Super Fan Dr. Jim Thorne

[00:00:00] Hey, thanks for listening to the BIG Sci-Fi Podcast. This is our In-Between Season Shorts, shorter episodes

[00:00:07] where we invited some of our biggest fans to talk about their favorite areas of fandom.

[00:00:13] Don't miss a single episode here on the BIG Sci-Fi Podcast. This podcast is a part of the Trek Geeks podcast network.

[00:00:23] Hey everyone, welcome back to the BIG Sci-Fi Podcast in between season content.

[00:00:29] Believe it or not, we recently wrapped up season six and we're doing something different this time in between seasons.

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[00:01:02] Doing stuff like this helps us get discovered by other fans like you.

[00:01:07] Speaking of fans, next up we have Dr. Jim Thorne, fan of the show who

[00:01:13] we met at Balticon. Was it Balticon a couple years ago? Yes, yes, and that was awesome.

[00:01:21] And so we've been getting to know each other since and I guess the first getting to know you question for just everybody now is

[00:01:28] tell us about your top three-ish sci-fi fandoms.

[00:01:33] Well, as I like to say,

[00:01:36] may the Force live long and prosper. So say we all.

[00:01:40] That kind of gets all three of them in there.

[00:01:43] Trek and Star Wars and Battlestar, absolutely.

[00:01:47] Original Battlestar or Spasscar? Battlestar, new Battlestar or both?

[00:01:52] Oh, both. I love them both. The first one was just so campy and the second one was very thought-provoking.

[00:01:59] Yeah, I'm not as familiar with the first one. I know I've seen it,

[00:02:04] but I did watch the second one and I know we've spoken a few times

[00:02:07] to somebody that do for a rewatch of the second one especially.

[00:02:12] I agree. I need to find it. I haven't watched it, but I need to find it somewhere.

[00:02:16] I don't know where to look. Need help?

[00:02:19] Well, I tell you too, I love that you like Star Wars and Star Trek

[00:02:24] because they can exist in the same universe peacefully, folks.

[00:02:29] Yes, yes, they can coexist. We can do this.

[00:02:33] And enjoy both.

[00:02:34] Yes, once a year, I volunteer at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and work with a lot of kids.

[00:02:40] I write songs to teach kids about space science and history, but once a year, the weekend of Halloween,

[00:02:46] they have air and scare and the families bring their kids in costume and there's a lot of Star Wars cosplay.

[00:02:53] So I'll stand there with R2-D2 and do this. And they say, oh, you can't do that.

[00:02:58] I said, well, Trek was first deal. That's right. Exactly.

[00:03:02] Well, your namesake is in the background of Brian and I just thought I'd bring him along on my glass as well.

[00:03:11] Jim.

[00:03:15] So if you're doing that at the Smithsonian, does that mean you're cosplaying and dressing up as favorite characters?

[00:03:21] I have not done that there. I generally dress up in the same stuff I use to do the

[00:03:27] story time programs for the children about pre-K through third grade, usually.

[00:03:32] But since you're asking, I have dressed up in the past back in the ancient time of 1991.

[00:03:39] I dressed up in a Star Trek next generation costume that was custom made by my then mother-in-law

[00:03:45] out of the full wool gabardine looked beautiful and I looked like Riker, at least I was trying to.

[00:03:50] And I was in Los Angeles. I got to meet my boyhood hero, Jimmy Dewin

[00:03:55] and tell him that I am an astronautical engineer in part because of his portrayal. And he beamed at me

[00:04:03] and said, I love it when people tell me that. So then I got caught in the hallway by some

[00:04:09] paramount production people who I guess like the uniform. And then when I told them I'm an

[00:04:14] astronautical engineer and I work with NASA on projects because I wasn't living in my mother's

[00:04:20] basement and had a real job, I guess they decided to have, I'm kidding, they had me put on

[00:04:25] or do a little interview for them. And that's how I have an IMDb credit on NBC for the Star Trek,

[00:04:31] the 25th anniversary special if you want to look it up.

[00:04:34] Oh, wow.

[00:04:35] Wow.

[00:04:36] For sure.

[00:04:36] Yeah, that's awesome.

[00:04:37] Great.

[00:04:38] Oh, there's a few interesting things about saying that. So one, I also met Jimmy Duhan

[00:04:43] around the same time period, but I'm a little younger. I was in high school.

[00:04:47] And so I told him that I was planning to go into the aerospace industry, not that I had yet.

[00:04:53] But in that timeframe, I struggled to meet people. And again, this was pre,

[00:05:00] as everyone knows, this is pre-internet days, pre any of this. So it's harder to meet people

[00:05:04] out of your circles, your family and everything. And so I struggled to meet people who were

[00:05:12] Star Trek and science fiction fans who then were in the industry. And that, a lot of people

[00:05:18] that I would go to conventions and I would meet people, they weren't in the industry. And I was

[00:05:23] shocked because I'm like, how is everyone not motivated by this? It was very, very, now I know

[00:05:30] a lot. I know a lot of people. I found all the people that are. But yeah.

[00:05:35] At that same convention, I got to meet, I'm sorry, I got to meet Gene Roddenberry too,

[00:05:39] which to me was a real peak of the whole thing. And I met all the original cast except for

[00:05:45] William Shatner.

[00:05:47] He's still on time. He's still on the ramp.

[00:05:49] That's true. That's true. Yeah, yeah.

[00:05:51] I met Shatner was just in my hometown here, Heart Rail Ohio, selling off his clothing items.

[00:05:58] And I got to represent the big sci-fi. Stay tuned for an episode soon guys of talking about that

[00:06:04] auction. But yeah. Well, I've been listening to Bill do an audio book of one of his Captain

[00:06:11] Kirk returns novels from my back because I'm recording my own audio book version with my

[00:06:17] own voice of the novel that I just released this year called Journey to Interes. And I found that

[00:06:22] my voice was so relaxed it was putting me to sleep when I was editing. So I just listened

[00:06:27] to the master and turn up ham to 11 and see, you know, if I can do a little more acting on

[00:06:34] the audio. Gotcha. Gotcha. Cool. Well, I'm impressed about your association with

[00:06:40] the National Aeronautical Space Museum. I've been there once in 2009. And remember going into the

[00:06:50] bookstore and seeing the enterprise hanging from the ceiling. Oh, yeah.

[00:06:54] And now it's in a better place. So I'm hoping to get back to Washington again because I do

[00:07:00] want to see all the major changes. I subscribe to the Air and Space magazine.

[00:07:05] So I've been following all the stories about what they're doing to make that place even more

[00:07:13] spectacular. What happened was a year or so ago, maybe two Jeff Bezos of Amazon dropped 200 mil

[00:07:19] on the Air and Space Museum. And that was more money than they were expecting, which is a good

[00:07:24] problem to have. But it means that there's more work going on, especially in the downtown mall

[00:07:29] location as they call it. Yes, that's the one. Right. So it's going to take longer,

[00:07:33] but that's because they're going to do more cool stuff. And they're going to build a new

[00:07:37] education center at one end of it. And they want to use some of my songs and material

[00:07:42] for outreach to the kids, including a song I wrote about Europa. When I was with NASA,

[00:07:50] Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, I was working trajectory design to go to Jupiter and explore

[00:07:54] a moon called Europa. And that's partly what I'm doing here in the Space Conference I'm

[00:07:59] attending. So Europa Clipper, which is an upcoming mission, is that the mission or?

[00:08:04] That's exactly the mission. And the head of that mission and system design is a buddy of mine.

[00:08:09] And he likes my song, Mission to Europa. So if you go to YouTube,

[00:08:13] forgive me for plugging, but if you go to Europa and put Jim Thorn, you will find a

[00:08:20] slideshow video I created for my television show, which was called Space Quest with Dr.

[00:08:24] Jim, that's public access and got rebroadcast all over the country. But I made these slideshow

[00:08:30] videos as part of the television show. So go look it up on YouTube if you want to take a mission

[00:08:36] with my heroes that are the same characters as in my book when they drop a submarine into

[00:08:41] the ice of Europa to look for life. And a friend of mine animated this for the

[00:08:47] Sky Show at a planetarium where I live. And she made the submarine robot yellow.

[00:08:52] And I never thought of that.

[00:08:57] We all live in the Yellow Submarine over here.

[00:09:02] That's great. Oh my goodness. Wow, this is beyond just talking about science fiction movies.

[00:09:10] We have science facts right here. This is great.

[00:09:13] Yes. For a little technical cred, if you want another fact check that you want to do on me,

[00:09:20] you can look up Thorn's solution of the Lambert problem. It is an initial orbit

[00:09:27] determination problem that goes back hundreds of years. And as a grad student, without knowing

[00:09:32] that there wasn't supposed to be a solution explicitly, I found one and they named it

[00:09:37] after me and it's in textbooks. And that's again part of what I do with the American

[00:09:42] Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Congratulations. Thanks. I was not intending

[00:09:47] to do that. I tried stuff until it worked and then there you are.

[00:09:53] That's what Einstein, I think it was Einstein who said the quote is attributed to him. It's not

[00:09:58] that you're looking for Eureka. No, it's Asimov that said it. It's you're looking for like,

[00:10:02] huh, that's funny. I love the Asimov. Yes. We've been going on about this and we still

[00:10:12] Is there any other science fiction questions? That's okay.

[00:10:19] Well, it's going to ask where people can find your book because you mentioned Jeff Beza. So I'm

[00:10:24] assuming Amazon perhaps? It is. It's on Amazon. It's called Journey to Antares, which is a real

[00:10:31] star and a friend of mine who's an astronomer and an oil painter did the cover. It's beautiful.

[00:10:38] It's got a science glossary in the back. There are certain words that are in bold so that it can

[00:10:43] be used hopefully for homeschool. I was really trying to make it an educational thing. It's a

[00:10:47] young adult space adventure novel, not a children's book, although it is based on the scripts I wrote

[00:10:52] for my television series. And yeah, you can find it on Amazon and hopefully by the end of the

[00:10:58] year or so on Audible as well. Oh my, that's great. That's excellent. So I'll just ask this

[00:11:04] quick question. Did you learn about our podcast through Adina or just how did you find out about

[00:11:13] it? Oh, definitely. I learned about it through Adina. She was very kind and has kept in contact

[00:11:19] with me in various ways and I asked if I could at some point sit in. I've done some other

[00:11:26] podcasts where I live with the local radio station but that's how I did it and I really

[00:11:32] appreciate the support. Thank you, Adina. Is this his audition tape, Adina?

[00:11:40] Well, we will definitely have you back on the podcast Dr. Thornton to talk about any of those.

[00:11:47] We haven't done a Star Wars podcast in a while my friends. Maybe we have him on to talk about

[00:11:53] Star Wars with them. I would love to if I may say one quick thing. I've performed now

[00:11:58] in schools at the museum, libraries, planetariums. I keep careful track for over 10,000 elementary

[00:12:05] students and I do a question and answer thing for school assemblies. The single question that I get

[00:12:11] more than any other is Dr. Jim, are aliens real? And since they asked me that, I'm mentioning

[00:12:18] this because that's why I wrote the book that I did about it's the first contact story in

[00:12:23] the future and what I tell the kids is we don't know but we're listening and so I just wanted

[00:12:27] to mention that was the motivation for it. Nice, absolutely. That's excellent. Well, thank you so

[00:12:33] much for coming on to our in-between season content. This has been interesting and Steve,

[00:12:40] when you get out this way, we'll do something with the museums and find it when I've seen...

[00:12:46] Hey, I'll come up too. I'll come over. Yes, because you're a fairly easy drive away.

[00:12:51] Washington's about five hours away. Great, great. And to our viewers and listeners,

[00:12:57] thank you very much for tuning in. Again, like, subscribe, share, do all those things that you

[00:13:02] got to do to help folks like us. We appreciate you so much and stay tuned for the next fan

[00:13:09] that we talk to for our in-between season content. Have a great day.