Robert Bigelow

Robert Thomas Bigelow (born 12 May 1945) is an American aerospace entrepreneur and real-estate mogul who became a billionaire as founder of Budget Suites of America — and remains, to this day, the most significant private funder of UAP research in history. In 1995 he founded the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) and acquired the Skinwalker Ranch in Utah as a laboratory for paranormal activity. In 2008 his company BAASS won the DIA contract for AAWSAP, the most comprehensive government-funded UAP study since Project Blue Book. In a 2017 60 Minutes interview he stated that he is "absolutely convinced" extraterrestrials visit Earth.

• Founder of Budget Suites of America, billionaire
• 1995 founded the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS)
• Acquired the Skinwalker Ranch in Utah as a research site for paranormal phenomena
• BAASS won the 2008 DIA contract for AAWSAP, deployed field teams, developed the CAPELLA database and produced dozens of technical reports for the DIA
• Through Bigelow Aerospace developed the BEAM module attached to the International Space Station
• 2017 60 Minutes interview: public statement of belief in extraterrestrial visitation
• Sold the Skinwalker Ranch to Brandon Fugal in 2016

Bigelow is the private hub without which modern UAP research is institutionally hard to imagine: he financed NIDS, BAASS and the Pentagon AAWSAP program, fused government interests with entrepreneurial wealth and left behind — through the Skinwalker Ranch, the CAPELLA database and the BEAM space module — a paranormal, an intelligence-related and a purely aerospace legacy at the same time. His public commitment to extraterrestrial visitation made him the rare figure of a business magnate who answers the existence question in the affirmative, without hedging.