Steve Hampton, a Boulder Colorado author and inventor, has perfected the Dean Drive possibly making air and space travel super-efficient.

In the summer of 1963, 12-year-old Steven Hampton became foster child to a Midwestern diary farming couple Glen and Audrey Kneer. He fed, cleaned, and helped milk 40 cows twice daily while also going to school. At age 14, Steven acquired a set of U.S. Air Force electronic training manuals and began exploring the beckoning field of solid-state electronics. He built various transistor circuits by scalping radios and junkyard TVs.

With Ma & Pa Kneer 1966

When he was 15, Steven secretly dissected his first padlock with his foster father’s bench grinder by removing the heads of the lock’s rivets. At 17, he was making his own lock picks. He was “popping” Master combination padlocks by freehand manipulation and could open a Russwin six-spooled pin tumbler bank door lock with a safety pin and small screwdriver.

Mowing hay for Uncle Virgil in 1967

US Naval Avionics Tech, Petty Officer 3rd Class 1970

Steve with son Christopher 1973

In late 1974, Steven fell intoxicated with comparative religion and studied Eastern and Western philosophy from a score of noted and respected teachers. He became a Rosicrucian then a Gnostic Christian. He then turned to Hinduism and practiced yoga, astro-projection and physic healing. He became a student of Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche and a practicing Buddhist in 1976 and in 1977 moved to the monastic setting of Marpa House in Boulder Colorado for three years. He was a periodic staff member for four years at the Rocky Mountain Dharma Center (RMDC), an expansive Buddhist meditation retreat in the remote Colorado mountains (now called Shambhala Mountain Center).[15]

Summer of meditation at RMDC 1976

In 1979 he began three years of studying Tibetan White Crane Kung Fu and Chinese medicine under grand master Dr. Lucjan Shila in Boulder. He spent two years studying jujitsu and wing chung under the late Sensei John Angelos. (It was because of a basic White Crane move and a conversation with Sensei Angelos that led Steven to the revelation and inspiration to build his first actual Dean drive in 1992.)

Collecting medicinal herbs in the Rocky Mountains 1986

In 1980, Steven became interested in the Dean Drive. Since then, he has conceived nine inertial engines and hand-built eight working prototypes for various applications, most of which are not Dean Drives. One drive displaces a ballistic 4-line pendulum while running. Another is an electronic recoilless jackhammer drive. In 2006 he completed inertial engine E-8, a dependable inertial propulsion spacedrive that loses 70% its weight while running on a floor scale.

Working on a book in Boulder Colorado 1994

Delores E. Hampton
Personnel Director
Centrifugål Dynamics Co.