Dr. John Hunter

John has a doctorate in theoretical particle physics from The College of William and Mary.  Currently he allows himself only one deep thought per month and instead tries to build things that are useful, make money or are fun.  His excellent children are grown but he has recently managed to obtain an exotic and fun wife from Mexicali.  He owns a 140 lb bloodhound named Huck with whom he hunts divorce lawyers for recreation.  Purely catch and release.  To be politically correct he insists on neutering the attorneys since they are notorious prolific, much like pit bulls.

John worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 1985 though1996.  He is a world expert in hydrogen impulse launchers, highlighted by his lead role in building and operating the SHARP 400-foot long hydrogen launcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).  That system set world records and launched scramjets at up to Mach 9.  A good description of his work on SHARP is an interview he gave on medium.com

https://howwegettonext.com/q-a-dr-john-hunter-b3b2af5bbf71#.iqsctkuet

Along with two friends he designed and licensed the Vortex Tornado line of Toys to Oddzon and Hasbro in the late 90s.  It was a ring airfoil launcher based on physics principles of lift and gyroscopic stability.  Their retail sales exceeded $25M.

After 9/11 He worked with DARPA and LLNL to help design armored trucks kits.   He was part of a team that assisted US troops to install the armor kits on 5 ton trucks in Iraq for protection against roadside ambushes.  They worked in Anaconda, Taji and Baghdad.  This was one of his favorite jobs.  He founded Water Station in 2001, a 501 C3 dedicated to providing water to people traversing the Southern CA desert.  Water Station installs and maintains 150 Water Stations near the Mexican Border where there have been a large number of deaths due to heat and lack of water.  Last month John and his wife Laura and volunteers, rescued two individuals who were near death.  This has been John’s other favorite job.  He was on 60 Minutes in 2010 when he and another person swam across the All American Canal and installed a line of buoys in seven minutes, in order to prevent drownings.  The pair were ticketed by the police but subsequently charges were dropped.  Because of the 60 Minutes publicity the Imperial Irrigation District installed 100 sets of safety buoys on the All American Canal.   As a result the drownings there have dropped significantly.  John consults in aerospace and renewable energy.  John manages two companies:

1. Star Sports designs and sells sporting goods and toys.  The HurriK9 “The world’s funnest Dog Toy”, is a joint venture that is doing well.  Check out HurriK9.com and Getmoonshot.com
2. Sundance Solar, LLC is a company that has IP in Solar airplanes and from which John consults in aerospace and solar energy.

John has recently started working on a Project called “Greenlaunch to the Karman Line”

This will be the focus of today’s show.  John is working with the “Lean Green Launching Machine” to perform hydrogen impulse launches from Yuma Proving Grounds.  The Greenlaunch team has three goals:

1.  Perform hydrogen impulse launches with useful payloads to beyond the Karman Line.  There will be four payloads per launch and each payload is 1.25” in diameter and 4 inches long.  They can be recovered as well as telemeter data back to a ground station.  This series of launches will cost $200K and will be performed in 2017.  This will then become a very affordable system (<$10K per launch) for determining the health of Mother Earth.  Our website is: KarmanLine2017.com.
2. Launch a payload to 200 km altitude with the same launcher.  This will be a world record.  The current world record is 180 km and it was set by the HARP project in 1966, also from YPG.
3. Build an orbital hydrogen impulse launcher to deliver cubesats to orbit.  This system will then be scaled to a larger system that will deliver 1000 lb payloads to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) for $200/lb.  This system will ultimately enable Manned Exploration of the Moon and Mars by delivering propellant to LEO. 

Education/Awards:

1977:  B.S. in Physics at the University of California at San Diego

1984:  Ph.D., in Theoretical Particle Physics at The College of William and Mary

1979:  Won the Delos Award for high score on the Ph.D. qualifying exam

1992:  Won Aviation Week’s Laurel award for the work on SHARP.

1999:  Won HASBRO Toy Fair Award for the Tornado

2001:  Channel 10 Leadership award for Water Station

2012:  Justice Cruz Reynoso Community Service Award for Water Station