Jim McDivitt

Commanded Gemini 4, featuring the first American spacewalk, and Apollo 9, the first crewed test of the Lunar Module. Later managed the Apollo Spacecraft Program. He died in 2022.

Before NASAU.S. Air Force combat pilot who flew 145 missions in F-80s and F-86s during the Korean War, then graduated first in his aeronautical engineering class at the University of Michigan and trained as an experimental test pilot at Edwards AFB before joining NASA in 1962.