Jordin Kare

Jordin Kare
Born	1956 Ithaca, New York, U.S.
Residence	USA
Fields	Aerospace engineering
Institutions	Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Kare Technical Consulting
Known for	Research on laser propulsion

Jordin T. Kare (born 1956) is a 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. Kare is also known as developer of the Sailbeam interstellar propulsion concept and, in the science fiction fan community, as a composer, performer and recording artist of filk music.

Jordin grew up in the Philadelphia, PA area and attended Harriton High School in Rosemont, PA. 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. Kare is the brother of Susan Kare, designer of the fonts and icons of the original Apple Macintosh user interface.

Kare worked for many years at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In 1996, he left LLNL and, after working briefly for a small space-related startup company, became an independent consultant specializing in advanced space system design in 1997, and started his own company. 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. He is Chief Scientist at LaserMotive, Inc. of LaserMotive, a laser power beaming entrant in the Elevator:2010 Beam Power Challenge.

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