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McDivitt, whose 36th birthday is this week, is a whippet-lean (5 ft. 11 in., 155 Ib.) Air Force major. As a youth, he did not seem exactly the type to be a spaceship jockey. After graduating from high school in Kalamazoo, Mich., he worked for a year as a furnace repairman, then drifted rather aimlessly into tiny (then 531 students) Jackson Junior College in 1948. On his college application he wrote: "I think I would like to be an explorer and a novelist." A so-so student, McDivitt finished his two-year course in 1950, and since he was about to be drafted into the Army, decided he might as well join the Air Force as an air cadet. He found a home and a calling.
As a jet fighter pilot, he went to Korea, flew 145 combat missions, won three Distinguished Flying Crosses and five Air Medals. In 1957 the Air Force sent him to the University of Michigan to get a degree in aeronautical engineering. By now more mature and sure of himself, he got straight A's, graduated first in an Engineering School class of 607. From Michigan he went to the Experimental Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California, was selected for the X-15 testing program, but applied instead for Gemini.
He was picked with eight others-including Ed White—in September 1962. Jim McDivitt sounds about as dispassionate about being an astronaut as he would about fixing furnaces. "There's no magnet drawing me to the stars," he says flatly. "I look on this whole project as a real difficult technical problem-one that will require a lot of answers that must be acquired logically and in a step-by-step manner."
McDivitt may be able to keep his eyes off the stars, but not Ed White, also an Air Force major. White was an Army Air Forces brat, brought up at bases from the East Coast to Hawaii, and committed to flying for a livelihood.
His father, who held a pilot's rating during all of his 35 years in the service, took his son up for his first airplane ride in an old two-seater T-6 trainer when Ed was only twelve. "I was barely old enough to strap on a parachute," re calls the astronaut. "When we were air borne, Dad let me take the controls. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to do." White won an appoint ment to West Point, where he finished 128th in 1952's class of 523. He went to flight school in Florida and became a jet pilot.
White was — and is — a fanatic on physical fitness. At West Point, he was a center-halfback on the soccer team. In 1952 he set an Academy record that still stands in the 400-meter hurdles, went on to qualify for the U.S. Olym pic trials, but missed making the team by .4 sec. He still jogs a couple of miles every day, squeezing a hard rubber ball as he runs. He can do 50 situps, then flip over and do 50 push-ups without breathing hard. On his days off, he enjoys climbing a 40-ft. rope in the backyard of his home near Houston. Of all the astronauts, he is considered by Gemini's medics to be the best physi cal specimen.