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John K. Strickland, Jr. Print bio

John K. Strickland, Jr.

John K. Strickland, Jr. is Member of the Board of Directors and Chair of the Awards Committee at the National Space Society (NSS). He is also an Advocate with the Space Frontier Society, a Director of the Cryonics Institute and a Director of the Protect Lake Travis Association. He coauthored Settling Space and Developing Space with our Sam Spencer.
 
John has been an active member of space- and science-related organizations since 1961, when he joined the American Rocket Society as a student member. In 1975 he joined both the National Space Institute and the L-5 Society — the “parents” of NSS. He was the founder of the Austin Space Frontier Society (a chapter of the NSS) and has served as its chairman from 1981 to the present. He created the Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award for the National Space Society in 1988, (shortly after the author’s death), and has managed the award from its inception. He also worked on the design and production of the Von Braun Award and the O’Neill Award.
 
In 1988, John was a founder of the NSS Chapters Assembly, and served as one of its officers. His involvement with both Austin environmental groups and CSICOP (now CSI) — a national group working for better science coverage and less pseudo-science in the mass media — has given him a unique perspective on such controversial issues as energy vs. environment.
 
Since 1976, he has produced articles for “The Humanist,” “L5 News”, “Ad Astra”, “Space News”, “Solar Power”, “The Space Review”, “NASAWatch”, and other local and regional publications. His articles have focused primarily on national space policy, access to space, in-space transport, and space solar power. His creation of a slide show and talk in 1990, explaining and promoting space solar power to non-technical audiences, led to the publication of his first technical SPS article in 1995, and a second in 1996.
 
He served as the director for science and space programming (about 50 events) at the 1997 LoneStarCon World Science Fiction Convention. He contributed a comprehensive chapter on energy systems in the book, Solar Power Satellites — a Space Energy System for Earth, edited by Dr. Peter Glaser et al., and published by Wiley-Praxis in 1998, as well as a chapter in Return to the Moon edited by Rick Tumlinson, Apogee Books, 2005. He since has contributed several additional technical papers and presentations to the Mars Society’s 1999 convention, the Wireless Power Transmission Conference of 2001 and the World Space Congress in 2002, and multiple NSS conventions. He is a director of the Space Power Association. He has also been a moderate Delegate to the Texas State Republican Convention in 2000, 2002, and 2004, where he facilitated the inclusion of pro-space items into the state platform.
 
John lived for 30 years in western New York before moving to Austin, Texas in 1976. He earned his B.A. in Anthropology with a minor in Biology from SUNY at Buffalo in 1967, and a second B.A. in Computer Science from St. Edwards University in Austin in 1986. He also earned graduate credits in both Anthropology and Biology. He has been a professional programmer and analyst since 1980, and was employed as a Senior Programmer/Analyst for the State of Texas in Austin from July, 1989 until June 2009, when he retired.
 
Some online publications by John:

Watch John Strickland On Space Solar Power, John Strickland On Destination Mars, and John Strickland On Launch Costs. View his Facebook page. Read his LinkedIn profile.

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