Brewster Hopkinson Shaw Jr. (born May 16, 1945) is a retired NASA astronaut, U.S. Air Force colonel, and former executive at Boeing.

Shaw subsequently led the Space Shuttle Orbiter return-to-flight team chartered to enhance the safety of the vehicles’ operations.

He credits his flying career to a fellow band member: “Our drummer, Steve Schimming, had a private pilot’s license, and one day he took me up in his plane.

He received his pilot wings in 1970 and was then assigned to the F-100 Replacement Training Unit at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona.

Shaw attended the USAF Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, California, starting in July 1975.

After ten days of spacelab hardware verification and around-the-clock scientific operations, Columbia and its laboratory cargo (the heaviest payload to be returned to Earth in the shuttle's cargo bay) returned to land on the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

After completing 108 orbits of the Earth in 165 hours, Shaw landed Atlantis on Runway 22 at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

Brewster Shaw told the NASA oral historian for STS-61-B that he installed a padlock on the hatch control because he was “particularly concerned” that the Mexican Rodolfo Neri Vela could “flip out” during the mission.

After 80 orbits of Earth the five-day mission concluded with a dry lake bed landing on Runway 17 at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

Shaw's next role was to lead the consolidated Boeing teams at Huntsville, Alabama, Canoga Park and Huntington Beach, California, in the design, development, test, evaluation, production and flight preparation of ISS hardware and software.

In mid-2003, Brewster Shaw left Boeing and became the chief operating officer of United Space Alliance (USA).

In that position he had primary responsibility for the day-to-day operations and overall management of USA, the prime contractor for the Space Shuttle Program, and its 10,000 employees in Florida, Texas, Alabama and Russia.