Rotary Meeting Jan 8,2019

 

                                                                            

Arriving exactly at 7:00 AM both I and Maeve missed the pledge, guest introductions and any new year thoughts our membership may have offered up. As they say, "The early bird catches the worm." In this case our infamous cuckoo clock dictated the start of the meeting, not my cell phone.

 

 Randy took the lead on our Club's family adoption for Christmas. Several hundred dollars donated by our club was spent in order for the family to have a merrier Christmas than what otherwise would have been possible. The family consists of a mother and four daughters, two of whom attend MCAT. Thanks, Randy.

 

President Hunter announced a full court press in our member recruiting process with numerous members assisting.

 

Happy Bucks

John-HNY

Dan-HNY

Randy-a good buck and a bad buck (maybe two good bucks. He was sick for his own NY's party.

Ritchie-Rain is always welcome in our arid state.

Rachel-HNY and family time

Beckie-Better weather here than SLC

Don-Family time in Seattle and nicer weather too

Denise-Sick???????

Peter-Daughter married Saturday and a shout out to Randy for Family sponsorship at Christmas

Bob-Friends in town. Oh, and Linda here with him this morning as well as guest speaker.AND IDENTICAL TWIN GRANDKIDS born over the weekend

 

Joke Off

Lynne- I think it goes like this: Preacher and Cab driver arrive at the pearly gates at the same time and the cab driver gets a bigger halo. The preacher naturally challenges this and when questioned admitted that sometimes his sermons were boring and put people to sleep. St Peter explained that nobody ever slept in the aggressive taxi cab owners vehicle and many were driven to praying for their lives. 

 

Maeve

How can I clean this up? This is beginning to be weekly problem with Maeve as she dives into ever sinking depths of lurid humor to get a laugh and beat out Lynne for the Joke of the Day crown.

Okay, here goes: If you are taking a dump at the stroke of midnight on New Years Eve is it the SOS different year?

 

Maeve wins! Must admit she knows her audience.

 

John won and lost the raffle with a 6 of diamonds.

 

 Our guest speaker, invited to our club by Bob Bishop, was retired aerospace legend Burt Rutan. Burt was "twice" awarded the Collier Trophy presented to those who have made "the greatest achievement in aeronautics in America..........."

Throughout his career he has worked on 46 manned research airplanes.Born into a family of Seventh Day Adventists sports were not allowed. At a very young age he was amazed to witness a low flying fleet of B36's and became enamored with building model planes. His first business after graduating from Cal Poly was started in 1973. It was the manufacturing of home built airplane kits. One of his companies founded in 1986 now has 600 employees. He is justifyingly proud of the "real" jobs and the tax revenue they create as opposed to government jobs that are 100% tax supported and created.

 

Much of Mr Rutan's talk dealt with the significant demise of NASA and space exploration. The 1965 NASA budget was 5.3% of the total US budget. Today's budgeted dollars are less than one tenth of that 1965 number. He mentioned his disappointment after the meeting with the fact that China appears to want to take the lead in space exploration and the recent deployment of a rocket and lander/rover to the far side of the moon and the simultaneous launching of the communication satellite since there is no direct line of sight to the far side of the moon. To drive home this disturbing trend he noted no one born after 1935 has walked on the moon. 

 

Mr Rutan was proud of the fact that a piece of the carbon filter from one of his early creations is on the Horizon Spacecraft that has passed Pluto and recently returned photos of Ultima Thule, 4 billion miles from earth. His belief is if you are doing things that are doable you are in Product Development. If you are working on things that are questionably even possible you are doing Research.

 

His most recent project, funded to the tune of 23 million by recently deceased Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is the Stratolaunch. its purpose to heave a half-million-pound rocket ship to cruising altitude and then drop it, whereupon the rocket would ignite its engines for a fiery ascent into space. Allen’s hope was that this extraordinary bird would be able to do quick laps between the ground and the stratosphere, making access to space no more exotic than a New York–to–Boston commuter flight. Launch is expected to be the fall of 2019.

 

One could not help but be reminded of The Spruce Goose masterminded by Howard Hughes and its one solo flight. With Elon Musk's SpaceX reusable rockets driving the costs down and reliability up does the Stratolaunch face the same fate? Only time will tell.

 

Today was a special day for our club. Seldom do we have the opportunity for such a distinguished person in their field speak to us. A winner of the prestigious Wernher Von Braun Memorial Award, named for the famous German rocket scientist who came to the USA after WWII, Mr Rutan provided us with a meeting to remember. As stated above he is truly a legend in the field of aerospace.

 

Board meeting John's office at 5:30PM Wednesday 1/9/2019.