100 Interviews

#37. JOE MILLER - “Someone who works at NASA.”

Joe Miller fanboys over a jet.

His features light up as he describes the X-51, an unmanned Boeing scramjet used for flight testing in the Air Force. The X-51 is remarkable because it’s able to move at extremely fast speeds, forcefully compressing and decelerating the incoming air before combustion. It’s an engine attached to a wing, a simple jet, and it’s eventual purpose could be to replace the external rocket boosters (the white parts) and external fuel tank (the orange/red part) attached to a launching space shuttle.

The X-51 would be used to achieve lift off. Unlike the rocket boosters and tank, the scramjet is reusable and could be detached and landed, either in the ocean or elsewhere.

The X-51 was developed by a little-known government entity called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). DARPA’s job, Joe says, is to create technology for the future. One example is DARPA’s work on microwave guns, science-fiction death ray blasters used to severely injure humans. They get to test what comic books have had for decades.

“If someone is going to invent laser beam guns, it’s these guys,” Joe says, excitedly. “They’re the cool guys.”

Joe is a flight hardware integration and test engineer for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Originally from outside Philadelphia, Joe majored in aerospace engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts and graduated last year. Less than a week ago, the 24-year-old completed a Master’s degree in mechanical engineering. (WPI offers a combined five-year program.)

“When people find out I work at NASA, they do look at me a little weird,” Joe says. “The first question is ‘Are you an astronaut?’”

I laugh, “What? Haven’t these people ever seen what an astronaut looks like?” I’m picturing big, burly athletic types from the 1960s or stately, grey gentlemen captains.

“No, actually that’s not the case anymore,” Joe explains. “There’s a lot of geeks that go up.” He tells me that four of the five astronauts on the last shuttle mission had PhDs. “They’re eggier than the eggiest egghead. It’s not so much military anymore. The pilot is. But the rest?,” he smirks, “They just have to be able to survive the launch.”

In high school, Joe says he was a troublemaker rather than a straight-up academic nerd. He never liked biology or chemistry but he was pretty good at math.

“I actually did awful in high school,” he says. He almost got expelled for being a smart ass one time, and was suspended for mouthing off. He was always in detention.

After high school, he spent a year at community college studying computer science. But even when he applied to a 4-year college, Joe says he didn’t really have big plans. He chose aerospace engineering because it looked like the most fun major in the undergraduate catalogue. Plus, Joe was always a fan of building with Legos. On his desk at NASA, he tells me he’s got both a Lego space shuttle and a Lego AT-AT from ‘Star Wars.’

He spent two summers interning at NASA during college, a position helped along by his dad’s coworker’s relative who worked at NASA when he sent in his resume.

Now, Joe works at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, right outside Washington DC. His job is to make sure everything is put together on the satellite. He works on plans for missions occasionally years in advance.

“We have a plan for everything. We plan for carrying 50 lbs. of equipment across the room because if we drop it then it’s thousands of dollars that just broke,” he says. “It’s a paperwork department, but I do get to play with the stuff.”

Satellites, like what Joe works on, are currently NASA’s main focus. The last, new manned mission in testing stages was the Ares 1X, which President Obama canned. Manned missions, though expensive and dangerous, are NASA’s bread and butter. It’s important to give space exploration a human face, Joe says.

“Newer programs have even tried to make robots cuter,” he says. He also mentions the naming contest held for the Sojourner mission to Mars. Participants were elementary and middle school students.

Joe’s job involves a lot of testing. For instance, he talks about putting satellites into a thermo-chamber with a complete microgravity vacuum. It’s the same work rocket scientist Shah described where the satellite is exposed to heat and cold and the shakes associated with launch to test its stability. There’s even an acoustic chamber with a giant horn. Sound is blasted at the satellite to see how many decibels it can withstand, simulating the sounds of launch. Joe and his co-workers work in 8 hour shifts, to make sure nothing breaks, for 24 hours a day.

“After we build it, we have to make sure it still turns on,” he says. “There could be a little line that snaps and then you have a 30 million dollar piece of metal in space that you can’t use. If it wasn’t for the launch, it’d be a lot simpler.”

Joe said he made the mistake of complaining about boredom early on and was made manager on the prototype. His job is to make sure everything is running on time, that everyone has everything they need, that the paper work is all done, and that each department knows what the other departments are doing.

One of his other missions is a Landsat Data Continuity Mission, which includes an instrument Joe worked on that measures different wavelengths of light to determine how hot a region is. The data is used by farmers and oceanographers around the world.

NASA hires a lot of young people, Joe says, but he agrees when I say that the administration has lost its luster with the new generation. Astronauts are no longer celebrities like John Glenn or Neil Armstrong. The excitement of the space race is over. A common question is what NASA’s spending so much money on.

“It’s because nothing new has happened,” he says. When I protest, he explains, “Nothing world-changing that people care about.”

“They think we want to put more people on the moon and see what happens when they…I don’t know, poop or whatever,” I say, eloquent as always.

“We barely care about the moon anymore,” Joe replies. “It’s mostly weather satellites. We see how the world is changing. There’s a lot of green initiatives and we can see real-time how it’s affecting specific regions. There’s rain measurements and then the data is compiled.”

“And it’s sent to the people that can work to fix it?” I ask.

“Well, NASA has planetary scientists, but yeah, it’s for people to fix it,” Joe says.

I tell him I wish people understood the importance of NASA scientists’ work. “What would be the next exciting thing NASA could do to get the public interested?” I ask.

“Put someone on Mars? Find aliens?” Joe suggests. “I mean, people always ask, ‘What’s the good of it? All this money?’ But if they got in there and could see us put it together, they’d see why it takes so long and why it’s so expensive. Each satellite is for such a specific purpose and so you can’t even multitask with them,” He jokes: “It’s like, ‘Hey, don’t break this five million dollar nut.’”

He tells me NASA has also started experimenting on sex in space. I joke that the line for interested astronauts would be down the block and around the corner. Joe says he’s not sure because the test subjects would have to attempt having sex while being dropped out of an airplane, to simulate the effects of zero gravity. He jokes that maybe to drum up publicity NASA could film the attempts and make a space sex porno. He laughs, shaking his head. “There’s your sound bite,” he says, gesturing to my notebook as I write down “space sex.”

Joe’s current mission launches next December and then he’s hoping to transfer to NASA’s propulsion department. He’s more interested in jets and high speed engines like the X-51 than in aerospace. “It’s more my speed,” he says and then smirks, “Forgive the pun.”

His dream job would be to work with DARPA, but like so many people believe about working at NASA, Joe says he feels being hired by DARPA is “unattainable.”

“Is it too late for me?” I ask, only partially joking.

Joe shakes his head, “No,” he replies sincerely.

“I meant to be an astronaut,” I laugh softly. “Is it too late for me to be an astronaut?”

“Oh,” Joe responds, “Then, yes. Yes, it is.”