Jim Lovell

James Arthur Lovell Jr. ( LUV-əl; March 25, 1928 – August 7, 2025) was an American astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot, and mechanical engineer. In 1968, as command module pilot of Apollo 8, he, along with Frank Borman and William Anders, became one of the first three astronauts to fly to and orbit the Moon. He then commanded the Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970 which, after a critical failure en route, looped around the Moon and returned safely to Earth.

A 1952 graduate of the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, Lovell flew McDonnell F2H Banshee night fighters. He was deployed in the Western Pacific aboard the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La. In January 1958, he entered a six-month test pilot training course at the Naval Air Test Center at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, with Class 20 and graduated at the top of the class. He was then assigned to Electronics Test, working with radar, and in 1960 he became the Navy's McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II program manager. In 1961, he became a flight instructor and safety engineering officer at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and completed Aviation Safety School at the University of Southern California.

Lovell was not selected by NASA as one of the Mercury Seven astronauts due to a temporarily high bilirubin count. He was accepted in September 1962 as one of the second group of astronauts needed for the Gemini and Apollo programs. Before Apollo, Lovell flew in space on two Gemini missions: Gemini 7 (with Borman) in 1965 and Gemini 12 in 1966. He was the first person to fly into space four times. Among the 24 astronauts who have orbited the Moon, Lovell was the earliest to make a second visit but remains the only returnee never to walk on the surface. He was a recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He cowrote the 1994 book Lost Moon, on which the 1995 film Apollo 13 was based, and he was featured in a cameo appearance in the film. Lovell died in 2025, aged 97.

Early life

James Arthur Lovell Jr. was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on March 25, 1928. He was the only child of James Lovell Sr., a furnace salesman born in Toronto, Canada, who died in a car accident in 1933 when Jr. was 5, and Blanche (née Masek), who was of Czech descent. For two years after the death of his father, Lovell and his mother lived with a relative in Terre Haute, Indiana. They then moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and he went to Juneau High School. He was a member of the Boy Scouts during his childhood and became an Eagle Scout, the organization's highest rank. He was interested in rocketry and built flying models as a teenager.

After graduating from high school, Lovell attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison for two years, where he studied engineering under the United States Navy's "Flying Midshipman" program from 1946 to 1948. He later credited the program for giving him the opportunity to attend college, saying that he otherwise did not have the money to attend. At Wisconsin, he played college football and pledged to the Alpha Phi Omega fraternity. He supplemented a meager Navy stipend by working at a local restaurant washing dishes and busing tables, and caring for the university's lab rats and mice on weekends.

While Lovell was attending pre-flight training in the summer of 1948, the Navy was beginning to cut the program. Cadets were under pressure to transfer out because there were concerns that the Navy would lack pilot billets for some or most of them upon graduation. To avoid this, Lovell decided to apply to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He secured a nomination from his local U.S. Representative, John C. Brophy, and entered Annapolis in July 1948.

During his first year, Lovell wrote a treatise on the liquid-propellant rocket engine. He graduated in the spring of 1952 with a Bachelor of Science degree and was commissioned as an ensign in the Navy.

Marriage and family

Lovell began dating Marilyn Lillie Gerlach while they were in high school. As a college student, she transferred from Wisconsin State Teachers College to George Washington University in Washington, D.C., to be near him while he was attending the Naval Academy. They married on June 6, 1952, in a ceremony at St. Anne's Church in Annapolis. The couple had four children: Barbara, James, Susan, and Jeffrey.

Navy career

Lovell was one of 50 members of his graduating class of 783 initially selected for naval aviation training. He went to flight training at Naval Air Station Pensacola from October 1952 to February 1954. He was designated a naval aviator on February 1, 1954, upon completion of pilot training, and was assigned to VC-3 at Moffett Field near San Francisco, California. From 1954 to 1956, he flew McDonnell F2H Banshee night fighters. This included a Western Pacific deployment aboard the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La. Lovell eventually completed 107 carrier landings. Upon his return to shore duty, he was assigned to train pilots moving to the North American FJ-4 Fury, McDonnell F3H Demon, and Vought F8U Crusader.

In January 1958, Lovell entered a six-month test pilot training course at the Naval Air Test Center (today, the United States Naval Test Pilot School) at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, with Class 20, which also included future astronauts Wally Schirra and Pete Conrad, who gave Lovell the nickname "Shaky". Lovell graduated at the top of the class. Usually, the top graduate was assigned to flight test on graduation. Still, the head of electronics test had complained about never getting the top graduate, so Lovell was assigned there, where he worked with radar sets.

Later that year, Lovell, Conrad, and Schirra were among 110 military test pilots selected as astronaut candidates for Project Mercury. Schirra went on to become one of the Mercury Seven, but Lovell was not selected because of a temporarily high bilirubin count. In 1960, electronics test and armaments test were combined and became weapons test, and Lovell became the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II program manager. During this time future astronaut John Young served under him. In 1961, Lovell received orders for VF-101 "Detachment Alpha" at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Virginia, as a flight instructor and safety engineering officer, and he completed Aviation Safety School at the University of Southern California.

NASA career

Astronaut selection

In 1962, NASA began recruiting its second group of astronauts, intended to fly during the Gemini and Apollo programs. This time the process was a public one. Lovell found out about the selection from an advertisement that had been placed in Aviation Week & Space Technology, and decided to apply a second time. A three-person selection panel consisting of Mercury Seven astronauts Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton, and NASA test pilot Warren J. North, reduced the candidates to 32 finalists, who were sent to Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio for medical examinations. The tests there were much the same as those employed to select the Mercury Seven, but this time Lovell passed. The remaining 27 then went to Ellington Air Force Base near Houston, where they were individually interviewed by the selection panel.

On September 14, Slayton informed Lovell that he had been accepted. To avoid tipping off the media, Lovell checked into the Rice Hotel in Houston under the name of Max Peck, its general manager. On September 17, the media crowded into the 1800-seat Cullen Auditorium at the University of Houston for the official announcement, but it wasn't as big as the unveiling of the Mercury Seven three years before. The group became known as the "Next Nine" or the "New Nine". The new astronauts moved to the Houston area in October 1962. Conrad and Lovell built houses in Timber Cove, south of the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC). Developers in Timber Cove offered astronauts mortgages with small down payments and low interest rates. The MSC complex was not yet complete, so NASA temporarily leased office space in Houston.

The task of supervising the Next Nine's training fell to Mercury Seven astronaut Gus Grissom. Initially, each of the astronauts was given four months of classroom instruction on subjects such as spacecraft propulsion, orbital mechanics, astronomy, computing, and space medicine. Classes were for six hours a day, two days a week, and all sixteen astronauts had to attend. There was also familiarization with the Gemini spacecraft, Titan II and Atlas boosters, and the Agena target vehicle. Jungle survival training was conducted at the United States Air Force (USAF) Tropic Survival School at Albrook Air Force Station in the Panama Canal Zone, desert survival training at Stead Air Force Base in Nevada, and water survival training on the Dilbert Dunker at the USN school at Naval Air Station Pensacola and on Galveston Bay. Following the precedent set by the Mercury Seven, each of the Next Nine was assigned a special area in which to develop expertise that could be shared with the others, and to provide astronaut input to designers and engineers. Lovell became responsible for recovery systems.