Physicist, rocket designer, laser propulsion proponent, co-founder of LaserMotive, and music composer Jordin Kare passed away last week: Remembering Jordin Kare (1956-2017) – Centauri-Dreams)

We’ve just lost a fine interstellar thinker. Jordin Kare has died of aortic valve failure at age 60. While Kare played a role in the Clementine lunar mapping mission and developed a reusable rocket concept in the 1990s that he thought could be parlayed into a space launch system (in typical Kare fashion, he called it “DIHYAN,” for ‘Do I Have Your Attention Now?’), it is through a laser sail system called SailBeam and a ‘fusion runway’ concept that he will most likely be remembered among those who study starflight. But he was also an active science fiction fan, ‘filksinger’ and poet whose name resonates wherever science fiction fans gather.

Here is Jordin’s song “Fire in the Sky“, sung by Kristoph Klover from the To Touch the Stars album of space inspired music.