Dr. John Brandenburg
John E. Brandenburg is a researcher at Orbital Technologies Corporation in Madison Wisconsin. He was before this, at Florida Space Institute at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, having come from The Aerospace Corporation, where one of his duties was as principle investigator of the MET (Microwave Electro-Thermal) propulsion project. He also performed an architecture study for a Human Mars Mission using solar electric propulsion. He also performed research on Fusion Propulsion and Kaluza-Klein theory of Field Unification for purposes of space propulsion. Before coming to Aerospace corporation Dr. Brandenburg was a researcher at Research Support Instruments (RSI) where he specialized in making controlled laboratory plasmas for uses ranging from Fusion research to the MET thruster. He also worked as an independent consultant on Space Missile Defense, Directed Energy Weapons, and space rocket plume phenomenology, and also at Mission Research Corporation and Sandia National Laboratories on plasmas for controlled fusion and similar topics. Doctor Brandenburg was born in Rouchester Minnesota but grew up in Medford Oregon. He obtained a BA in Physics from Southern Oregon University in Ashland Oregon, home of the Shakespearean Festival. He obtained his MS in Applied Science at University of California at Davis and his PhD in Theoretical Plasma Physics at the UC Davis extension campus at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore California. The Title of his Thesis was “A Theoretical Model of a Reversed Field Ion Layer Made of Monoenergetic Ions” and dealt with the magnetic confinement of plasmas for controlled nuclear fusion. Inspired by the Apollo missions to choose a career in Physics he has always been an avid fan of space exploration and science fiction. He is the author the “Dead Mars, Dying Earth”(1999) with Monica Rix Paxson , which dealt with the problems of energy and global warming from a comparative planetary science ( Earth-Mars) perspective and has been published the USA, Great Britain, Germany and Japan. It was the winner of the Silver Medal in the Ben Franklin awards for books on science and environment. He has recently completed writing a science fiction novel “Morningstar Pass” dealing with the problems of initial contact between humanity and extraterrestrial intelligence and the development of the human race into a space-faring civilization. He has dedicated his career to problems of space, energy and national defense.