James “Jim” Thorne was raised in a small college town in Western Pennsylvania. He took an early interest in music and learned to play piano, guitar, banjo, trombone, and later studied jazz flute and mandolin. In the third grade, Jim was identified as a gifted student and was selected as the subject of a special research project by a graduate student in psychology. Inspired by Apollo, he learned everything he could about math, science and space engineering, and graduated early from high school in three years. Jim earned a degree in astronautical engineering from Purdue University where he followed in the footsteps of Neil Armstrong. After Purdue, Jim completed both Masters and PhD degrees, also in astronautical engineering. He solved a 300+ year-old problem in classical orbital mechanics that was described as “difficult” by Isaac Newton, and the equation he derived is known as “Thorne’s Solution of the Lambert Problem” in the scientific literature. Jim wrote the novel "Journey to Antares" based on the story songs and characters from his Telly Award-winning TV series, "Space Quest with Dr. Jim" which is available on YouTube.