Dr. John Brandenburg spills the beans on Spaced Out Radio

“Biography: John E. Brandenburg is a theoretical plasma physicist who was born in Rochester Minnesota, and grew up in Medford Oregon. He obtained his BA in Physics, with a Mathematics minor, from Southern Oregon University in 1975 and obtained his MS in 1977 and PhD in Plasma Physics both from University of California at Davis in 1981. He presently is working as a consultant at Morningstar Applied Physics LLC and a part-time instructor of Astronomy, Physics and Mathematics at Madison College and other learning institutions in Madison Wisconsin. Before this, he worked at Orbital Technologies in Madison Wisconsin, as Senior Propulsion Scientist, working on space plasma technologies, nuclear fusion, and advanced space propulsion. He is the principle inventor of the MET (Microwave Electro-Thermal) plasma thruster using water propellant for space propulsion. He has previously worked on SDI, the Clementine Mission to the Moon, Rocket Plume-Regolith Interactions on the Moon and Mars, Vortex theory of Rocket engine design, combined Sakharov-Kaluza-Klein theory of Field Unification for purposes of space propulsion and Mars science. He is a lifetime member of the AIAA. John also performed an architecture study for a Human Mars Mission using solar electric propulsion. Before coming to ORBITEC he was teaching and performing research at the Florida Space Institute of the University of Central Florida, at Aerospace Corporation in Chantilly Va., and earlier at Research Support Instruments (RSI) in Lanham Maryland. During the Reagan years he worked at Mission Research Corporation and Sandia National Laboratories on SDI and plasmas for controlled fusion and directed energy weapons. John has authored the popular science books “Death on Mars,” (2014) “Life and Death on Mars” (2010), “Beyond Einstein’s Unified Field” (2011) and “Dead Mars, Dying Earth” (1999) with Monica Rix Paxson, which won the Ben Franklin Silver Medal award for best Science/Environmental book in 2001. He has written two science fiction novels under the pen name “Victor Norgarde”: “Morningstar Pass, The collapse of the UFO Coverup” and “Asteroid 20-2012 Sepulveda” He is the recipient of the William Gerald Award in 2006 from the Harlem Children Society for his work with underprivileged students, and the 2012 Devi Bhargava Award at Madison College for working with students with disabilities.”