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JUNE 10TH in NEW DIGS
at the BEL AIR
Yes, we moved up in class quite a
bit. The Main Dining Room had one table for ten, and the other tables
were all for six – and every seat was filled! It was a great program,
and a really memorable meeting. PDG ANDY ANDERSON started us off with
the Pledge, followed by that well-known duo of JACK HARRIS and PP JIM
DOWNIE, with God Bless America. LEO TSENG provided the Invocation.
“This week America lost a great leader, and the world lost a good and
decent man. His legacy brings us the best of hope, not the worst of
fear.” We joined in a moment of silence in his honor. Thank you LEO,
for an excellent tribute.
There were a lot of guests. TONY
MARRONE brought his wife, Veniece, and Bob Wilson. Program Chair SALLY
BRANT had Susan Rasich, President of the World Affairs Council. RALPH
WOODWARD came with his wife, Bettye. LILLIAN KLIEWER brought along her
daughter, Christy, who just graduated from the 8th grade –
which got some applause, of course. Pres. PETER was joined by his wife,
Shirley. PP JIM COLLINS came with his neighbor, Bob Greer. And our
Speaker, Dennis Tito, brought his wife, Elizabeth. We had a Visiting
Rotarian, Mike Leider, from Pasadena – who tells us that his club
brought in FORTY FIVE new members this year!
Pres. PETER reported briefly on
his ten days with other Flying Rotarians in Hawaii. There were 32 in
his group, in six planes plus a charter, and they landed on five
islands.
PETER suggested we all consider
one of the many Rotary Fellowships that might be of interest. It’s a
very wide range of programs – and of course, PP RON LYSTER, as the
founder of the Motorcycling Fellowship, can give you more information.
This brought up the question of use of our Club website, and a survey,
based on hands being raised, was undertaken. Quite a few of the members
do check the site frequently.
The new 75th
Anniversary Group Picture was passed around, and we were asked to mark
the sheets on each table if you would like a copy. In the ensuing
program, I’m not sure if those sheets got picked up – but we do need to
know of your interest, as you can understand. This in turn led to a
seven minute interval, just for fellowship.
SALLY BRANT introduced our
Speaker, Dennis Tito. He has a BS in Astronautics from NYU, and an MS
from Rensselaer Polytechnic in Engineering Science. His first job was
at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, when he was just 23. His basic assignment
was the design of the trajectories for the Mariner spacecraft missions
to Mars and Venus. In 1972, he changed careers, founding Wilshire
Associates, which applies mathematical formulas to advise a wide variety
of institutional and high net worth investors worldwide.
His team of 250 professionals
advises on about one trillion dollars in assets, directly manages about
ten billion, and provides analytical tools to some 350 institutions.
Dennis began by ‘confessing’ that
he is passionate about space travel (surprise!). He gives a lot of
talks about his space journey, and it can pay off – when he spoke to the
Stanford Alumni of WLA a little over a year ago, that’s where he met his
wife, Elizabeth!
His interest in Space began when
the Soviets launched Sputnik – some 45 years ago – and he has sought a
way to actually travel in space for years. His job at JPL paid $670 a
month – but there weren’t very many individuals around at that time who
understood and could provide the analytical methodology required in
space science. So he left JPL after five years - but his quest to
travel in space continued. Meanwhile he enrolled in the PhD program at
UCLA, studying finance, which enabled him to found Wilshire
Associates... While he devoted the great majority of his time to
developing his investment firm for the next three decades, his space
‘hobby’ continued to interest him. During his continuing quest to
achieve space travel, he learned that the Russian Space Program was
short of funds. He began talking to them several years ago, and
finally, in June of 2000, they agreed to let him participate in a trip
to their Mir space station. The price was twenty million dollars, which
as he pointed out, was after-tax dollars!
He thus began an eight month
regimen of training, and he reminded us that boot camp when you are
young may be OK, but at his older age, it wasn’t much fun. He was
living in a two-room flat – somewhat different from his comfortable
residence in Pacific Palisades. And being told what to do by
sergeant-types didn’t go down too well, either. However, he stuck to it,
training for eight months in Russia – and then the Mir space station was
abruptly decommissioned! But because the Russians had made a commitment
to Dennis, they were able to switch him over to the International Space
Station. NASA, of course, pretty much felt they owned the Space Station
– which was true – and they weren’t enthusiastic about any civilian
being involved with it. This was particularly true of an American
civilian, since the Challenger disaster had caused the death of another
U.S. citizen.
However, the Russians were
determined to have him fly in their Soyuz craft, and NASA finally
relented. On April 28th, 2001, he and two Russians were
launched from Baikonur, Kazakhstan atop the same type of Russian ICBM
that started the space race in 1957. He showed footage of his actual
liftoff, and it took just 8 minutes and 50 seconds to achieve orbit. He
was aware that earlier astronauts had peaked heart rates of 130 to 140
beats per minute, and when he asked the Russians what his own heart had
done, his rate stayed at 72. His theory was that his heart was just too
old to get excited…He then showed some videos he took on his Sony inside
the capsule, to show how modern everything was, including the Posits on
the control panel! At this point, he was orbiting 240 miles above
earth.
The views from the Soyuz were
spectacular, and he also showed some slides from his Nikon S Five, which
provided better resolution – but the real point here is that you can see
many things on earth from space. They made 32 orbits – each one lasting
about an hour and a half, over the next two days – and they then
approached the International Space Station. This was shown on a B&W
monitor – they later did get a color instrument, but it again indicates
how basic their equipment was. Their speed in space was 18,000 mph, and
they approached the ISS at a rate of inches per second. After docking,
he showed more videos, noting they were traveling five miles per second,
or three hundred miles per minute. This would translate into an eight
minute trip from LA to NY.
Aboard the ISS, he offered videos
of the sleeping area. He showed his sleeping bag, and was holding the
camera with one hand while propelling himself along with the other hand
– this the result of weightlessness, of course. His six days aboard were
almost entirely in the Russian section, since he wasn’t welcome in the
US section, somehow. One of his most entertaining videos showed a young
Russian crew member, somersaulting and flipping about in the compartment
– and he commented that you can’t really do these things, once you get
older. Dennis took along thirty hours of Opera CDs, and spent a lot of
time just playing them, and looking at the earth. This was possible for
him, of course, since while the crew was working, his time was entirely
free.
Q&A – DON NELSON, What did you
eat. They had all kinds of food aboard, but he was so tired of Russian
food that he tried everything else. I asked how hard they hit the
ground upon reentry. Your capsule comes down, slowed by a parachute,
and with reverse thrusters at work, so he didn’t think it was a very
hard landing. Someone asked about sleeping, and he said you zip
yourself into your bag, and sleep very well. LILLIAN KLIEWER wanted to
know about his introduction to weightlessness. They first take you up in
an airplane, and on a falling parabola, there is about 25 seconds of
zero gravity. He was also in a centrifuge, which produced eight times
his normal weight. He liked the cramped space capsule. PP STEVE
SCHERER, Why was the U.S. wary about your trip. “Only God Knows”, but
some guesses include the lingering fear of a repeat of the Challenger
tragedy, his age might have been a factor – and after all, here he was,
an ordinary guy in SPACE! DENNIS CORNWELL, upon learning the Tito and
his wife would be returning to Russia soon, inquired if by chance they
needed a Travel Agent.
Great Stuff - we all loved it
(and those fancy digs aren’t bad either).
YOE, Ernie Wolfe |