HOWARD HUGHES II

Entrepreneurs Enter the Commercial Space Race

At the Bigelow Aerospace factory here, the full-size space station mockups sitting on the warehouse floor look somewhat like puffy white watermelons. The interiors offer a hint of what spacious living in space might look like.
“Every astronaut we have come in here just says, ‘Wow,’ ” said Robert T. Bigelow, the company founder. “They can’t believe the size of this thing.”

His space stations are not his only interest in space. “I’ve been a researcher and student of UFOs for many, many years,” Mr. Bigelow said.

“Anybody that does research, if people bother to do quality research, come away absolutely convinced. You don’t have to have personal encounters.”
He added: “People have been killed. People have been hurt. It’s more than observational kind of data.”