Guest: Dr. John Hunter: Topics: John was all over the place with topics. He updated us with Green Launch, spoke a lot about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, talked about rockets and speed, fuel, weapons, Green Launch markets, commercial uses, commercial satellites over Ukraine, beavers on the west coast and more.
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We welcomed back Dr. John Hunter of Green Launch to the show. Check on the company progress and news at https://greenlaunch.space. John had news to report in including their recent successful vertical launch late last year. He talked about this test shot in some detail. You can see the video of the launch from Dec. 21, 2021 on the Green Launch home page. This was actually a very hard show for me to summarize as John was all over the board on subjects from green launch fuels, hydrogen, rocket speed, the different types of gun launches, the Russian war on Ukraine, fighting Russia, lots of commentary about Russia war tactics, weapons, even relocating beavers to rescue them along the west coast. Perhaps following the tags will give you the best summary of what we discussed on the show along with listener participation with key questions that John addressed. The tags are repeated below for your convenience, In addition, at times John's language was too colorful. I let most of it pass but I did remove one comment using an unacceptable word.
Dr. John Hunter, Green Launch Company, vertical launch, launch to sample the mesosphere, hydrogen, light gas, rail gun, launch speed, magnetic guns, SpaceX, Elon Musk, Ukraine, Russia, energy budge of the Earth, 37 Km goal, FedEx type of market, atmospheric study market, testing market, speed for rockets market analysis, Kwajalein launch site, small rocket concerns, R&D explosions, relocating beavers along the west coast, using big guns from the Moon and Mars, machine gun silencers, nuclear weapons, Green Launch military uses, challenges for high speed, SST commercial jets, long range government applications, Putin and nuclear weapons, private sector satellites over Ukraine, upcoming Green Launch plans and goals.
John talked quite a bit about his past experience at Livermore and the work he did on gas guns that led to his Green Launch activities. At one point late in the show, I asked him if he had ever anticipated ending up doing what he is now doing and if he was ok with his accomplishments and work to date. John gave us a very interesting response to that question so when you hear it, listen to all of it. However, earlier in the show when John was being asked about commercial results from Green Launch and timelines, he identified three potential markets including a FedEx delivery in space market and the continued use of their rockets to study the mesosphere plus other possibilities but none were ready to go any time soon. Listen to what he said about each market potential. What do you think? Are any viable as a commercial market? Let us know by posting on our blog.
There is not much I have to say on John's Ukraine commentary which was on and off throughout the entire program. John was certainly partisan, especially when he was willing to identify his own perspective which he did multiple times. He was obviously very upset at what was happening and what Russia was doing. He definitely made that clear to us. His Russian and Ukrainian commentary led us to topics about nuclear weapons being used, national security for space and hi speed rocketry, the risks and dangers from China and Russia, and much more. Feel free to comment on this part of John's discussion, just no name calling and no filthy language. In fact, Disqus has been removing comments calling people negative names. I have no way to control those settings with Disqus but if I know its happening, sometimes I can restore the comment. The best we can do with the Disqus program is just not run afoul of their auto policing software.
John had much more to say about speed and rocketry and even answered the question of why it was so challenging to do high speed with rockets and make progress. Don't miss his response to that one. Our program was 1 hour 28 minutes in length and it was action packed with a variety of topics, some only distantly related to Green Launch and space. We will continue to follow John's progress and keep you posted on his launch goals and objectives.
Please post your comments/questions on our blog for this show. You can reach John through me or his website per above. He also gave out his email address so feel free to reach out to him or contact him through me.
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