There has been an interesting progression with Bigelow's interests.

Early on, the company was simply "Bigelow Aerospace" and they were devoted to developing systems for NASA's space programs and pursuing their own private programs as well.

Bigelow, being interested in UFO's, bought Skinwalker Ranch and began studying the phenomenon with a team of scientists.  The government sent someone out to see what they were finding and suddenly they got funding and participation from the Pentagon.  The company became known as the National Institute for Discovery Science.  Very little is known about what they actually recorded on Skinwalker Ranch but in the interview below, Bigelow mentions some very interesting encounters with whatever phenomena they were interacting with there.  The research was very inconsistent due to the unpredictable nature of the phenomenon and there were adverse effects among the researchers and Bigelow himself so he haulted the program.  Essentially, whatever they were communicating with was following them home...

Now, his company is focused on consciousness and the survival of consciousness after death.  He is throwing a lot of money at figuring out life after death and his experiences with NIDS along with the death of his wife led directly to the change of priorities.  I find this very telling.  I think his experiences at each stage are leading his research in the right direction.

Watch all 3 videos here.

If the delays in manned launcher hadn't happened, Bigelow was positioned to have habitats on orbit. Two prototypes flew.

He hires some very talented people and he was basically doing SpaceX stuff before Elon was rich.

I would love to see him and Musk team up. Things would progress much more rapidly in several fields and to the benefit of America!

Bob's obsession with the supernatural (from UFO's to Werewolves) basically torpedoed Bigelow Aerospace.  Which is sad, because they had a lot of serious engineers who just wanted to build space habitats for NASA (and did).  When Bob folded his other organization into Bigelow Aerospace, he promoted a bunch of his werewolf-chasing buddies into management positions...


...which resulted in Engineers working on materials science and tension structure analysis and ECLSS having to take orders from former mall cops.


Result: massive personnel turnover at BA, among the engineering staff.  You can't run projects when the dudes you hire to run the projects keep quitting after a couple of months.


At least the Transhab patents expired, and now SNC (a serious company) is working on inflatable habs for the space program.