mastronaut - 4/6/2006 2:45 PMCould an SI-C stage survive ocean impact and has there ever been an attempt to recover any surviving hardware such as the F1 engines? I've always been curious about locations of the stage on the ocean bottom.
Dana - 4/6/2006 6:01 PMI don't know about a big ol' S-1C, but I do know that a Titan II first stage can do it. Here is a pic of the first stage of Gemini 5's Titan II being recovered from the Atlantic by crewmen from the U.S.S. Dupont. No parachutes, no wings, no drag flaps-just plopped into the water like that! And the very fact that it even survived the Titan II's fire-in-the-hole staging process was a feat in and of itself; the Titan II lit its second stage before jettisoning the first, and on some missions, both manned and unmanned, the moment that second stage engine lit it just blew the first stage to pieces. (As with the rather herky-jerky ride into orbit, hey, the WARHEAD never complained....) Didn't get blown up, didn't get torn apart by aerodynamic forces, fell all that way unassisted, didn't shatter when it hit the water. And they were able to find and recover it.