GUESS, WHAT IS THIS?
Piece of history. Piece of life. And the life itself – isn’t it a history?
In a few blocks from our home one can see THIS. 
Often I drove by, but never stopped; though always saw this item – on the premises of the company Boeing. But there is no Boeing already. It was Rockwell corporation Rocketdyne Division. Either monument, or tombstone, or sample of something…
And at last I’ve found that it was an engine - rocket engine, F1. Rocket Saturn 5C - the one that brought American astronauts to the Moon - was equipped with this engine
Width – 3,76m; Length – 5.79 m. Thrust (at sea level) – 680.39 t.
At my airspace department at the Bauman Technical University in Moscow our professor told us one day:
“Did you see the small note in the yesterday’s newspaper? Rocket Saturn 5 was launched from point Canaveral, Rocket engine – F1. It is a beginning of new era in space development – remember it!”
New era started with this rocket testing and reached its apogee while landing on the Moon. It was awesome! All the radio stations told the same: “Apollo… the Moon…Apollo…. The Moon…” Nothing was told at that moment by Soviet radio, but we still managed to listen another stations – like “Svoboda” or “Voice of America”
It is hard to imagine now, how this new era passed through our lives. From Moscow, from the first “sputnik”, from that very day, when we saw a small moving star on the dark October sky – and till the slowing this space race… From the lecture in the Bauman School and to this engine, still standing on the plant premises in the hot Los Angeles, California.
