum, which sits across the street from the historic Kincardine Lighthouse and Ann Maria anchor, which was placed there in 1966, has shown interest in protecting the wreck alongside the municipality, but neither has the knowledge or experience to know how to handle such a project.

Last November, after a The Kincardine News feature on local shipwreck artifacts from the Erie Belle, Carter and George R. Clinton was published and the items were donated to the museum, the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and Culture scolded the museum and diver Carl LaFrance for retrieving the artifacts, which under Ontario law is against the law, but wasn’t when LaFrance retrieved them before the Ontario Heritage Act was put in place in the 1980’s.

The MTC later gave its blessing to see the artifacts; the Erie Belle compass, brass steam vent, chain link and other items, along with the ships log from the J.N. Carter, preserved in the local museum.

The Kincardine News then questioned the MTC and Ontario Underwater Council as to why Kincardine’s wrecks are allowed to fall victim to nature along the shoreline. The MTC also revealed that none of the Kincardine-area wrecks are registered with the government agency.

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By Christina NG - ABC News

Some call it the final frontier. While humans have breached the limitations of land, air and space, the underwater world remains largely untouched.

In addition to researchers and scientists, another group has taken an interest in the underwater unknown--the mega-rich.

The race to the bottom of the sea is being led by director James Cameron and British entrepreneur Richard Branson.

This week, Cameron is launching his unprecedented mission to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the South Pacific. The "Titanic" and "Avatar" director is hoping to make the seven-mile dive as a solo venture, which no one has ever done before.

The only pair to ever make it all the way down made the trip in 1960 and spent only 20 minutes at the site. Cameron hopes to spend six hours shooting footage of the dive for a National Geographic documentary, complete with 3D footage.

Branson unveiled a single-person submarine in April 2011 that he said would break records by exploring the five deepest sea locations of the next two years.

"More people have been to the moon than to that depth of the ocean," Bailey S. Barnard, associate editor of luxury magazine Robb Report, told ABCNews.com.

The magazine for the "ultra-affluent" has written about private submarines in the past and plans to include the vessels in an upcoming "Toys of Summer" feature.

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