US Air Force Retires First C-17 Globemaster III Ever Built

The C-17 Globemaster III is a foremost cargo plane for the U.S. Air Force. The first C-17 Globemaster III was basically hand-built by McDonnell Douglas. It flew its first flight on September 15, 1991 with a life expectancy of five years. After 20 years, it finally flew its retirement flight to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. It is expected that the C-17 will be put in a public display the museum’s Air Park this summer.

“This aircraft will serve as the representative C-17 airframe in the museum’s collection, allowing us to share with the public more of the story of the demanding airlift missions facing today’s Air Force,” Lt. Gen. (Ret.) John Hudson, the museum’s director, said in an Air Force report.

When McDonnel Douglas merged with Boeing, it continued the production of C-17 Globemaster III. The aircraft had been rebuilt and refurbished over time which allows it to support other flight and propulsion test programs for the U.S. Airforce, NASA and other agencies. The first C-17 Globemaster III also dabbled in pop culture. It had appeared in the Emmy Award-winning production of “American Soldier” by country singer Toby Keith and in five movies namely “Transformers,” “Iron Man,” “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” “Iron Man 2″ and soon to be released “Superman: Man of Steel.”

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News source: http://www.seattlepi.com

Amazon CEO Wants to Recover Apollo 11 Engines from the Ocean

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, revealed his plans to recover the F-1 engines used on Saturn V rocket that carried the Apollo 11 crew members 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,” Bezos wrote.

“We don’t know yet what condition these engines might be in; they hit the ocean at high velocity and have been in saltwater for more than 40 years,” he added. “On the other hand, they’re made of tough stuff, so we’ll see.”

Bezos shared that he watched the original mission on televison when he was five years old. It had inspired him to dream big, and now he wants to venture on this huge task of recovering the engines.

Each of the spacecraft engines approximately weigh about nine tons and they are clustered into five. Every second, they burned 60,000 pounds of fuel to produce 32 million horsepower. The five engines propelled the largest rocket in history 38 miles up in just under three minutes.

After launching the rocket into space, the engines plummeted into the ocean where it stayed for four decades. NASA had a general idea of its location and a piece of debris landed on a German merchant ship that provided more clues.

Robert Pearlman, a space memorabilia expert, said that there are 65 of these engines launched. Once the engines had been brought back to surface, it can be authenticated by their serial number. But bringing the spacecraft engines up would be a challenge. It can be liken to bring up a big part of the Titanic.

But this venture is hardly the first in retrieving spacecraft memorabilia, in 1999, NASA’s Mercury 7 space capsule piloted by Gus Grissom was found and recovered.

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News source: edition.cnn.com