Jordin Kare

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jordin Kare (1956 - ) is a rocket scientist, known for his research on laser propulsion. He is also active in science fiction fandom and filk music.

1 General
2 Education
3 Professional activities
4 Publications
5 Honors

[edit] General

Jordin Kare is a physicist and aerospace engineer. Educated at MIT and the University of California, Berkeley, he worked for many years at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In 1997, he left LLNL and, after working briefly for a small space-related startup company, became an independent consultant specializing in advanced space system design.

Jordin Kare is also known as a science fiction fan and filksinger. He has been a regular attendee and program participant at science fiction conventions since 1975. He was an editor of The Westerfilk Collection, an important filksong collection, and later a partner in Off Centaur Publications, the first commercial publisher specializing in filk songbooks and recordings.

He is married to Mary Kay Kare and currently lives in Seattle. He is the brother of Susan Kare, designer of the fonts and icons of the original Apple Macintosh user interface.

[edit] Education

Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (MIT 1978)

Bachelor of Science in Physics (MIT 1978)

Ph.D. in Astrophysics (University of California, Berkeley 1984)

[edit] Professional activities

Jordin Kare is a leading advocate of laser propulsion for space launch and in-space propulsion. He organized a 1986 Workshop on Laser Propulsion at LLNL and later led a development program for ground to orbit laser launch supported by SDIO. He has received a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts grant to study a near-term form of laser launch using arrays of relatively low powered lasers; the final report is available online.

He was also responsible for Mockingbird, a conceptual design for an extremely small (75 kg dry mass) reusable launch vehicle, and was involved in the Clementine lunar mapping mission.

[edit] Publications

[edit] Academic

A considerably out-of-date bibliography of his publications on Laser Launch

[edit] Musical

Article about filk music published in Sing Out! Magazine
Published the Westerfilk Collection, a seminal filk songbook
Self-published two albums of his songs, Parody Violation and Fire in the Sky