I can trace my budding interest in space development back to the early 1970s when as a teenager I watched Star Trek, saw 2001: A Space Odyssey and voraciously read Analog Science Fiction and Fact. In high school, as an amateur astronomer I built two telescopes by hand and wrote a report on space solar power satellites in my senior physics class. I dreamed of going to the stars. Then l learned about the limitations imposed by the laws of physics, but I became hooked on space advocacy after reading the High Frontier and have been a Senior Associate of the Space Studies Institute since its early days, as well as a member of the National Space Society. I always believed that the Gerard K. O’Neill’s vision of space settlement would be realized and hoped it would be within my lifetime.
I have a Bachelors Degree in Physical Science with a minor in Astronomy from UC Berkeley. In 1980 I was hired as a Product Assurance Engineer at Varian Associates (now Communications and Power Industries) where I worked on a Department of Energy program to develop a 200 kilowatt continuous wave microwave tube called a gyrotron used in fusion energy research.
All through the 1980s I continued my hobby as an amateur astronomer and began photographing celestial objects and selling them at art shows. In 1986 I traveled to New Zealand to photograph Halley’s Comet.
During the 90s I joined Project Astro, a program of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific fostering collaboration between amateur astronomers and K-12 teachers to bring space science lesson plans into the classroom.
In 1992, after being laid off from Varian at the end of the Reagan defense build up, I got started in the Medical Device Industry where I’ve held positions as a Sr. Quality Engineer, Quality Manager and Director of QA and Regulatory Affairs at both small start-ups as well as larger established medical device companies
From 1990 to 1993 I published a bi-monthly newsletter called Space Colonization Progress. From 1993 to 1995 I was Technical Editor for the Spacefaring Gazette, the newsletter of the Golden Gate Chapter of the National Space Society.
More recently, in 2016 I participated in March Storm, an annual project of the Alliance for Space Development where private citizens travel to Washington DC and meet with members of Congress advocating for support of space development initiatives. I’m also a lifetime member of Icarus Interstellar. In 2019 I joined the Advisory Board of the One Giant Leap Foundation which controls and operates The Space Show created and hosted by Dr. David Livingston.
Having recently retired I can now devote more of my time to space advocacy and continuing my efforts of popularizing research and technology that will enable human settlement of the solar system and beyond. That’s what this blog is all about.
John Jossy can be reached at jajossy123 at gmail dot com
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