Biography

Jim McDivitt was born on June 10, 1929 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for The Brady Bunch (1969), Mysteries from Beyond Earth (1975) and Beyond Belief (1976). He was married to Judith Ann Odell and Patricia Ann Haas. He died on October 13, 2022 in Tucson, Arizona, USA.

NASA astronaut who was Commander of the Gemini 4 and Apollo 9 space missions.

He was the command pilot on Gemini 4 when Edward H. White II became the first American to walk in space and perform an extra-vehicular activity (EVA). Though not able to use their second stage as a docking target, they did perform White's spacewalk and set a flight duration record (4 days, 2 hours).

On Apollo 9 he was the command module pilot and flew with Dave Scott and Russell Schweickart in earth orbit. In ten days, the astronauts tested the lunar module, separated and re-docked the spacecrafts and McDivitt performed an EVA between the two spacecraft without any securing tether. The nickname for the command module was "Gumdrop" and for the lunar module it was "Spider.".

He received a bachelor of science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Michigan.

He joined the Air Force in 1951, flying 145 combat missions during the Korean War in F-80 and F-86 aircraft. He was a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Experimental Test Pilot School and the US Air Force Aerospace Research Pilot course, and served as an experimental test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base, California.