James Montgomery Beggs (1926-2020) was an American business executive and public administrator. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy (1947) with an MBA from Harvard (1955), he held senior posts at Westinghouse and General Dynamics before entering space administration. As NASA's sixth administrator, appointed by Ronald Reagan, he led the agency from 1981 to 1985: it was under his tenure that the United States committed to building a permanently crewed space station, forerunner of the International Space Station. He stepped aside in late 1985 following an indictment (later dismissed, with an official apology), and resigned in 1986 in the aftermath of the Challenger disaster. He wrote the introduction to the book's second part.