Paul G. de Jong

One line 31 words

Paul G. de Jong is the author of Orbital Ring Engineering and the Astronomy's Shocking Twist series: five engineering textbooks and five hard science fiction novels about mass transit to space.

Short 73 words

Paul G. de Jong writes at the intersection of physics, electronics and engineering, with three decades of work in medical ultrasound, hydrogen energy, software, audio and a home physics lab. Orbital Ring Engineering is his three-volume engineering treatment of space mass transit infrastructure: orbital rings, mass drivers and space elevators. His threshold for suspension of disbelief is very low, and the technical series arose from a desire for more truly hard science fiction.

Medium 185 words

Paul G. de Jong is the author of Orbital Ring Engineering, a three-volume engineering treatment of orbital rings, mass drivers and space elevators, and of Why Space, the economic case for mass transit to space written for the general reader. Both belong to Astronomy's Shocking Twist, a ten-book project: five technical books written to serve as undergraduate textbooks and five hard science fiction novels set in the world the technical books describe. The novels obey the known laws of physics. People live normal lifespans, propulsion is limited by the power that can be produced, materials are limited to reasonable extrapolations of current research, heat has to go somewhere, and every trajectory is calculated with real orbital mechanics.

De Jong studied electronics and physics at Heald Institute of Technology, Ohlone College, UC Berkeley and the University of Amsterdam. He has worked as an electronics technician in medical ultrasound, in hydrogen energy when it was still a fringe topic, and as an inventor and software entrepreneur in San Francisco. His derivations are done in MathCAD and checked against open-source Python simulations that readers can download and run.

Long 410 words

Paul G. de Jong is the author of Orbital Ring Engineering, a three-volume engineering treatment of space mass transit infrastructure, and of Why Space, the economic case for building it. The books belong to Astronomy's Shocking Twist, a ten-book project in two tracks. The technical track is five non-fiction books on orbital rings, mass drivers, space elevators, ion propulsion, generational ships and large-scale space habitation, written to serve as undergraduate textbooks. The fiction track is five hard science fiction novels that share one universe and use the technology the textbooks describe. The two tracks are meant to reinforce each other: the fiction tells a story that could happen, and the technical books show how it could be done with real materials and real numbers.

De Jong has been thinking about orbital rings and space infrastructure for more than ten years. The series is the long version of that thought. Much of it was prompted by Isaac Arthur's YouTube channel, Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur, whose episodes on orbital rings and megastructures he still recommends as the best accessible introduction to the subject.

His career has crossed several fields: electronics technician at Acuson Medical Ultrasound in the late 1980s, member of the Hydrogen Energy Society in the 1990s when hydrogen was a fringe topic, and a project called Making Math Fun in the same decade when he was considering teaching. Since then he has worked in software and audio as an inventor and serial entrepreneur, founding AnyTaxi, Club Clock and KaraokeListMaker in San Francisco, while keeping a home physics lab active throughout. He studied electronics at Heald Institute of Technology and physics at Ohlone College, UC Berkeley and the University of Amsterdam. The common thread across ultrasound, hydrogen, software, audio, the lab and space infrastructure is a habit of showing the work.

That habit shapes how the books are written. Derivations are performed in MathCAD and verified against simulation code written in Python. The simulation code is open source on GitHub. Every major number in the books comes from one of three sources: a peer-reviewed publication, a calculation presented in the book, or a simulation whose code the reader can download and run. De Jong uses AI tools for research, technical verification and editorial feedback; the engineering decisions, design choices and writing are his own, and so are any errors. The Errata page on this site is where readers report them.

He is Dutch-American and writes under his own name.