Joseph C. Mills Biography - Remained Focused On Education, Became A Reactor Safety Expert, Designed Power Systems For Spacecraft, Spent Nine Years On The Iss
nuclear
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).
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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 Servi…
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 scien…
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 nu…
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 …
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 Grum…
"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-Coole…
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