WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥 James A. McDivitt, who commanded the Apollo 9 mission testing the first complete set of equipment to go to the moon, has died. He was 93.
McDivitt was also the commander of 1965鈥檚 Gemini 4 mission, where his best friend and colleague Ed White made the first U.S. spacewalk. His photographs of White during the spacewalk became iconic images.
He passed on a chance to land on the moon and instead became the space agency鈥檚 program manager for five Apollo missions after the Apollo 11 moon landing.
McDivitt died Thursday in Tucson, Arizona, NASA said Monday.
In his first flight in 1965, McDivitt reported seeing 鈥渟omething out there鈥欌 about the shape of a beer can flying outside his Gemini spaceship. People called it a UFO and McDivitt would later joke that he became 鈥渁 world-renowned UFO expert.鈥 Years later he figured it was just a reflection of bolts in the window.
Apollo 9, which orbited Earth and didn鈥檛 go further, was one of the lesser remembered space missions of NASA鈥檚 program. In a 1999 oral history, McDivitt said it didn鈥檛 bother him that it was overlooked: 鈥淚 could see why they would, you know, it didn鈥檛 land on the moon. And so it鈥檚 hardly part of Apollo. But the lunar module was ... key to the whole program.鈥
Flying with Apollo 9 crewmates Rusty Schweickart and David Scott, McDivitt鈥檚 mission was the first in-space test of the lightweight lunar lander, nicknamed Spider. Their goal was to see if people could live in it, if it could dock in orbit and 鈥 something that became crucial in the Apollo 13 crisis 鈥 if the lunar module鈥檚 engines could control the stack of spacecraft, which included the command module Gumdrop.
Early in training, McDivitt was not impressed with how flimsy the lunar module seemed: 鈥淚 looked at Rusty and he looked at me, and we said, 鈥極h my God! We鈥檙e actually going to fly something like this?鈥 So it was really chintzy. ... it was like cellophane and tin foil put together with Scotch tape and staples!鈥
Unlike many of his fellow astronauts, McDivitt didn鈥檛 yearn to fly from childhood. He was just good at it.
McDivitt didn鈥檛 have money for college growing up in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He worked for a year before going to junior college. When he joined the Air Force at 20, soon after the Korean War broke out, he had never been on an airplane. He was accepted for pilot training before he had ever been off the ground.
鈥淔ortunately, I liked it,鈥 he later recalled.
McDivitt flew 145 combat missions in Korea and came back to Michigan where he graduated from the University of Michigan with an aeronautical engineering degree. He later was one of the elite test pilots at Edwards Air Force Base and became the first student in the Air Force鈥檚 Aerospace Research Pilot School. The military was working on its own later-abandoned human space missions.
In 1962, NASA chose McDivitt to be part of its second class of astronauts, often called the 鈥淣ew Nine,鈥 joining Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and others.
McDivitt was picked to command the second two-man Gemini mission, along with White. The four-day mission in 1965 circled the globe 66 times.
Apollo 9鈥檚 shakedown flight lasted 10 days in March 1969 鈥 four months before the moon landing 鈥 and was relatively trouble free and uneventful.
鈥淎fter I flew Apollo 9 it was apparent to me that I wasn鈥檛 going to be the first guy to land on the moon, which was important to me,鈥 McDivitt recalled in 1999. 鈥淎nd being the second or third guy wasn鈥檛 that important to me.鈥
So McDivitt went into management, first of the Apollo lunar lander, then for the Houston part of the entire program.
McDivitt left NASA and the Air Force in 1972 for a series of private industry jobs, including president of the railcar division at Pullman Inc. and a senior position at aerospace firm Rockwell International. He retired from the military with the rank of brigadier general.
