Robert Bigelow
Robert Bigelow is an American billionaire businessman, founder of the Budget Suites hotel chain and Bigelow Aerospace, and one of the best-known private funders of research into UFOs and paranormal phenomena.
Robert Bigelow is an American billionaire businessman. He made his fortune through Budget Suites of America, a hotel chain for extended stays. He also founded Bigelow Aerospace, a Nevada company that develops inflatable space modules. He is a well-known private funder of research into UFOs and paranormal phenomena.
Research activities
In 1995, Bigelow founded the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), a private research institute that funded research into UFOs and paranormal phenomena. In 1996, he bought Skinwalker Ranch in Utah and made it the NIDS research base. The institute's researchers reported, among other things, creatures with glowing eyes and animal mutilations, but their instruments often did not record what the eyewitnesses described. NIDS disbanded in 2004. Bigelow sold the ranch in 2016.
Ties to government programs
On September 22, 2008, his company Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) received the contract for the Defense Intelligence Agency's (DIA) Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP). The program became public in 2017 following a New York Times article, which reported that most of the money spent on it went to Bigelow's company. The program was initiated by Senator Harry Reid, a close friend of Bigelow. According to the Department of Defense, the funding ended in 2012.
Space industry
Bigelow Aerospace's experimental inflatable module, BEAM (Bigelow Expandable Activity Module), was delivered to the International Space Station in 2016, where it is used for storage. In March 2020, the company laid off all of its employees.
Positions
On CBS's 60 Minutes in 2017, Bigelow said that there has been and is an existing presence, an extraterrestrial presence. The 2024 historical report of AARO, the U.S. Department of Defense's UAP office, found no evidence of extraterrestrial technology.
Sources
- Will there be fallout from Bigelow’s views on ‘ET presence’ on Earth? (Las Vegas Sun, 2017. június 6.)
- What is Skinwalker Ranch and what’s really going on there (Utah.com)
- Bigelow Aerospace lays off all employees: Report (Space.com, 2020)
- US government admits funding secret UFO programme (Al Jazeera, 2017. december 17.)
- Timeline of Modern UFO Investigations: AAWSAP to AARO
- AARO Historical Record Report Volume 1 (2024)