Joseph C. Mills

1946—

Nuclear engineer

In a career spanning more than three decades, Dr. Joseph C. Mills contributed significantly to our understanding of nuclear reactor safety and the development of a new generation of nuclear reactors for use in space. He played pivotal roles in the design, construction, launch, and assembly of the International Space Station (ISS). Dr. Mills also headed The Boeing Company's effort to design and build the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Remained Focused on Education

Born on February 26, 1946, in Los Angeles, California, Joseph C. Mills, Jr., grew up in the tough neighborhoods of South Central L.A. His mother, Mildred Craddock Mills (subsequently Lehman), a clerk for the Los Angeles County Marshall's Office, stressed the importance of education for her children's success. Joe's father, Joseph C. Mills, Sr., worked for the U.S. Postal Service for a few years, but was often unemployed. The Mills divorced when Joe was eleven and he and his younger brother and sister were raised by their mother. She kept Joe focused on his education at a time when athletics and friends pulled him in other directions.

In addition to his mother, Joe Mills was strongly influenced by his fourth-grade teacher who recognized his abilities and challenged him in mathematics. He also looked to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as his role model—a man from a humble background who accomplished great feats.

However, for the most part, it was negative experiences that challenged Mills. He attended Los Angeles High School, which was about 70 percent white, and shared his accelerated classes with only one or two other black students. He told Contemporary Black Biography (CBB ) that during his junior year a school counselor told him: "Sometimes you can keep up with the other students just by working harder." The counselor was implying that, despite being a superior math and science student, Mills lacked innate ability. When he entered the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), a counselor said to him: "Are you really this good?" as he related to CBB. Mills took such negative comments as challenges to succeed.

Became a Reactor Safety Expert

Despite having grown up near the heart of the aerospace industry, when he entered U.C.L.A. in 1963, on a four-year California State Scholarship, Mills had only the vaguest notion of what an engineer did. In the end he chose engineering because it lacked a foreign-language requirement. However Mills soon found that he loved engineering and its applications. He told CBB : "Engineers take science and turn it into practical things.... God put me in the right place for my skill set." Mills earned his Bachelor of Science degree in engineering in 1967.

Fellowships and traineeships from the Atomic Energy Commission enabled Mills to complete his graduate studies at UCLA. He earned his master's of science in nuclear engineering in 1969 and his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering in 1972, studying nuclear reactor core disruption accidents. He developed a multi-dimensional computational model for predicting the way in which a reactor would meltdown and the consequences for the reactor core and radiation escape.

Following graduation Mills joined Atomics International, a small division of Rockwell International that later merged with Rocketdyne, another Rockwell division. During his first year at Rockwell, Mills participated in a joint Rockwell-UCLA program in which he taught algebra to incoming minority students. Over the next two decades, in various project and program management positions in Canoga Park, California, Mills helped to develop a new generation of nuclear power systems.

During the first 12 years of his career, Mills published numerous technical reports on nuclear power systems and safety and became an internationally-known expert on safety systems for liquid-metal fast-breeder nuclear reactors (LMFBRs). During the early 1980s he served on numerous task forces and committees that studied the development of LMFBRs, both domestically and internationally.

Designed Power Systems for Spacecraft

Between 1987 and 1994 Mills was a Rockwell program director in charge of developing nuclear power systems for military applications and civilian exploratory missions in space. Among his projects were the NASA Space Exploration Initiative and the Dynamic Isotope Power System for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Air Force. Mills also was program manager for Rockwell's space nuclear power systems component of the "Star Wars" missile defense—the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO)—initiated by President Ronald Reagan. Mills worked on both a multimegawatt nuclear power system for the DOE/SDIO and a 40-kilowatts-electric (kWe) Thermionic Space Nuclear Power System for the DOE/Air Force/SDIO.

However by the early 1990s the world had changed dramatically. When the predicted energy crisis failed to materialize, plans for a new generation of nuclear-powered electrical-generating systems were put on hold. With the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, interest in the military applications dwindled. In 1994 Mills went to work on the International Space Station (ISS). It was to be the high point of his career.

At a Glance...

Born Joseph Chester Mills Jr. on February 26, 1946, in Los Angeles, CA; son of Joseph Chester Mills Sr. and Mildred Craddock Mills; married (divorced); married Gail, 1982; children: two (first marriage), two stepchildren. Education: University of California-Los Angeles, BS, engineering, 1967; University of California-Los Angeles, MS, nuclear engineering, 1969; University of California-Los Angeles, PhD, nuclear engineering, 1972. Politics: Democrat.

Career: Rockwell International, Atomics International (later Rocketdyne), Canoga Park, California, various project and program management positions in the development of new nuclear power systems, 1972-87, Rockwell International, program director for development of nuclear power systems for military and exploratory space missions, 1987-94, Rockwell and the Boeing Company, director of the Power Module/Cargo Element Team for the International Space Station, 1994-97; Boeing, Canoga Park Site Director, 1997-98; Boeing, Huntington Beach Site Director, 1998-99; Boeing, Houston, TX, vice president and deputy program manager for ISS contract, 1999-01; Boeing, vice president and program manager for ISS contract, 2001-03; Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, Pasedena, CA, vice president and program manager for JIMO Phase A Trade and Concept Design Study, 2003-04; Boeing, Canoga Park, CA, vice president and executive focal of space science initiative, 2004-05.

Memberships: American Nuclear Society; American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Awards: LA-San Fernando Engineers' Council, Distinguished Engineering Project Achievement Award for the ISS Electric Power System, 1998; Aviation Week, Laureate of the Year for Space, 2002; Boeing 30-Year Service Award, 2002; Black Engineer, Black Engineer of the Year Pioneer Award, 2004; Rotary National Award for Space Achievement (RNASA) Stellar Award, 2004.

Addresses: Office— c/o The Boeing Company-NASA Systems, 13100 Space Center Blvd, Houston, TX 77059-3556.

Initially Mills worked on Rockwell's solar power systems for the ISS, as director of the Power Module/Cargo Element Team at Canoga Park. When Rockwell merged with The Boeing Company in 1996, followed by Boeing's acquisition of McDonnell Douglas, the companies' ISS contracts came under Boeing's administration. In 1997 Mills became the site director at Canoga Park and in 1998 he became site director at the Huntington Beach, California, facility. In these positions Mills oversaw the design, development, testing and evaluation, production, and flight preparation of the hardware and software used for the assembly of ISS components in space. These out-board and in-board trusses and their associated electrical power systems, produced under McDonnell Douglas and Rockwell contracts, were launched from the space shuttle for the construction and instrumentation of the ISS.

Spent Nine Years on the ISS

In 1999 Mills spent three months as the ISS site director in Huntsville, Alabama, correcting problems and overseeing the production of pressurized element hardware and associated software for the ISS. From there he moved to the central ISS headquarters in Houston, Texas. As vice president and program manager in Houston, Mills was in charge of the entire Boeing role as prime integrating contractor for the ISS. To service this multibillion-dollar contract that saw the orbiting laboratory through its design, development, testing, launch, and operation, Mills coordinated several thousand Boeing engineers at five major locations around the country, as well as subcontractors and suppliers in 23 states. Additionally Mills was responsible for integrating the contributions of the ISS's 16 partner countries. Dr. Mills told CBB that his work on the ISS was, by far, the most satisfying project of his career. "In the early part of my career, working at the leading edge of nuclear science—Star Wars and nuclear energy—nothing was ever built. The ISS was my first opportunity to see the fruits of my labor—from design all the way to launch, utilization, and discoveries. I was leading the thousands of folks who were doing it and nurturing young careers."

Because of his background in nuclear power systems, in 2003 Boeing asked Mills to try to secure NASA's JPL JIMO contract. JIMO was a major component of NASA's ambitious Prometheus Program to develop nuclear-fission-powered propulsion systems for the exploration of deep space. The Prometheus Jupiter Icy Moons spacecraft would be designed to orbit three planet-sized moons of Jupiter—Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa—which may contain huge oceans beneath their icy surfaces. Plans for JIMO included the use of nuclear-electric power, a technology that uses converters to transform reactor heat into electricity to power the spacecraft thrusters more directly than conventional reactors that heat steam to turn turbines. Mills believed that such a system would enable JIMO to orbit the Jovian moons for years, conducting detailed scientific observations and experiments.

Failed to Win JIMO Contract

From the fall of 2003 to the spring of 2004, Mills was in charge of Boeing's JIMO Phase A Trade and Concept Design Study, working in Pasadena, California, for Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, one of the world's largest defense and space businesses. Boeing hoped to win the JPL contract to co-design, develop, build, launch, and operate JIMO. However in the fall of 2004, Northrop Grumman Space Technology was awarded the contract.

Mills stayed on at Canoga Park as vice president and executive focal of Boeing's space science initiative, one of four NASA initiatives to which a Boeing executive was assigned as the focal contact between the company and NASA. In this position Mills helped plan Boeing's future undertakings in space.

In 2002 Mills was named Aviation Week 's Laureate of the Year for Space, in recognition of his contributions to the ISS. In 2004 he was awarded the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement (RNASA) Stellar Award—also known as the NASA Rotary Stellar Award for Late Career Achievement—for his nine years of leading the Boeing ISS program and his contributions to the development and delivery of every major ISS component and system. Mills also was recognized with Black Engineer 's 2004 Pioneer Award for his work on the ISS. The Pioneer Award is reserved for engineers who have made contributions to areas in which very few black Americans have worked. Dr. Joseph C. Mills retired from the Boeing Company in March of 2005, devoting more time to his family, to volunteering in the community, and to playing golf.

Selected writings

"An Axial Kinetics Model for Fast Reactor Disassembly Accidents," Proceedings of the Conference on New Developments in Reactor Mathematics and Applications (Idaho Falls, Idaho), March 1971.

"An Industry-University Cooperative Program: AAP," Blacks in Science and Engineering Manpower Symposium (Cleveland, Ohio), October 1974.

"Inherent Safety in Liquid Metal-Cooled Breeder Reactors," Los Angeles Energy Symposium, October 1980.

"Development of Scaling Requirements for Natural Convection LMFBR Shutdown Heat Removal Test Facilities," Specialists Meeting on the Safety Aspects of Natural Circulation Decay Heat Removal in LMFBRs (Grenoble, France), May 1981.

"Phenomenological Sodium Tests to Investigate Intank Natural Circulation Behavior under LMFBR Design Heat Removal Conditions," ANS/ENS Reactor Safety Meeting (Lyon, France), July 1982.

"An Analytical Study of Stratification in Horizontal Pipes with Fluid Temperature Transient Imposed at Inlet," ASME Winter Meeting (New Orleans), December 1984.

"COMMIX Code Validation Studies with Phenomenological Sodium Natural Convection Experiments,"BNL Specialists Meeting on Decay Heat Removal and Natural Convection in LMFBRs (New York), April 1985.

Sources

On-line

"Black Engineer of the Year Award Winners, 2004," BlackEngineer.com, www.blackengineer.com/artman/publish/printer_204.shtml (February 4, 2005).

"Four Boeing Engineers Receive National Black Engineer Awards," Boeing News Release, www.boeing.com/news/releases/2004/q1/nr_040218s.html (February 4, 2005).

"Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter," Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, www.jpl.nasa.gov/jimo/ (February 8, 2005).

Other

Additional information for this profile was obtained through an interview with Dr. Joseph C. Mills on February 16, 2005, and through materials provided by Boeing Company-NASA Systems.

—Margaret Alic