#Tavern tycoon buy extension license

The aerospace company, however, laid off all but about 20 of its 155 employees last March when Nevada’s governor declared it nonessential and it had to close.Īfter canceling his consciousness studies program, Mr. Bigelow said he had a “fantastic” new commercial purpose to reveal soon. In 2016, Elon Musk’s SpaceX sent Bigelow’s BEAM to the space station, where it is filled with sensors, but Mr.

#Tavern tycoon buy extension license

In 1999 he founded Bigelow Aerospace and the following year bought the license from NASA to build expandable space habitats, launching the unmanned Genesis I and II inflatable modules into orbit in 20. Bigelow’s granddaughter, Blair, has worked with his aerospace and realty companies and may eventually take them over, Mr. (That son, Rod II, grew up to struggle with drug addiction and would also die from suicide at 20 in 2011. The Bigelows’ interest in consciousness grew after the 1992 death by suicide of their 24-year-old son, Rod Lee, father of a baby son and as-yet-unborn daughter. Bigelow said he had an idea what that best evidence might be, but “it would be prejudicial to say.” 1, to be judged by a panel of specialists. Submissions of up to 25,000 words are due by Aug. 28, with a record of at least five years of study of the field and preferably an affiliation with groups like the Society for Psychical Research in Britain.

1.Įntrants must qualify as serious researchers by Feb. It set the stage for his new afterlife contest, seeking the best available evidence of survival of consciousness, with prizes of $500,000, $300,000 and $150,000 for first, second and third place. The strange goings-on drew the interest of the Defense Intelligence Agency and, through funding secured by Harry Reid, the former Democratic Senate majority leader, led to the formation of a Pentagon effort to study unidentified flying objects - the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, revealed by The New York Times in 2017. Bigelow to indulge a celebrated, if sometimes derided, interest in what he called “anomalous events” including his 20-year ownership of a spooky Utah ranch overrun by flying orbs and other creepy phenomena. The profits have enabled him, he says, to sink more than $350 million into Bigelow Aerospace, “my own real black hole,” as he put it in recent phone interviews. His aerospace ventures have been financed by his Budget Suites business, one of the first extended-stay rental chains, now housing some 15,000 people in three states. He amassed a fortune to pursue his interests, including the designing and building of inflatable astronaut habitats for NASA, like his soft-sided expandable activity module called BEAM attached to the International Space Station. A daunting quest, perhaps fringe to some, but the shaggy-maned and mustached entrepreneur, the sole owner of Bigelow Aerospace and Budget Suites of America, is not easily put off.