Can this Billionaire Create a Life for Humans in Space?

Can Robert Bigelow create a life for humans in space?

- Diego Patino

TURN DOWN SKYWALKER WAY, then make a left on Warp Drive. A hangar-like facility is there, huge, as a hangar should be. Inside, a tall mustachioed gentleman in a baggy gray pinstriped suit stands idly. He owns the facility and everything around it. He also owns the Budget Suites of America a few miles away, down near the Las Vegas Strip. That’s just part of his empire, that bud get hotel, along with a whole chain of others scattered across the Southwest.

But we’re not here to talk budget hotels. We’re here to talk about the future, and a different kind of accommodations entirely: one that can be folded up, bundled onto a rocket, shot into space, expanded, and lived in. We’re here because Robert Bigelow—low-key billionaire, space entrepreneur, avowed believer in extraterrestrials—has invited us into this warehouse to show off his blow-up space home. There are doughnuts and coffee. Soon, lunch will be served. But right now Bigelow is ambling up to a podium, where he begins to scold us.

“You laughed at me,” he says to the crowd in his North Las Vegas headquarters. “When we said we would build an expandable system and place it on the International Space Station in two and a half years, you laughed,” he says. “It’s been two years and a quarter.” He pauses, letting it sink in—that he’s ahead of schedule—then lets loose a smile, wide as the West. “And here we are.”