Rotary Meeting of August 30, 2012 “A Worthy Endeavour"

Posted by Gary A. Wilson 
 

The Meeting

A packed house came to hear about the Space Shuttles long Journey to end up in Los Angeles on September 20, 2012 about noon.  With any luck they will do a “fly over”, over Los Angeles so that everyone can see the Shuttle arrive.  They did that in Washington and it was pretty special. That is a “maybe” depending on the weather and other conditions that may exist, but that would be pretty neat and I hope it happens.  They expect thousands along Imperial to watch the plane land.

The Endeavour will spend a while at the Airport getting ready for its next mission on October 12th and 13th to travel about 12 miles from LAX to its final home in the California Space Center. (Volunteers are needed to help.  If you want to help call for an application on 213-744-2124 or email VolunteerDept@cscmail.org).

Speaking of those in the room, we had the Mayor, the New Counsel Member Dave Atkinson, The Chief of the Police, the Fire Chief, and on and on.  There were lots of Police present to view the presentation and our own Carlos came in his SWAT team uniform just in case Tom got out of hand.  Tom thought they came to see him -- they did not.  They came to hear about “Endeavour”, Los Angeles soon to be “very own Space Shuttle”. 

I brought a guest that I had met the prior week at the Chamber Mixer at Schat’s.  He is a young fella that may be interested in Rotary and his name is Connor Bescos who is an Information Technology guy (Computer Dude) from Premier Systems in El Segundo.  Very nice guy.  This was a good meeting to take a guest to.  He got a chance to see many of the “Top” people in El Segundo, and Tom too.  While he did sit next to Dick, he said he would like to come back again.  I hope he wasn't just engaging in hyperbole so I am going to call  him.  His favorite ice crème is Mint Chip.  Other visitors in the room also favored the Mint Chip.  That’s mine as well.  Perhaps some at a future meeting for desert is in order..."just sayin".

The Speaker was the Sr. Vice President of Development and Marketing for the California Science Center Foundation, William Harris.  You could tell he loved this presentation and loved the very interesting “journey” to bring the Shuttle to LA.  It was extremely interesting and a nail biter(even though we knew the outcome) as he outlined the process,  and then the countdown waiting for the “decision” phone call that said -- “you got it”.  Some facts about our Space Shuttle follow.

Space Shuttle Endeavour

Endeavour successfully completed 25 missions into space, including the first service mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as the first mission to add a U.S. component to the International Space Station.

Specs

·         Inaugural launch date: May 7, 1992

·         Total number of fliers: 173

·         Total number of orbits: 4,671

·         Total miles traveled: 122,883,151

·         Time in space: 299 days

·         Orbiter length: 122 feet

·         Orbiter height on runway: 57 feet

·         Wingspan: 78 feet

·         Manufacturer: Rockwell International Corporation in Palmdale, California

Famous Firsts

  • First (and only) shuttle named by elementary and secondary students
  • First service mission to the Hubble Space Telescope
  • Assembled the Unity Module, the first U.S. component of the International Space Station
  • Carried the first African-American female astronaut into space (Mae Jemison), the first Japanese astronaut in the shuttle program (Mamoru Mohri) and the first married couple to fly on the same space mission (Mark Lee and Jan Davis)
  • On Endeavour's first spaceflight, four spacewalks were completed in a single shuttle mission, which had never been done before.

Thank you Shirley for making this meeting happen.