The man behind the ISS

摘要

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 9 January 1926, James Montgomery Beggs graduated from the US Naval Academy at the age of 21 and spent seven years with the US Navy before earning a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard in 1955. From there he joined Westinghouse, a company heavily involved in the nascent electronic industry and a lot of emphasis on defence and aerospace work. Jim remained in Baltimore from 1956 to 1968, when he took up a personal invitation from then NASA Administrator James Webb to join the agency aS head of the Office of Advanced Research and Technology. Beggs had been recommended by Frank Godsey, whom he had known while he was at Westinghouse and Webb was quite used to "collecting" people as he went the rounds! People who were highly effective in the positions for which they were nominated by Webb and so it was with Jim Beggs. But it was to be a brief period at NASA. By the end of 1968, Webb and President Johnson had gone and Richard Nixon was within weeks of entering the White House. But now Beggs and his family were in Washington, DC, and this coincided with Webb appointing himself chief recruiting officer for the new Administration.