Apollo 11 moon mission engines to be hoisted from the deep - Telegraph.co.uk

Nasa expressed excitement about the find. The space agency said it has not been formally contacted by Mr Bezos and waited for more information.

"There has always been great interest in artefacts from the early days of space exploration and his announcement only adds to the enthusiasm of those interested in Nasa's history," Nasa spokesman Bob Jacobs said in a statement.

No timetable has been set for the recovery. When it happens, it'll undoubtedly take longer to hoist the 19ft engines off the sea floor than the 2 1/2 minutes it took for them to power off the launch pad.

The sea floor is littered with spent rockets and flight parts from missions dating back to the dawn of the space age and it's unknown what survived decades later after crashing into the ocean.

In 2009, a private company salvaged Gus Grissom's Mercury capsule that accidentally sank in the Atlantic after splashdown in 1961. It was restored and displayed at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center.

Mr Bezos' planned Apollo recovery is the latest deep-sea adventure by the wealthy. Avatar director James Cameron over the weekend rode a mini-sub to Earth's deepest spot in the western Pacific Ocean, seven miles below the surface, which he described as an alien world. Sir Richard Branson plans a similar dive to the deepest part of the Atlantic, the Puerto Rican trench, later this year.

Mr Bezos was five-years-old when he watched the moon landing on television and became hooked on getting to space. Nasa "sure inspired me, and with this endeavour, maybe we can inspire a few more youth to invent and explore," he wrote.

It was not immediately clear when Bezos' team spotted the Apollo engines. Mr Bezos offered few details about the discovery and did not say how he knew the engines were from Apollo 11. The cost of the recovery was not disclosed, but Mr Bezos said it will be done with private funds.

Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener said Mr Bezos was not available for comment.

Mr Bezos' Blue Origin has been developing a vertical take-off and landing rocket ship that would fly passengers to suborbital space. It has NASA funding to compete to go into orbit as a space taxi now that the space shuttle fleet is retired.

Last year, a test flight went awry when the vehicle became unstable at 45,000ft and crashed.

Source: agencies