Robert Bigelow is an American aerospace entrepreneur and hotelier whose companies have carried out privately funded and government-contracted research into unidentified aerial phenomena. George Knapp described meeting Bigelow in 1989, characterising him as a billionaire businessman who owned real estate and hotel properties in multiple states.1 Knapp said Bigelow subsequently began funding private UFO investigations as well as the work of UFO organisations.2 Bigelow’s fortune derives from the Budget Suites of America hotel chain.3
In 1995, Bigelow self-funded the creation of the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS),4 which George Knapp described as founded in 1996.5 The following year, in 1996, Bigelow paid 200,000 US dollars to purchase Skinwalker Ranch in Utah,6 funding full-time surveillance of the property as part of an investigation into paranormal claims associated with it.7 Eric Davis began working for NIDS in July 1996,8 and Bigelow later invited Edgar Mitchell to serve on the organisation’s science advisory board,9 where Mitchell sat while NIDS conducted research that remained secret.10 None of the scientists Bigelow brought in to study the Skinwalker Ranch phenomenon were UFO believers by background.11 The scope of NIDS’s work extended beyond the ranch, and much of what it uncovered remains confidential;12 the organisation conducted investigations across the United States from 1995 to 2004.13 Luis Elizondo later described NIDS as having studied Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) and the paranormal during the 1990s.14
In 1998, Bigelow founded Bigelow Aerospace, a company specialising in manufactured space equipment, largely with his own funding.15 The company has since worked with NASA to produce expandable craft for use in space.16 Harry Reid said his own interest in UFOs originated with Bigelow,17 and Luis Elizondo counted Bigelow among Reid’s friends.18 Reid said he visited Bigelow’s Skinwalker Ranch, and that what a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) scientist saw there convinced him the phenomenon warranted investigation.19 In August 2008, the DIA issued an invitation to tender for the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP); Bigelow was the sole bidder, securing 10 million US dollars in funding for the first year with a five-year option.20 The contract was awarded to a subsidiary of Bigelow Aerospace.21 The programme’s investigations began in late 2008 and reportedly ended in 2012,22 though most of the AAWSAP team were terminated by mid-2010.23
Most of the funding for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) also went to Bigelow’s aerospace research company.24 That funding flowed to Bigelow Aerospace, which hired subcontractors and solicited research for the programme.25 Working with Bigelow’s Las Vegas-based company, AATIP produced documents describing sightings of aircraft that appeared to move at very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion.26 Much of the Pentagon funding for the UAP investigation went to LLC Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), owned by Bigelow,27 which served as the prime contractor for the programme Luis Elizondo joined28 and on which Bigelow was described as the lead contractor.29 Bigelow hired several of the same scientists who had worked on his earlier NIDS investigations to work on the BAASS programme.30 Elizondo described Bigelow as a billionaire hotelier, developer, and aerospace magnate,31 and as the contractor running the investigation at Utah Skinwalker Ranch.32 Bigelow had bought the ranch land in the mid-1990s so his scientists could study unusual occurrences long associated with the property,33 and he still owned it at the time of AAWSAP.34 Elizondo said Bigelow spent much of his own money funding some of the programme’s costs.35 According to reporting on the programme, under Bigelow’s direction Bigelow Aerospace modified buildings in Nevada Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that Elizondo and AATIP contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena.36 An alien logo is painted on the exterior of the Bigelow Aerospace building in Las Vegas.37
Bigelow has spoken publicly about his views on the Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) and Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) issue. He has said that internationally, the United States is the most backward country in the world on the UFO issue.36 He has said American scientists are scared of being ostracised and that American media is scared of the stigma surrounding the subject,37 while, in his view, China and Russia are much more open about it, working on it through large state organisations.38 Bigelow has said he believes UFOs have visited Earth.39 In an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Lara Logan, he said he was “absolutely convinced” that aliens exist,40 and he has said he probably spent more as an individual researching an extraterrestrial presence than anyone else in the United States ever has.41 Bigelow is described as notoriously media shy, making the 60 Minutes interview a notable exception.42 He has also described his grandparents having a close encounter with a UAP that filled the windscreen of their car before shooting away into the distance.43