Art Bell Back in Time Ep629-Art Bell-Space Ventures and the Paranormal-Robert Bigelow
Jan 5, 2026
Robert Bigelow, billionaire founder of Bigelow Aerospace and investor in both commercial space habitats and paranormal research. He discusses expandable orbital modules and the business and political hurdles to private spaceflight. He talks launch partnerships, plans for stations and Mars logistics. He also touches on anomalous footage, Skinwalker Ranch research, and ideas about consciousness survival.
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Scale A Global Ground Station Network Quickly
- Build a global ground‑station network early to maintain contact with habitats; Bigelow plans ~24 stations and aims to add two to three per year.
- He expects Genesis 2 will allow about five hours/day of communications with distributed stations.
Russian ICBMs Enabled Bigelow Launches
- Bigelow repeatedly had to use Russian launchers because U.S. commercial options missed schedules, so Russia became essential to getting hardware into orbit.
- He notes Russia's willingness to repurpose SS-18 rockets and remove warheads for civilian launches.
Shuttle Retirement Leaves A Multi Year Access Gap
- The U.S. faces a gap in human access to LEO: shuttle retirement creates years with no domestic crew transport.
- Bigelow explains Congress funded small COTS prizes (~$475M) but that is tiny next to NASA's multi‑billion budgets and won't fully replace transportation needs.