AIAA Mourns the Passing of James M. Beggs Written 27 April 2020

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Michele McDonald
703.264.7542
michelem@aiaa.org

April 27, 2020 – Reston, Va. – The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) mourns the passing of AIAA Honorary Fellow and former NASA Administrator James M. Beggs, 94, who died on 23 April 2020.

Beggs joined AIAA in 1968 and became an Honorary Fellow in 1997. In 1981 he became NASA’s sixth administrator, serving until after the Challenger disaster on 28 January 1986.

“James Beggs brought his vision to NASA and helped to rebuild the space program,” said Dan Dumbacher, AIAA executive director. “The space ecosystem we have today in low Earth orbit, which will eventually move deeper into space, owes a debt to what he started near four decades ago.”

Under Beggs’s leadership, NASA grew to an annual budget of nearly $8 billion, 20,000 employees, and had more than 20 successful space shuttle missions. He worked to reestablish NASA’s standing with the space shuttle program and a new space station, which NASA was directed to build in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan.

“There is no telling where our vision and imagination will lead us once we have the space station,” he said in 1985, according to The Washington Post. “As Shakespeare put it, ‘Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried.’”

When Beggs resigned from NASA after the Challenger explosion, he did it because “NASA needed to move on from the disaster with strong leadership that he couldn’t provide under the circumstances,” his son Charles Beggs told Time magazine. “Instead of hanging on, he resigned for the good of the organization,” Charles Beggs said. “It wasn’t about him. It was about others.”

A Pittsburgh native who grew up in San Antonio, Texas, Beggs graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1947. He served in the U.S. Navy until 1954, earning an MBA from Harvard University the following year. Before joining NASA, he was an executive vice president and a director of General Dynamics Corp. He was active an active aerospace professional and worked as a consultant into his 80s.

About AIAA
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the world’s largest aerospace technical society. With nearly 30,000 individual members from 85 countries, and 100 corporate members, AIAA brings together industry, academia, and government to advance engineering and science in aviation, space, and defense. For more information, visit www.aiaa.org, or follow AIAA on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.