Jim began his Navy career at Moffet Field in Moutain View, California in 1953, where he was an aviator assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La in the Pacific Ocean close to Japan. There he learned how to land jets on the carrier's runway at night, and on one occasion did it with no lights and no ability to read his instruments, barely making it back to the ship's landing deck.

Upon returning to the States he took a position in Annapolis, Maryland where he studied to be a test pilot . Then on October 4, 1957 the Soviet Union blindsided the West with the launch of a twenty-three inch robotic ball called Sputnik . As this event occured President Eisenhower, at the white house became very serious about putting something, anything into orbit, so American engineers attempted to launch a six inch satellite. The Vanguard rocket exploded on the launch pad, and thus was born America's space program. It seemed to Jim at the time that the rockets he'd always cared so much about always seemed to blow up.