Jordin Kare

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Jordin Kare (1956– ) is a rocket scientist, physicist, and aerospace engineer known for his research on laser propulsion. In particular, he was 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.

1 Background
2 Career
- 2.1 Filk music and science fiction
3 Publications
- 3.1 Academic
- 3.2 Musical
4 Honors
5 External links

[edit] Background

Kare the brother of Susan Kare, designer of the fonts and icons of the original Apple Macintosh user interface. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1978 and Ph.D. in Astrophysics from University of California, Berkeley in 1984.

[edit] Career

Kare 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. He 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.[1]

[edit] Filk music and science fiction

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 TThe Westerfilk Collection: Songs of Fantasy and Science Fiction , an important filksong collection, and later a partner in Off Centaur Publications, the first commercial publisher specializing in filk songbooks and recordings.

[edit] Publications

[edit] Academic

Jordin Kare Laser Launch Bibliography (1986-1992)

[edit] Musical

Article about filk music published in Sing Out! Magazine
Published The Westerfilk Collection, a seminal filk songbook [2]
Self-published two albums of his songs, Fire in the Sky (1991; distributed by Wail Songs) and Parody Violation: Jordin Kare Straight and Twisted (2000)