Page 12/The Sun and News, Saturday, March 2, 2024TO INFINITY AND BEYOND: Space
exploration calls to TK alum
Jason Morley hopes to find
himself blasting off into space
someday.
If he does, it could very
well be in a rocket he’s had a
hand in designing and build-
ing.
The 2006 Thornapple
Kellogg High School gradu-
ate is a manufacturing engi-
neer focused on designing
and building of space crafts
and propulsion processes. His
boss, Jeff Bezos, has been in
the news a lot about his dream
of creating a road to space
encouraging future genera-
tions to establish a million
people living and working in
space at Blue Origin.
Morley currently spends
most of his time supporting
propulsion for the New Glenn
rocket but has worked across
several areas at Blue Origin
including making direct con-
tributions toward the launch
of the New Shepard Rocket
carrying Bezos above the
Karman line and into space.
“I like the idea of building
something that encourages
and helps others achieve a
permanent presence in space.
I think that’s a cool mark to
leave, especially for the
future,” Morley said.
Morley is excited about the
growth at Blue Origin and the
potential careers for anyone
interested in the space indus-
try.
“We need more minds,
more Einstein’s, more people
exploring creative ways to
make space travel easier,
more capable and more
affordable,” he said. “I want
to motivate others to explore,
enjoy the unknown, find the
joy in looking into things that
are not discovered and then
find ways to tap what they
find to create or reinvent the
wheel. If we don’t discover a
way to make space travel pos-
sible now, it will only get
more difficult to achieve in
the future as resources
become limited.”
Morley was one of the
early employees hired at Blue
Origin and it’s obvious from
talking to him to know how
much he loves what he’s
doing.
“I love the thought that
Earth is this beautiful blue dot
in the middle of our galaxy.
Exploring and seeing what
else is out there, for me, is the
most incredible part because
we only really have what we
can see or experience here on
Earth,” he said.
He’s also excited about the
history-making potential of
his job.
“Our goal is to launch
rockets successfully and land
them so the rockets can be
used over again. It’s one thing
to launch a rocket, it’s some-
thing else to get it back, and
reuse it,” he said.
Morley has always had an
inquisitive mind. It led him to
a manufacturing engineering
degree from Western
Michigan University. He also
credits his father for support-
ing, encouraging him and
introducing him to space.
“My father encouraged me
to learn about how things
work, tearing things apart,
breaking them down to their
most basic parts and under-
standing fundamentally, how
components work on theirown, so you know how they
work as a whole,” he said.
Morley said his father
would never be upset when
he had something torn apart
but didn’t know how to get it
back together.
“He was the most patient
father, amazing role model
and hero I’ve ever had,” he
said.
His father also introduced
him to space.
“He and I would take blan-
kets and pillows to the flat
roof of my childhood home to
watch for meteor showers and
other phenomena and talk
about the amazing planets
and constellations,” Morley
said. “He was also a helicop-
ter pilot and would take me to
work or other aerospace
events which intrigued me
every time.”
Morley moved to
Thornapple Kellogg Schools
when he was in middle
school. He gives his middle
and high school teachers
credit for really cultivating
his passion for engineering
and helping him see what he
wanted to do as a career.
“I think I always kind of
knew I wanted to do some-
thing with space, but it wasn’t
until I was in high school that
my teachers really helped me
realize what I could do,” he
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Farmer recognized for
outstanding wheat yield
A local farmer brought home two awards at the 2023 National Wheat Yield
Awards reception this week. Wayland-based farmer Nick Suwyn (center) was pre-
sented a trophy for second place in the Winter Wheat Irrigated division by NWF
Executive Director Chandler Goule (left) and Bernard Perterson (right) at the
reception held Feb. 28 during the 2024 Commodity Classic event. Suwyn, who
farms in Allegan and Barry County, won the award with his yield of a measured
171.71 bushels per acre with his DF Seeds DF-131 variety. Suwyn attributed his
high yield to being able to apply extra irrigation when needed in the spring dry
months in the Barry and Allegan County areas. He also applied Nitrogen fertilizer
as needed determined by tissue testing of wheat plant leafs during the growing
season. Suwyn’s entry also won him a national second-place quality award in the
Soft Winter Wheat category for which he received an additional cash award.
(Photo by George Hubka/MG News Service)Voters approve
operating millage
renewal for Barry
County Central Dispatch
Jayson Bussa
Editor
Barry County Central
Dispatch will see a slight
bump in funding after
Tuesday’s presidential
primary election.
In the election, which
concluded Tuesday, vot-
ers also passed a renewal
of an operating millage
for Barry County Central
Dispatch that included the
restoration of 0.
mills that had been slowly
lost over the years due to
the Headlee Amendment,
which requires a local
unit of government to
reduce its millage when
annual growth on existing
property is greater than
the rate of inflation.
With the approval of
the operating millage,
Barry County Central
Dispatch will again levy
1.000 mill, an amount
that was originally
approved back in 1992.
Stephanie Lehman,
director for the depart-
ment, said in the days
leading up to the election
that she expected the res-toration of the 0.
mills to generate an addi-
tional $164,860 — assum-
ing all taxes are collected
— for the department,
which would ideally be
used to hire two addition-
al dispatchers for a
department that has seen
its utilization steadily
grow over time but is not
fully staffed.
The department also
faces persistent techno-
logical needs to keep
infrastructure up to indus-
try standards.
While Central Dispatch
has routinely passed pre-
vious operating millages
in the past, Lehman
admitted she was a little
nervous to see how voters
would respond to this
year’s request, as it came
with a small increase with
the Headlee override.
“I was pretty nervous
about it because it is an
increase in cost to the res-
idents of Barry County,
and we’re living in a soci-
ety and a climate right
now where the inflation
rates and things, in mylifetime, have reached an
all-time high,” Lehman
said following the suc-
cessful campaign.
“So, everything is con-
tinuing to cost more and
costs continue to rise and
even though the differ-
ence between the Headlee
(override) and the full
mill was not a huge
amount of money, it is
some.”
The increase will cost the
average property owner an
additional $5 or $6.
Of the 12,756 voters who
weighed in on the topic,
8,166 voted yes (64 per-
cent).
“In a time and age
where everybody is strug-
gling and every house-
hold is making some sort
of concession with today’s
inflation, and just the cost
of life in today’s market,
we are incredibly fortu-
nate to do the work that
we do in a community
that continues to support
their 9-1-1 center,”
Lehman said. “Not every
community is that fortu-
nate.”Thornapple Kellogg alum Jason Morley (left) works
for aerospace company Blue Origin. (Photo provided)