Designing Radiation Shields for Nuclear Rockets

Thursday, November 12th, 2020 at 7:00 pm CST with David Hewitt via Webinar on Zoom

Join HAL5 as we welcome our Vice President David Hewitt to speak on the subject that he spent many years of his life working towards for his Master's Thesis, "Design of Radiation Shielding for Pulsed Fusion Propulsion Systems". Mr. Hewitt is a Propulsion Engineer at Dynetics, Inc; in this job he has been able to ply himself on space-related projects for customers in the civil, commercial and defense realms over the last decade. He is a graduate of the University of Alabama in Huntsville with a BS in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (2004) and an MS in Aerospace Systems Engineering (2020). He has over 20 years of experience in and around the space industry, first as a student and then as a professional. He is a longtime member of the HAL5 starting in 1995. His professional career has wound itself through many interesting places, starting as a young college student working on the HAL5 amateur rocket Project High Altitude Liftoff (HALO. Project HALO sent a sounding rocket from a weather balloon in 1997 that reached 38 miles and then spun off into other projects and ventures, with members of the team going off into commercial space activities in the early 2000s. Mr. Hewitt has held positions at Aerojet, Teledyne Brown and Orion Propulsion, Inc. prior to its acquisition by Dynetics in 2009. In addition to his duties as HAL5 Vice President, Mr. Hewitt participates in many STEM activities on their behalf as well as that of his employer. When he is not pining away for better ways to explore space or trying to inspire the next generation of scientists or engineers, Mr. Hewitt plays bass guitar with his nerd rock band of rocket scientists known as Foot Pound Force.

Zoominar: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89215622074 ID – 874 9896 1303

The event is free and open to the public.

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