Robert Bigelow
Aerospace and hotel entrepreneur who funded the Pentagon's AAWSAP UFO study and decades of private research at Skinwalker Ranch.
- Active
- 1944–
- Country
- USA
- Organizations
- Bigelow Aerospace, BAASS, NIDS
Robert Bigelow is an American real-estate entrepreneur, founder of the Budget Suites of America hotel chain, who used his fortune to found Bigelow Aerospace, a private space-habitat company, and, in parallel, to become likely the single largest private funder of UFO and paranormal research in American history. In 1995 Bigelow founded the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), which conducted years of investigation into reported anomalous activity at Skinwalker Ranch, a property in northeastern Utah that Bigelow purchased specifically to study firsthand, working with researchers including George Knapp and biochemist Colm Kelleher. Between 2008 and 2010, Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), a Bigelow Aerospace subsidiary, received a Defense Intelligence Agency contract, secured with the help of Senator Harry Reid and other lawmakers, worth approximately $22 million to administer the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP), employing dozens of researchers including Hal Puthoff and Eric Davis and compiling a large private UFO case database. Bigelow has stated publicly and repeatedly that he is 'absolutely convinced' extraterrestrial life exists and has visited Earth, an unusually direct claim from a figure of his business stature. Bigelow Aerospace ceased operations in 2020, but Bigelow's decades of sustained private investment fundamentally shaped the institutional and financial infrastructure underlying the modern UAP disclosure movement.