Robert Bigelow, a 1967 graduate of the University of Arizona with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration, is a member of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas (UNLV) Foundation and an associate member of the Society for Scientific Exploration. In 1999 he founded Bigelow Aerospace (BA), a company responsible for the research, development and economic breakthroughs of habitable space stations, private enterprise space launch facilities, and space transportation in the developing areas of space tourism and the future of space travel. A powerful strong-minded individual who is not only developing the first in a long line of Bigelow Sundancer space hotels, he was also the original founder of the Budget Suites of America hotel chain with over 30 years experience. For those who would enjoy listening to his August 24, 2006 speech with Dr. Livingston on The Space Show, listen to this stream.
The prominent name of the Nevada millionaire Robert Bigelow hit the space news with a big impact in 2004, when it was announced that Bigelow Aerospace of North Las Vegas, Nevada, had developed the "America's Space Prize" to promote space travel into low Earth orbit with a $50 million dollar purse--five times the amount of the previously won $10 million Ansari X Prize. Bigelow developed his contest to further develop space tourism while utilizing everyone's key ambition of a "cold hard cash prize". His thoughts were to more or less break Russia's hold in space that was held by their Soyuz spacecraft, while ultimately pushing private-funded space travel for space tourism into low orbit.
