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March 17, 2007 - Art Bell

02:38:00

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Space Ventures and the Paranormal - Robert Bigelow

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50:02

robert bigelow

01:37:37

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art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be in the world's time zones, prolific as they are, and each and every one of them covered by this program, Coast to Coast A.M. I'm Art Bell.
		It is my honor and privilege to be escorting you through this weekend, a good one it shall be.
		This night, and I've got so much to say about this.
		Robert Bigelow is going to be here.
		Mr., I'm going to put a hotel in space, and he's not kidding.
		In fact, he's got one satellite up now.
		The other is either launched or about to be launched.
		This guy's real serious, and to prove it, you might want to peruse some of the photographs that I've got up there.
		They just went up on the website just before airtime.
		Now, this is the visit that Aaron and I made to Bigelow Aerospace, and I held most of the photographs back.
		In fact, Bob would probably do well to go up there and peruse them himself.
		I'm sure he's not seen them, so they're going to be a surprise for him as well.
		A lot of his equipment is pictured.
		It's absolutely fascinating stuff.
		So you might want to get up to the website and peruse that ahead of the interview, which I'm going to begin at about 15 after the hour.
		This hour.
		Just a couple of things that I want to get out of the way.
		As you know, last weekend I was in Los Angeles, and I received an award, a very great honor.
		It was indeed, from Radio and Records.
		And I will not burden you with any thank yous here.
		They came in a little speech that I made thanking them.
		And that, too, is on the website.
		You can hear it.
		So that was kind of cool.
		We did get to go to Disneyland after that affair.
		And that was way cool.
		We got, if you haven't seen the California experience or the California, whatever it is, the IMAX presentation, oh my God, you've got to see it.
		It's just nothing short of incredible.
		All right.
		For those of you who have listened to the program for years, you're going to know what I'm about to say.
		For some of the rest of you, you won't.
		So let me tell you a little story.
		Years ago, Ramona and I went to Paris.
		Actually, we loved Paris.
		It was one of our favorite places, and we were there any number of times.
		But on this occasion, we were on the far outskirts of Paris, and we went into a little Italian restaurant run by an Italian guy.
		This is now a decade ago.
		I guess it's a decade ago, better part of a decade ago.
		And we ordered a cheese pizza.
		We were hungry.
		And he brought out this incredible sauce that he had made of about 16 herbs.
		And anyway, it was just unbelievable good.
		It took this pizza and it made it, it made it magic.
		And Ramona was very good at this kind of thing.
		So she sat at the table and deciphered what these herbs were.
		She was just very good at that.
		And we came back to the U.S. and she put together what we now call, and 10 years ago, eight years ago, whatever it was, I told you about it.
		It was to be called pizza punch.
		Well, guess what?
		After all of these years, let me add a little more.
		We produced, you know, right here at the house, some pizza punch.
		And we decided we would test market it.
		So we took it down.
		We took it down to a local pizza parlor, and they offered it to their customers who went berserk over it.
		And they couldn't get enough of it.
		And we couldn't supply enough of it.
		It was crazy.
		Just people went berserk over it.
		It was so good.
		And so I was contacted by a man a few years ago now who said, look, we might be able to make this pizza punch.
		And longtime listeners know this has, you know, kind of been in the works for years.
		Well, finally, tonight, if you would like to try Pizza Punch, you can do it.
		There's now a website up.
		It's called ArtBellsPizzapunch.com.
	That's A-R-T-B-E-L-L-S Pizza Punch, P-I-Z-Z-A, P-Y-N-C-H, all strung together, artbellspizzapunch.com.
	And you can order some and give it a try.
	It is amazing stuff.
	Absolutely amazing.
	In fact, the whole story of Pizza Punch is really up there on the website.
	You can read about the history of it, how we found it, how we developed it, and all the rest of it.
	So it's now called Art Bell's Pizza Punch, but it ought to be Art and Ramona Bell's Pizza Punch, I guess, my name being the one they used it.
	Anyway, there you've got it.
	And a certain amount of the proceeds, if there turn out to be any, will go to the Asthma Foundation directly.
	So there you've got it, Pizza Punch.
	People have been bugging me for years and years and years and years about this.
	So if you want to give it a try, you can locate it at artbellspizzapunch.com.
	And I really, really, really would like your input on this.
	It was kind of a love of ours and very carefully and lovingly developed.
	And I never thought that I would have a food product.
	And in a sense, I guess I don't.
	It's just there.
	If you want to give it a try, if you are curious, after all these years, if you're curious about a new product, something really cool, this is it.
	Artbellspizzapunch.com.
	A-R-T-B-E-L-L-S-P-I-Z-Z-A-P-U-N-C-H.
	And punch it does, too, dot com.
	So there you have it.
	It'll be available.
	It's actually, I think even if you ordered it now, you couldn't get it until April 1st, is it?
	I don't know if that'd be a good date.
	Yep, April 1st.
	Ships April 1st.
	It's not a joke, though, that's for sure.
	All right.
	Beyond that, there is a photograph right now on the website under Art Bell's webcam.
	And if you want to take a look at that, you're welcome to.
	I caught Aaron and our other little immigrant, our little Manila kitty, both asleep on the couch.
	Pregnant women do a lot of that, sleeping.
	And I thought it was so cute.
	And so I snapped a photograph, and that is it.
	So there's a lot of stuff on the website to take a look at tonight, including, of course, that photograph I just mentioned.
	And all of these photographs of the Bigelow Aerospace Facility.
	I mean, we really got in and got to look at everything.
	The only thing not included in that array of photographs is an actual picture of the satellite, the second satellite itself, which was totally proprietary.
	It looks like someone's telling me the web server crashed on Pizza Punch.
	That only took about a minute.
	All I can tell you is it's already down.
	Got about five people on there saying it's already down.
	Sorry.
	The people who run that website, I'm sure, will do their very best to get it back up again.
	So just write it down and try later or tomorrow or something.
	People have been waiting years for that.
	So I knew it was going to get hit hard.
	I didn't know it would only last seconds.
	Just write it down, art Bellspeacepunch.com.
	Okay.
	In a moment, Robert Bigelow graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration.
	In 1999, he founded Bigelow Aerospace.
	Bigelow Aerospace is a general contracting, investment, research, and development company that concentrates on achieving economic breakthroughs in the costs associated with design, development, construction of habitable space stations, space transportation, and launch facilities to the extent that they will be affordable for private enterprise use.
	Robert Bigelow is active and a member in various business and scientific community organizations.
	He is a member of the UNLV Foundation and an associate member of the Society for Scientific Exploration.
	He's my H.R. Hadley.
	He's a billionaire who decided at his late age, or I should say our late age, we're nearly the same age, to take all this money he had amassed in private industry and go to space.
	Now, who in the world does that?
	I think it was Mr. Bigelow who told me, aerospace is a business that will very quickly turn billionaires into millionaires and then less.
	But that's what he's doing.
	Hopefully not getting turned into a millionaire or less, but certainly going to space.
	In fact, he's already there.
	So he's not a man who just talks.
	He's a doer.
	And if you doubt it after seeing these photographs, well, then just stay by your radio.
	Turn the volume up a little bit because what you're about to hear will blow your mind.
	In a moment, Bob Bigelow.
	Well, all right.
	Again, I would like to emphasize the man you're about to hear is not just a talker.
	He's a doer.
	He's already sent one satellite into space, if not two.
	And if the second hasn't gone, it's about to go.
	And he's got little creatures, bugs, and that sort of thing that he's doing environmental testing with.
	By all means, make it up to coast2coastam.com and look at the photographs that I took of his facility.
	It's quite a facility, Piccolo Aerospace in Las Vegas.
	And I haven't released these to anybody until tonight, until this very moment, actually.
	And I guess Bob will get a chance to see them.
	He can probably sit where he is and peruse the photographs because they literally just went up at airtime.
	So, ladies and gentlemen, if we're ready, here is Bob Bigelow.
	Bob, welcome to the program.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Art.
		Thank you.
		Thank you very much.
		Good evening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Great to have you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, have you had a chance to go to the website?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		You know, I'm sitting in a room that's not where my computer is.
		It's in a different area.
		But I generally remember the photos that you took, the positions that you were in, and so I tend to remember them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're very, very good photographs, Bob, and we'll sort of go through them.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Incidentally, we figured a way out to kind of expose the G2, the Genesis 2 spacecraft, and still comply with the restraints of ITAR, you know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Stop, stop, stop.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Tell everybody what ITAR is.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, ITAR is a rather ominous agency, regulatory feature of the Department of State.
		And its intent is to protect this country from the export of information that could have derogatory effects.
		And so in its scope and sweep of implementation, it covers a multitude of things, some of which probably should not need to be covered.
		And so we have to be very cognizant of anything that we expose on the website or other ways that we don't reveal something that could be objectionable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What is ITAR?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What is the acronym?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		It stands for the International Treaty on Arms and Munitions and Regulations.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		And so what we've done is kind of tricked out the what we did, we photographed the spacecraft by turning all the lights off in the room when we started there.
		So we turned all the lights off, and then we created various kind of lighting enhancements that were kind of obscure.
		And then we took and we overlaid a fog over the pictures so that you kind of see this outline, this shape and some things bleeding through and some kind of instrumentation.
		And it looks kind of cool, actually.
		So what I'm going to do is find a way to get those photographs to you as soon as I can.
		And I think you'll like them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Let's update where things are.
		You launched your first spacecraft when?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		July the 12th of last year.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		July the 12th last year.
		And you had some biologics on the spacecraft and you had a lot of, I guess you had cameras, you had communications gear.
		You're a private citizen putting a spacecraft in orbit and in orbit it still is, right?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Oh, definitely.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		It'll be there for some forecasts are as long as 13 years and probably no less than 10 years, depending upon solar flare activity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		And now, you've got a second spacecraft, which I had the privilege to actually see in person when I was at Bigelow Aerospace.
		And it was going to be launched.
		And I don't know whether you can discuss the current status of it or not.
		Can you?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I think we can.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		I think we can.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are we?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		We are expecting a launch the week of the 19th and out of Russia, of course.
		We had been told initially that we were expecting a launch on the 30th of January, and that got bumped because of events that took place.
		Subsequent to our launch last year in July, they had a failure of another launch carrying other satellites.
		And that's a big deal.
		And so it dominoed on us, and the result of it was that everything slid north schedule-wise, and so our schedule got bumped from the 30th of January to, we were told, later than the, we were told that the 1st of April was the expected date thereabouts.
		And now we have confirmation that that is going to occur definitely in the week of the 19th.
		So that is our, in fact, we're shipping a spacecraft out very soon because we have to be there about a month or so or maybe five weeks or four or five weeks ahead of the actual launch date.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you were to articulate the difference between the first spacecraft and this one, what would the high points be?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, the high points are that this is a sister spacecraft in terms of its size is virtually identically the same.
		But what we've done is significantly altered the payloads, and we're flying a number of things that Genesis 1 is not flying.
		And we're flying reaction wheels.
		We're flying multiple gas tanks, air tanks that are manifolded.
		We're flying almost twice as many cameras.
		We're flying, of course, the Fly Your Stuff program for folks, which is kind of a fun thing that we're doing.
		it's not necessarily tied into the mission of the spacecraft.
		We're flying a suite of avionics that are significantly enhanced over what G-1 had in terms of redundancy and other kinds of...
		So these are testbed Pathfinder spacecrafts, and all of them are intended to try to validate various kinds of hardware, various approaches, from everything to fabricating different hardware and assembling, integrating it all together to various companies' systems.
		And so, you know, each one is a gamble.
		Each one is a situation where it's not only the launch itself that we keep our fingers crossed over, but it's actually the performance of all kinds of stuff on each spacecraft.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The average American citizen thinks, I believe, that, you know, if somebody like yourself, a private individual, private citizen, decides to invest a lot of money and put something in space, then it's only your business.
		But that's just not true.
		Is it?
		ITAR is there.
		You are watched over by our government, probably other governments.
		Everybody in sight watches over you, don't they?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah.
		And you know what, Art?
		I think the way to express this level of intensity, you know, we've all, God knows, technology is a huge grunt.
		And to say the least, we're always on pins and needles as to what technological apparatus actually works or fails.
		But if you're looking at the hierarchy of sharks that can bite you, that can really hurt you in this business.
		I look at it this way.
		I put technology as kind of the foundation.
		It's the lower level, very, very serious, but not quite as serious as some of the next things.
		And I think the next thing is money.
		You know, if you have enough money, you can pretty much buy a lot of different kinds of technology and eventually get what you want.
		Above that, I think it's management.
		Because if you screw up the management of your money, then it really doesn't make much difference if you can't appropriate it right or even if you don't have enough of it, then you're in serious trouble.
		So management is crucial.
		And we know some examples where poor management of money sometimes hasn't resulted in much benefit.
		But above that, you're getting into an area now that's the most lethal, and that is politics.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Politics.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		And there probably isn't anything that's worse because you have no control over that subject.
		You're at the mercy of a lot of people that just flat don't care.
		And actually you're putting them, making them go to some trouble that maybe they'd rather not have to go through.
		And so politics to us is a big friggin' deal.
		It is no small nightmare that we have to deal with.
		We have a fantastic Washington office, and they devote 90% of their time to this ITAR subject, you know, trying to get our satisfy the Department of State and other agencies, and it's a big deal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, it shouldn't be a big deal.
		Now, obviously, we don't want to give away priceless technology to enemies.
		There is that.
		But that issue aside, it seems to me that could be handled.
		Well, all right, there's the music.
		Hold tight, Bob.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It seems to me that ITAR could be handled in a sensible, non-political way.
		But I guess we all know the world is not non-political.
		The world is nothing but politics.
		And so we'll talk about that tonight.
		We'll talk about how hard it is for a private citizen to endeavor to do what NASA has done and perhaps more.
		Here I am.
		My guest is Bob Bigelow, my H.R. Haddon.
		And he's launching spacecraft.
		Number two is going up next month, week of the 19th.
		Now, all of this is not just to launch spacecraft.
		This is all headed toward a goal.
		And that goal is a hotel in space.
		Ultimately, a hotel in space.
		And if you want to see how it's going to go together, if you want to see how the modules are configured, go to the website, coastcoastam.com.
		Aaron and I went to Bigelow Aerospace.
		We got to take pictures of modules, habitable, ultimately habitable modules, modules that may well take you in your lifetime to space.
		Can you imagine that?
		Think about that.
		You, certainly your children, but you, this is our lifetime kind of thing.
		This is a 2012 kind of thing.
		When we're talking about getting some of you to space, we'll be right back.
		So in other words, if you were a private citizen and you wanted to put a spacecraft in orbit, ultimately a hotel in orbit, you'd be concerned about technology, of course, and money, and then the management of money.
		But more than any of those, you'd be concerned about politics.
		Bob, is there any way, and this is something we talked about this when I was there, that the audience can help you out.
		Is there any way to cut through some of the red tape?
		Because in a moment, I'm going to have you describe what NASA is doing and the gap that we're facing in terms of our capability to get things into space.
		And that's going to shock a lot of you.
		And you're going to know then that we need the Bob Bigelows of the world.
		So, Bob, is there anything the audience politically can do to help your case out?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		You know, since you asked me that question, Art, I've been pondering that, and I wish that I had a positive solution and say, oh, yes, only if we just did this one thing.
		But it's really, as we'll find out here in this discussion tonight, it's so entwined and kind of a self-choking situation that there isn't any one simple solution necessarily.
		And the political aspects of space really are part of the kind of, it's what really induces part of the problems that NASA is having today, even.
		And so even NASA is hamstrung by politics that completely surrounds this subject.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Who owns space?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Who owns space?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Does anybody own space?
		Does anybody own the moon?
		Does anybody own Mars?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		That answer changes according to the geography that is the target.
		If you're talking about, you know, there are air rights over real estate, over land, and each country has a different, each sovereign country can dictate more or less where its air rights stop, and that changes from country to country.
		And when you go talk about the moon and other celestial bodies, you encounter the 67 Moon Treaty, and which the United States is a part.
		And, you know, that's a piece of a treaty that has constrictions as to who can do what.
		And, you know, so then that's actually something that's in debate as to whether or not it's even valid.
		And it's quite a complex.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bob, what are the basics of it?
		I mean, what does it say?
		What can we and can't we do?
		I don't need all the details, but I mean, the big picture.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, it was passed in 1967.
		A lot of countries were not part of that.
		And so at that point in time, it was anticipating that there was a mad lunar rush.
		And so the treaty wound up dictating that it was to be used for the general good of mankind.
		And essentially, you could put a base on the moon, you could operate it like Lemurdo in the Antarctic, but you couldn't really, you could never use it for military purposes, which is a good thing.
		And you also would be, if you were to put any kind of business enterprise affiliated with the moon, it would fail because it would be required that that enterprise be sort of a charitable kind of operation.
		It would be something that would be for the good of mankind, essentially.
		But the language really is vague.
		And so there is ambiguity as to what the private sector might be able to do versus the sovereign countries.
		And there's a lot of countries that never agreed to anything because they never signed the treaty.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Let's say the Chinese got into space, and they are getting into space, Bob, and they flew to Mars somehow.
		They got to Mars and planted a Chinese flag on the red soil.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What would that mean?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that'd be great.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Because we would all go out there and kick ass to try to beat them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, that's true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the moment we knew they were going to even try it, I suppose we'd have money to go back to space.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		I would love to see that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You'd love to see that.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		I absolutely would love to see it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Your facility is astounding.
		And again, folks, if you want to see what the facility looks like, part of it anyway, I took pictures of as much as I was allowed to.
		For example, that giant machine, Bob, can you explain about that?
		It's a big orange monster.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's a special CNC machine that is a computerized machine that can handle a 14-foot square billet that might weigh thousands and thousands of pounds because it could be 10 or 12 inches thick.
		And it's just the kind of thing that we use to make full-scale bulkheads from.
		Because you, as I tell the guys, we're really good at taking nice-sized large pieces of aluminum and winding up with a whole lot of shavings over here.
		But seriously, that's what the purpose is, is you make a one-piece uni-body construction of an isogrid billet for an isogrid bulkhead out of that billet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Further on, we've got a lot of pictures of your control room.
		And this is an area where you have controllers sitting at consoles.
		We didn't happen to catch them at the consoles at that point, but they monitor and communicate with the spacecraft.
		Is that correct?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
		You probably scared them, Mark.
		They were probably in hiding because – So anyway – They are there, and we now capture.
		We have three stations scattered in the one that you saw, and then we have receiving and sending stations in Alaska and Hawaii.
		So we will be, with Genesis 2 flying, we will be in constant communication five hours a day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Five hours a day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so the more stations you have around the globe, the more communications you have, obviously.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and that's crucial.
		We're looking to try to have maybe a couple of dozen eventually about 24 stations.
		But we're at least anticipating adding two as a minimum per year, maybe three per year, between now and 010.
		And 010 is a date in which we intend to launch Sundancer, which is intended to be an occupiable module.
		And by that time, we should have in the order of perhaps 10 stations at least.
		And that's not too bad.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's not bad at all.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we'll be in fair communication.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, now further on, photos 15, 16 will give people some idea of the interior of what ultimately is going to go up there and turn into, and we should talk about this a little bit.
		I don't know what it's going to turn into.
		Is it going to turn into, I suppose at first, big aloe astronauts will be occupying this immense amount of space.
		And it's a lot of space.
		In fact, as you go down the photographs, 18, 19, 20, take a look.
		21, the outside of these modules.
		These are pressurized modules that Bob has built and will be building mock-ups of them here.
		And they're big.
		They're going to be big enough to ultimately be a hotel and space, aren't they, Bob?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, let me back up just a little bit and give some credit here to NASA, and then we'll go on forward to the use and these structures and like that.
		We acquired, I actually was introduced to this expandable technology through, started off being a magazine article.
		And I was astounded to learn that NASA had created this kind of technology.
		And of course, by the infinite wisdom of Congress, their program was cut.
		This is part of the politics problem we're talking about, right?
		So they lost their funding.
		And through some phone calls I made, and one thing led to another, I come to find out the program was not being pursued.
		So we started pursuing it.
		And then eventually we acquired licenses to their patents, and we acquired patents of our own.
		And so essentially what you have is an expandable system that provides, in our particular scale of things, about three times the interior volume of any module that's flying on the International Space Station right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good Lord.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		So that's a good thing because every launch is very expensive.
		So any time that you could triple the value, the volume of space, you kind of triple the value, so to speak, of the module itself per launch.
		So you're putting each launch to very good use.
		And so that's part of the value of these systems is the volume that they can carry.
		The other value is the safety.
		Because of the shielding involved and also because of the designs for our radiation protection, these systems are safer to be inside than the conventional construction of solid aluminum structure is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it reasonable for you to explain the difference or are we getting into guarded?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, no, no, we can.
		We can do that in fairly kind of, you know, general terms.
		I can't name names of materials and things like that.
unidentified		Okay.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		We can in general terms because there's already quite a bit out in the literature on this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, how much safer?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, years ago we did some hyper what they call the ballistic tests are called hypervelocity impact tests.
		And we did this on, we performed these tests on some old shield architectures.
		And these tests showed that the projectiles That we shot into our own shields sustained the impacts very well and just obliterated the targets that we used that were exact mock-ups of the strongest insulated and mechanically prepared portions of the hull of the modules,
		the best constructed modules on the ISS, and just obliterated.
		In fact, it didn't punch a hole in it.
		It actually unzipped these pieces to where it fractured them so badly, we thought, well, if this had been a real incident, it might have gone from bulkhead to bulkhead.
		That penetration was so violent.
		But in our shields, it didn't exit the targets.
		So from that standpoint, and NASA knows this.
		In fact, the original intent for these structures by NASA was to use them as a dormitory for the ISS and for deep space missions going to Mars.
		That was the whole point.
		So this isn't some concoction of ours that we said, oh, gee, you know, we laid awake one night and just jumped this up.
		No, this was the guy that was the principal fellow on the team was Dr. Bill Schneider.
		In fact, he has been a consultant to us for years now, and he had some excellent fellows and gals under him on the whole team.
		And, of course, that all was disbanded when the program was killed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why was it killed, Bob?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, I won't give names of particular congressmen, but there was a particular congressman who was the chairman of a certain committee, and he felt that NASA was being distracted and wanted to maintain, have them maintain their focus in other directions, and that this kind of system might encourage NASA to be too invigorated about going to Mars.
		And so it was called the M-word at that time.
		They would say, well, don't say the M-word here around the halls of headquarters or JSC or wherever.
		Don't talk about Mars.
		That's not the word you want to use.
		So again, that's the silliness of politics.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I guess.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But not mention the word Mars.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Mars was unmentionable because...
		It was not approved as an appropriate agenda for at that moment in time, at that point.
		And this goes back to 1999 and 2000.
		And it was not appropriate.
		There was this application to use this structure as a dormitory for the ISS, but somehow that was drowned in the noise of instead of it being something that could be looked upon as applicable to Mars.
		So it was a good program that should have continued.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it should have.
		I don't get it, Bob.
		There's a breaking news story from Pasadena right now.
		New measurements of Mars' South Pole region are indicating extensive frozen water.
		Now, listen, the polar region contains enough water to cover the entire planet in a liquid layer about 11 meters or 36 feet deep.
		In other words, cover all of Mars to 36 feet deep.
		That's a lot of water, Bob.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		It is.
		It makes you think that that planet offers tremendous potential, particularly for countries that have a lot of population, but maybe not a lot of land mass.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's an awful lot of water.
		I guess water is necessary for life.
		Water is necessary for fuel, correct?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So if we're to go to Mars and come back and or do that trip on any sort of regular basis at all, we have to have water there because water is real heavy and you can't launch a whole bunch of it from Earth, right?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		That's correct.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		You need to have, we incorporate water as part of our radiation shielding because we intend to use that in a certain way that helps to provide supplemental protection for deep space missions, or even for long tours of duty in Leo, but deep space is worse once you exit Leo.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Leo, low Earth orbit.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		You've got to remember, a lot of us are not all up on all of these.
		By now, you've been doing this so long, the acronyms just fall right out of your mouth.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		No, I've gotten written all over my T-shirts and everywhere on the dashboard of my car, you name it.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		It gets confusing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you remember the moment in your life, Bob, when you decided to make this unbelievable investment in going to space?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, I made a commitment.
		I never knew exactly what direction it was going to take because it was so many years ago, and I just kind of had a general passion and feeling that, by God, I was going to get involved in some major way.
		And it happened just when I was a kid.
		And, you know, I've told you that story.
		And sometimes when you're a young kid, you get something in your head because of an event or a story that someone has told you about.
		And you never forget it.
		And that's lived with me all my life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but as an adult, I guess for some years you've had reasonably the financial structure to be able to do something like this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There must have been a moment, though, as an adult when you said, oh, the hell with it, let's do it.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, that actually occurred in about 1997.
		I felt that I was financially ready and that I had waited long enough.
		And that's when I started casting about, looking for what the hell to do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then ultimately, to get anything into space, including the satellites that you're now launching, You had to go to Russia instead of the U.S. You had to go to Russia to get your stuff launched.
		You're still doing that.
		And that's got to be a big story.
		Why Russia?
		Why not the U.S.?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it is a big story.
		It's a good news, bad news kind of story.
		And the good news was that Russia, fortunately for us, has been a fantastic asset, actually, for us, because without them, we wouldn't have anything in space.
		And we had, at the same time, we had multiple lines in the water, of course, on everything that we do, and we try to anyway.
		And so we had another agreement and contract with an American company, but the American company just didn't come through.
		And so thank God we had the other line in the water with the Russians, and they did, and they've been tremendous to work with.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In addition to that, folks, unless I'm wrong, I believe every time you launch a satellite, Bob, it's an SS-18, which was one of the Soviet Union's biggest assets in terms of carrying multiple warheads to the United States and elsewhere around the world for what would have been a horrible war.
		So they use SS-18s.
		Is that correct, Bob?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		It is correct.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		We just asked them to remove the warhead on the missile that was aimed at Las Vegas and please put our spacecraft on it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Bob Bigelow is my guest.
		He's already in space, and he's about to go again shortly from the high deserts.
		The both of us, actually, from the high deserts.
		I'm Art Bell.
		Indeed, here I am.
		We're dealing with a missing cat, yet he has somehow managed to escape, or he's hiding in a new place that we can't find.
		Listen, everybody, my guest is none other than Bob Bigelow.
		He is a private citizen in space.
		And it's going to be more than just Bob Bigelow in space eventually.
		There are plans.
		And if you look on the website, you'll see more than just sort of an artist's rendition of those plans.
		You'll see next to the real McCoy.
		And if we could show you the real McCoy, and I think Bob may have some photographs on his website of some of the satellites that he's got in orbit.
		Or if he doesn't, he'll have them there soon or get them to me and I'll have them there.
		At any rate, in a moment, we'll continue with Bob Bigelow.
		Again, here's Bob Bigelow, Bob.
		So it's SS-18s, and it's kind of nice.
		I guess everyone you launch is one that is no longer armed with nuclear warheads aimed this away.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		We started with, you know, saying, okay, take about several of those warheads off of this one over here, since it's aimed at Las Vegas.
		We'll begin there.
		And there's 7 million tons of explosives.
		It's no joke.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No joke.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		It's no joke.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		There are 1,100 that are hot, and there are 165 available to the private sector.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My God.
		Well, thanks for considering Las Vegas first, because in every movie I've ever seen, Las Vegas is the first to go.
		Okay.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Maybe they just think we'll self-destruct on our own and not waste the nuclear arsenal, you know?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe.
		At any rate, soon another one is used.
		Soon another one goes into orbit.
		Now, you have plans that go all the way out to the year 2013.
		Now, this is all reasonably within your lifetime and my lifetime, right?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Hopefully.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you plan to go to space, Bob?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		I do.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		I definitely do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What year would you go?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I don't know about, I guess, just so I don't wait too long and I can still crawl on board, you know.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		I don't actually have a particular year in mind, but I think it's a function of being prepared and knowing that something is in place in terms of structure where when that time occurs, I'm not leaving something behind that can't be self-sustaining.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Right.
		So you're out to 2013.
		Guess at a year when you might feel comfortable.
		Now, the modules start going up Sundancer in 2010, right?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you might wait, what, a year and then go?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		We have quite a program.
		And by the way, I think there are two or three things here to mention.
		One is that we are a member of a group of companies that are all kind of in this together in this private sector effort because unless transportation is there, you know, eventually for people, then we're going nowhere.
		So we're very connected to whether there's transportation.
		Sundancer is the exception.
		We are going to launch that spacecraft regardless of whether there's transportation.
		But we are also connected to Space Force, the availability of having dominion and control over Space Force without getting knocked off by DOD or NASA because of some agenda that they have.
		So it's very important for the private sector to have control where if they promise schedules and they promise delivery of flights, they have to be able to be the Southwest Airlines of that kind of operation and be able to fulfill those commitments.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		While we're here, let's talk a little bit about NASA because we've got the space shuttle, such as it is, but it's got a retirement date, I guess.
		And there's going to be a number of years where the United States, I guess, is not going to launch anything at all.
		We're going to be out of the space business, more or less.
		Is that true?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		That is absolutely true.
		It's an unbelievable situation that we're going to be in.
		But the shuttle fleet, which of course started off being five and now is down to three, has about 14 Missions ahead of it.
		And so it's kind of even not certain whether all 14 can be accomplished by those three shuttles in that length of time.
		But nevertheless, that is the agenda.
		So it's a very high flight rate for them.
		And between when that shuts down and 010, they're all being mothballed.
		Michael Griffin, who's the NASA administrator, as you know, has said recently that they do not see any way that we will have a transportation system, the Orion system, before 015.
		So America will be, in fact, we have appropriated congressionally over a billion dollars a year for transportation expenses that will be applicable to those points in time from 010 to 015 or beyond.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So from 010 to 2015, we're not going to space.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's nothing that we have no vehicles that could get us there.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yes, as far as the federal program is concerned, now there is a caveat to that.
		There are two caveats to that.
		The first caveat is that Congress shoved and pushed to its credit, so we have to give them a little credit.
		Not too much, we don't want to get carried away, but a little credit.
		They shoved and pushed, and they forced NASA to embrace the private sector in a transportation program called COTS.
		And that's an alternative transportation program to the lunar program that NASA is trying to implement.
		So they took a sum of money, a little less than $500 million, appropriated over a five-year period.
		So say averaging $100 million per year.
		Now, that's a lot of money, but you've got to keep something in mind here.
		Everything is relative, right?
		So there's $500 million that was awarded to private companies, and that's out of a sum of money that's going to be at least $90 billion that NASA will have that will be appropriated to NASA over the course of that five years.
		So out of $90 billion, about $475 million was given to the private sector to say, hey, take this money and go do what we need to have done to get a transportation system to the ISS and back in that five-year period of time.
		So the money was actually pretty much divided equally, not quite equally, but one company got a little more than the other between those two companies.
		And they are SpaceX and Kessler Rocket Plane.
		And they have been in the news a lot because they are trying to succeed, and they have a huge challenge ahead of them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Anybody wanting to go to space in the private sector has a monstrous challenge.
		And you sort of outlined the technical part, the money part, and of course, worst of all, the politics of it all.
		You know, you said you thought about it, and there's too many choke points.
		There's no real point where a massive audience like this could help you out.
		There must be a few points that are more sticky than others.
		I mean, it just doesn't seem right.
		If Bob Bigelow or anybody else wants to go to space, and you've demonstrated certainly a capability to do so, and you've got a satellite up there that is functioning, another one that's about to, and they're going to continue to function, and obviously you're going to get up big space.
		As a matter of fact, to give people an idea, when you've got about four or five modules in 2012 or 13 or whatever it is, how does the amount of space inside your various modules compare to what the International Space Station will have in its heyday?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		If and when the ISS is completed, the intent is to have 1,100 cubic meters.
		NASA had a while ago decided to cut that in half to 550 cubic meters and call it core complete.
		But through various political pressure, I think that that size is going to march more toward the full 1,100 meters maybe in 3, 4 years or so.
		That kind of is a TBD.
		In our case, each of our modules is over 300 meters, so we could accumulate 11, well, we could accumulate 1,200 meters with four modules.
		They're 300 plus meters.
		So, you know, give you some idea.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, big.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		And by the way, our modules are fairly generic.
		Our intent, believe it or not, is not necessarily to operate space hotels, but these modules, our intent is to serve different client communities and essentially lease these structures to different kinds of users.
		And it could be the Hera Hotel Company or Richard Branson or the MGM folks for hotels or Hilton.
		It could be that.
		But it may also be major corporations that want to use them for laboratory purposes.
		And we also have created a, we're going to make a special announcement in Colorado in April as to a whole new market that basically hasn't been kicked around much at all by anybody that we know of.
		And I'll tell you what it is right now.
		And so I wasn't going to do this, but I decided, yeah, let's do it.
		We're making a major presentation, as I said, in Colorado.
		And this is at the Space Foundation Symposium, which is going to be attended by about 7,000 people.
		And we're trying to launch our whole business kind of concept plan, at least the major portions of it.
		And one of the major areas of markets that we think makes a lot of sense is providing what we call hang time for what we call sovereign clients.
		And what that means is there are out there in other countries, including America, about 225 active astronauts.
		Now, that's been the case for a long time, for decades.
		That's all.
		That's all there is.
		Now, why isn't there another zero on the end of that?
		You know, why after all these years?
		And why are there only 225 and barely hanging on to that?
		And mainly it's because there haven't been places for them to go and it's an expensive activity.
		Can they afford that is the other question.
		So the waiting list is huge for them to get on board the ISS.
		And in fact, I've heard it mentioned many times if an astronaut has not flown and they're in their 40s, they have a good chance of never flying.
		Just because if you do the math, you know, the ISS is going to expand in 08 its population to six people.
		But right now it's three.
		And they change shifts every six months.
		So it's, you know, six people a year.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there was one more thing that I remember you said to me that really worried me.
		During those years that the United States may not be flying at all, the Russians will be.
		So the Russians sort of inherit the space station.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that great?
		I mean, the Americans will have spent, this is really interesting.
		The Americans will have spent $100 billion by OTAN after all the launches on the shuttles are done and all the modules and everything else, they will have spent $100 billion.
		And they have no frigging way of getting there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My God.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No way to get there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the only people that could get us there, we'd have to beg a ride on a Russian spacecraft.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		You got it.
		You got it.
		And right now, the Russians have agreed to 2011 to price those seats at $21,800,000.
		And after that, all bets are off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why, Bob, we've got ICBMs, right?
		We had at least as many, if not more, than the Russians, or at least we had parity of some sort.
		So why aren't you using old U.S. ICBMs instead of Russian ICBMs?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Excellent question.
		Excellent question.
		Well, you know what the answer was to that?
		Because the SALT II treaties demanded that we destroy X number, both countries, destroy X number of missiles per year and so on, or take them off the market, so to speak.
		Well, the American rocket companies politics and lobbied against that because what would happen is those less expensive rockets now become, they get on the market, and in theory, they take the place of a much more expensive system.
		So you wouldn't want, I mean, you know, if you're looking at this from Boeing's standpoint and Lockheed's standpoint, you're going to say, hey, wait a minute, let's take bulldozers and drive over these things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But I thought the American taxpayers owned these.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Sort of.
		Well, yeah, but the other ones have to be manufactured, don't they, to replace them?
		And what will happen is anything that's available for launching potentially can take market share away from the market, away from other systems that can be used.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, then that had to be a lobbying effort, really, on the part of the aerospace people.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
		Of course.
		Yes.
		Yes.
		If you're selling missiles, you do not want government missiles on the black market for sale at a tenth of the cost.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, but, you know, through some sort of procedure, you could determine that they're going to a good use, for example, what you're doing.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, but this isn't a, you know, business is business, and if you're building missiles and making those, it's not philanthropy that you're into.
		You're into trying to maintain your market share.
		You're trying to make sure that there aren't other sources of missiles that are going to grab part of your market.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But this is just a waste of money.
		I mean, the Russians are not wasting money.
		They're turning these missiles into turning them over virtually to the private sector.
		In other words, to you, selling them to you or whatever, the launch capability.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but that's only because the Russians don't have the money.
		You see, necessity is the mother of invention.
		And the fact is, since they don't have the money, they were forced to be judicious and careful and innovative in their whole thought process.
		Over here, we have a lot of money.
		We have more than that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So we just crush them.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
		That must be an awfully frustrating, awfully frustrating thing for you.
		I mean, obviously, you would want to do business with your own country if you could.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
		In fact, we did.
		We contracted with a small aerospace company that is in the process of trying to perfect a new rocket.
		And they were supposed to have that ready, and they've had some difficulties, and they're still working at it.
		And I think they will eventually succeed.
		But it really played hell with our schedule, so we couldn't just hang around and hang around and hang around.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I understand.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's just sad.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		It is sad.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		It really is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, on the one hand, we don't have enough money to go back to the moon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We don't have enough money to go to Mars, but we've got enough money to crush missiles and then have somebody like you have to go to the Russians and buy theirs.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, going back to the moon is a huge financial problem.
		And in fact, to put this in perspective for you, to show you just how distant, no pun intended, the moon is from a financial standpoint, think of it this way.
		At the heyday, at the peak of the lunar initiative back in the 60s, at one point in time, in one year, the United States spent 5% of its Budget.
		Now we're at a $3 trillion budget now.
		That's $150 billion.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		In one year, we're talking about here.
		One year.
		In one year, at the peak of that initiative, it was 5% of the budget at that point in time.
		Now, if you fast forward here to this point in time, that 5% would be $150 billion because you now have a $3 trillion budget, so it would be $150 billion.
		Well, NASA's new 0708 budget is the same as last year, $16.2 billion.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		And oh, by the way, half of that budget is spent to maintain the shuttle and the ISS.
		Yeah, right.
		And so Bush said, go forward and cast your bread on the waters and multiply on your own here because we're not giving you any new money.
		You're going to go to the moon based on the cannibalization of the shuttle and ISS programs after OTAN.
		You're going to shut them down, you're going to phase them out, and those dollars, that half of the annual budget, you're now going to allocate toward the moon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so that's why politics is up at the top of your list.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Oh, boy, is it.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you do have an office in Washington that, I guess, addresses the appropriate agencies and spends all its time trying to get permits for you and that sort of thing?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		All of the time.
		Yes.
		It is a horrendous challenge.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		All right.
		Hold tight, Bob.
		Bob Bigelow is my guest.
		He's not talking about going to space.
		He's in space.
		And the plans are just absolutely incredible.
		They don't stop at 2012, by the way, as the Mayan calendar does.
		They go straight on to 2016.
		That would be the sixth standard big module from the high desert.
		I'm Art Bell.
		Indeed, here I am.
		Bob Bigelow is my guest.
		And his company, Bigelow Aerospace, is already there.
		And the plans they have would just blow your mind.
		If you want to take a look, go to coast2coasta.com, and the photographs that Aaron and I took when we were at Bigelow Aerospace will convince you of the extremely serious, no-fooling-around effort this man is making.
		We'll be right back.
		Well, all right.
		Back again with Bob Bigelow.
		Bob, welcome back.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Oh, thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, all of this aerospace business now is new.
		Prior to aerospace, you were into all kinds of paranormal subjects, very deeply into the paranormal, and I know you financed many, many scientists that I've interviewed on the air over the years.
		And I guess in some ways, one sort of led into the other, and in fact, kind of meshes or may mesh with the other.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Is that so?
		Well, yeah, I think that's kind of fair to say.
		I think so.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, a lot of my listeners, you know, they follow ufology very closely, Bob.
		And obviously, here you are, a private citizen with a spacecraft in orbit, another one about to be more on the way.
		You're going to have a lot of cameras in space.
		You're going to have a lot of ability to look around, as it were, and view unfiltered.
		Let's see how am I trying to put this.
		You're going to have a lot of footage, Bob, that didn't go through anybody's filter.
		Are you going to be looking?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, one of the things that characterizes the UFO Enigma and that fabulously interesting topic is that it is in command of its behavior and it really is selective as to when it wants to expose or where and to whom and the timing.
		And it is always a challenge to try to ever get a replication of an exposure and have a second performance.
		Those kinds of things are relatively unique.
		And so it's a catch-as-catch-can kind of thing.
		And obviously, you know, our cameras are looking back at the Earth and as we show those scenes on our website.
		We also have a lot of cameras, however, that are looking back on the spacecraft itself to monitor the behavior of the spacecraft, what is going on.
		And of course, a lot of those cameras are interior as well.
		The majority, though, I think are probably exterior-located.
		But if you were to say, look, would you promise us that if you capture something looking in the face on one of those lenses that you'll identify it as such, you damn right we will.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In addition to that, aside from a possible little gray face or something like that, the STS cameras have on occasion caught things that are very, very curious.
		I mean, things that just almost can't be.
		They've caught objects apparently shooting at other objects.
		They've caught all kinds of things, Bob.
		And you're going to have cameras focused in the same area.
		So if you catch something like that, you'll make that available, won't you?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		Absolutely.
		If we see something crossing in a certain direction that makes a right-angle turn, that is anomalous.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it sure is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure that you've seen some of the STS footage of things just like that.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes.
		Yeah.
		And they explained it away as ice crystals that were blown off prop systems on board.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I know.
		I know.
		From the tone of your voice, I take it you didn't fully buy that yourself.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		No, not based on a couple of those that I've seen.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		I think that's something else.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Is it reasonable, Bob, in your mind that if there was another intelligence out there Since we set off the first above-ground test, that they would have been watching us, that they would be monitoring us.
		And therefore, something in low-earth orbit or any kind of orbit might well get a look at something.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think you have kind of two thoughts that you've just expressed at the same time.
		And one suggests that the awareness of this phenomena occurred at the time that we first started detonating nuclear devices.
		Yes, sir.
		And I could argue that maybe it has been around much longer than that.
		But then, yeah, I think you have a number of astronauts that have come back and reported things that they have seen both terrestrially, incidentally, as well as airborne.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's absolutely true, of course.
		And it's kind of underreported.
		But yes, many astronauts have, quite a few astronauts have seen something, something.
		So it's entirely possible that in this venture, I mean, it is, after all, going where a few, very few people, you just documented it yourself, have gone.
		And so I don't know.
		I've always had this theory that maybe since the beginning of man, Bob, they've been watching us or been keeping tabs on us.
		But certainly when we entered the Element 92 age, we would have really captured their more intent observation of us, I would think.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think it would be interesting to be an objective observer of the human species and ponder the progress of the technological achievements at the same time that you're hoping that, gee, the spiritual maturity is keeping pace.
		And what happens when it never does?
		And are we, you know, I always wonder, are we the Klingons?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, are we the Klingons?
		We may be.
		We're not all that well behaved at the moment.
		You and I talked to some degree, Bob, about the current ecological situation on our planet.
		It's not the very best.
		And if you look at the way it's headed, it's not headed in a particularly good direction.
		I just watched Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, and it scared the hell out of me.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		It's so well done.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So well done, yes.
		There are irrefutable truths that he presented in that.
		No matter how you feel about Al Gore, and I know a lot of people hate his guts, a lot of those things are just irrefutable truths.
		That's all there is to it.
		I mean, he had pictures.
		They were undeniable.
		What's going on on our planet is undeniable.
		And eventually, we're going to need more real estate, perhaps sooner than later.
		Now, the only close real estate right now that's worth two hoots or might be worth two hoots would be Mars.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that fair to say?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, we have the ability to get to Mars, don't we?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		Well, we do.
		We do.
		And we have had, even through crude chemical systems, they work.
		And there are alternative systems underway being developed that can significantly reduce the time of each way travel.
		So I have a friend, in fact, that's an astronaut that has been working on an I-EN propulsion system for a long time that it appears now that after all these years he's on more solid footing and making progress.
		And he tells me that he expects that transition time from Earth to Mars to be maybe as short as a month and a half under his type of propulsion.
		Of course, Mars has, you know, it's not a perfectly circular orbit, and so the deviation is substantial.
		You need to time it when it's closest to Earth, and it can be as close as maybe 80 million miles and as far away as 130-some million miles.
		In fact, I think at one point here a few years ago it was in about the 65 million mile, which was a rare, very rare proximity to Earth.
		But obviously that shortens your travel time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, you said something earlier that caught my attention, and you were laughing when you said it.
		But you said it'd be great, you know, just great if the Chinese decided they were going to go to Mars because that would get us going again.
		We couldn't possibly let the Chinese get to Mars and lay down whatever claims they could lay down, or even just the claim of being there first, without getting into a race with them, and then we'd somehow find the money, wouldn't we?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, we would, because, first of all, you wouldn't start World War III over that kind of an event.
		It's not life-threatening.
		It's not threatening any other sovereign country.
		And trade and commerce would proceed merrily on its way, so nobody is getting harmed in the process physically.
		You wouldn't start a war over that.
		Also, there is so much ambiguity about the 67 space treaty that we mentioned earlier that a lot of folks feel that it just doesn't hold water anymore.
		India is declaring a space program, and other countries, even Britain, has a lunar program.
		India intends to send a package to the moon, and Russia and China have now partnered in that regard.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think even Germany said.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Even Germany, even England.
		Yes, a number of countries have.
		So I think the 67 Treaty probably is going to be interpreted quite differently through application.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So eventually we're going to need I mean, all the best theoretical physicists that I've talked to have said the only way the human race ultimately is going to survive is to find a new home.
		It's going to have to find more real estate.
		And right now, Mars is the only thing within the thinkable reach, really.
		So what would get us there?
		Well, a race would get us there.
		Short of that, why are we not doing it, Bob?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, business could get us there, too.
		A race is one approach.
		But actually, there are probably business concepts that could also provide that kind of financial support and impetus to make that happen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, all right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Explain to me what business model you could imagine that would get us to Mars.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think if you came to a point in time where the perception was that you could adequately mount an expedition to Mars and you could have essentially a convoy of structures, and as a precursor to that, you had already deployed along the way various depots, you know, so that you can stop off and replenish your supply of candy bars and whatnot.
		And so you've done that, and maybe you've also deployed to the surface of Mars, as some others have suggested, Zubrin and others, that you might want to do that.
		And I think the moon is a necessary precursor to this because you learn a lot about how to behave and in hostile environments.
		And a moon is a good place to start that.
		It's close to home and it is a hostile environment.
		And Mars is a little less hostile, but it's also tricky because it has.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is a little less hostile than the moon, right?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but it's tricky because it has winds, you know, and those winds are an interesting feature to have to deal with with structures.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I interviewed not long ago somebody from NASA, and they were praising the winds, particularly these whirlwinds that would come along, even though they don't have the same pressure gradients that our winds do, they were enough to clean off the solar panels on the little bugs we've got flowing around up there.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, but they've been known to click along at 300 miles an hour.
		And of course, that actually isn't 300 Earth miles in the sense of actual power because of the atmosphere change.
		But it is equivalent to 100 miles an hour here.
		And so, I mean, how would you like to have you've got some habitat sitting out there and you want to make sure that thing is really nailed down because 100 miles an hour force is huge.
		And, of course, if you have solar field out there with your solar arrays, I think it would do more than clean off the dust off your solar arrays.
		So you probably want to go to RTG's radioisotopic thermonuclear generators, which would be the practical power source to have.
		And they're fairly benign.
		They're not something that is going to cause a visionable reaction.
		And that's the kind of power that you'd probably want.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bob, could the space shuttle go to the moon?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		No.
		As a matter of fact, they have difficulty launching from the Cape on one of the shuttles, I'm not sure if it's Atlantis or Discovery, a full payload because the inclination of the station is so difficult to get to, it can barely get to that.
		And the reason it's there is because the first modules, it's at a 64-degree inclination, that's because the first modules to the station were launched from Bankonor in Russia instead of the Cape.
		And had they been launched from the Cape, well, then they would have been probably a 28-degree orbit and been much easier to get to.
		So the shuttle fleet is designed only for low Earth orbit for LEO operations and not really anything very altitude intense at that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I heard it suggested by someone somewhere that once you were in low Earth orbit, you were not that far from the moon in some respects.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely, yeah.
		Yeah, the gravity well is what they were referring to, and that is that once you can get to Leo, you're halfway to anywhere.
		And that's because the gravity, you know, that field is so important.
		It takes so much energy with conventional means, since we don't have levitating capabilities yet.
		It takes a lot of energy just to get to Leo.
		And then, you know, essentially, you're on your way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, you're obviously launching with conventional means, the SS-18.
		Now, I'm sure that you have looked into every possible propulsion system that you could get your hands on or that anybody imagined or mentioned or whispered about.
		And there is nothing out there right now.
		Is there, Bob, except what we've got, except the heavy power way to get to orbit?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, what you know or what you speculate about and what's actually there that you can get your hands on easily are very different things.
		And so you go where the line of least resistance is, right?
		And you go with systems that are well understood, that are available, that are economical, and yada, yada, yada.
		So, you know, that's the way you approach things.
		And you also want, you know, there are a lot of different things that are offered up as even rather conventional, but new technologies that are whiz-bang situations, you know, self-healing membranes and shape-shifting structures and so forth.
		And they have now found their way into the lexicon of our language and into the actual application of space science, wherein we used to just read about those in the UFO books 20, 30 years ago.
		So, anyway, that aside, so even in those kinds of things, you want to be careful that you don't put them in the path of really a single fault-tolerant situation.
		I mean, you want to be very, very careful when life is at stake.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, indeed.
		And let's talk about life for a second.
		On your first spacecraft, you launched I've got pictures, as a matter of fact, I think of some of the beetles?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, little Madagascar hissing beetles.
		And the little buggers survived a complete vacuum in our test.
		We tested a lot of little critters because we didn't know what to expect.
		And those things survived after being in a vacuum something like an hour or maybe it was even two hours, an unbelievable time.
		I forget what I was told exactly, but something in the order of an hour to two hours.
		And, of course, they hauled them out and they're legs up, belly up, and oh, okay, another group didn't make it.
		Well, they came back.
		They came back.
		So they have the gold star seal of approval for flight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How can that be?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		I mean, do you understand the clue, Art?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		I have no idea.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know how anything could stand a complete lack of air, a complete decompression for an hour and then live and come back.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, nothing else did that we tested.
		I have no clue.
		No clue.
		But we kind of threw these things together on that Genesis 1, and so we scrambled around and put some Mexican jumping beams in there and these beetles and said, okay, guys, you're off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I guess there's going to be a progression of higher life forms that are going to be going on.
		Future spacecraft hopped off, I suppose, with a human, and then many humans.
		All right, Bob Bigelow is my guest, and will be back in just a very few moments.
		I am a creature of the night.
		There's no question about that.
		Good evening.
		Good morning, everybody, as it were.
		We do our best work here in the nighttime.
		My guest, probably not usually up this late, is Bob Bigelow.
		He'll be back in a moment.
		Let me give you a couple of pieces, or me, a couple of pieces of good news.
		The lost cat, Yeti, is found next door, screaming like a banshee.
		And so he's back in custody at the moment.
		Now, one other thing, finally, we got the Art Bells Pizza Punch website back up again.
		So those of you, gazillions of you, who didn't get to see it because it crashed in about nine seconds, you might want to give it another try now.
		It's Art Bells, A-R-T-B-E-L-L-S Pizza, P-I-Z-Z-A, Punch, P-U-N-C-H dot com.
		ArtbellsPizzaPunch.com.
		Go take a look.
		It's incredible stuff, and I'm going to be looking to many of you for taste testing, as it were.
		We'll be right back.
		Incidentally, we have an ability for you to ask questions of our guest while he's actually doing the interview.
		You can just go over to the website, CoastCoastDam.com, and fast blast us a question.
		Bob, Michael in Jasper, Alabama asks whether we have access, meaning we, the public, are you going to give access to any of the onboard cameras, particularly the ones focused back toward Earth?
		Are you going to stream any of that?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		On Genesis 2?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, on any of them, for that matter.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, Genesis 2 has a public program.
		It's the only spacecraft of our Pathfinder group that will have that.
		And it's the Flyer Stuff program.
		So we have interior cameras that are going to be following all the things floating around inside that spacecraft, for one thing, that the public has paid to see.
		They've paid to have their items flown, and then they're paying to actually have them captured on film.
		And we will freeze frame those and then put them on our website so people can see their own stuff.
		If we fail to do that, we return all their money.
		Yeah, it's a money-back guarantee that if we can't do that, if we can't capture everyone's item or anybody's item, any particular item in there that we can't identify clearly and put it on our website, then everybody gets their money back for those items that we can't find, that we can't grab the pictures on.
		So there are those cameras.
		Then there are cameras outside that we are trying two projection systems, just for the heck of it, that broadcast messages perhaps on the hull of the spacecraft outside, you know?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So we have to, just kind of as a second one as a backup situation, and we have cameras that will be looking at those projections, and we have some prescribed pre-canned messages in case our command and control of those runs amok.
		But if the command and control works, then in theory, we might be able to execute a, you know, virtually a very large menu of communications on the outside of that spacecraft.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, yes, the answer is there will be public involvement with the cameras.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ralph in Cerritos, California, asks, has the U.S. government at any point ever asked you to censor any possible footage that you might get in space?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		No, not yet, as of this time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How would you react to such a request?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, it would have to be an awfully good reason.
		I mean, you know, we are Americans, and we feel as patriotic as the next guy, but we would have to really be convinced that such a demand, it would have to get into the context of not just probably a request, but an actual demand.
		We have already experienced something in a different kind of way, in a different context.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you talk about it?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, only in a circumspect kind of way.
		And that was that we were the result of exposing something would have violated a promise and agreement that we had with some other folks.
		And we refused to do that.
		It wasn't something that, in our judgment, was warranted.
		It was something that violated our ethics.
		It violated our principles of contracts.
		And it violated our keeping our word.
		And it wasn't in the context in which we were given this in terms of a request.
		It wasn't a demand.
		It was in a request, and we turned the request down.
unidentified		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, obviously, you can't talk anymore about that, so I won't push any further.
		Chris in Suez Town, New Hampshire asks, when you get human beings up there, the space station, of course, has an escape capability.
		What would your modulized station have to get people down in an emergency?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, the same capsules that are used to transport people back and forth are also the lifeboats.
		And so every when Sundancer flies in O10, the second half of O10, it will go through a space trial just like you would a sea trial for a time, but that would be an unoccupied space trial.
		And then that would come a time when there would be occupancy.
		And that would necessitate having a transportation mechanism.
		And at that point, that vessel becomes the lifeboat for those folks.
		And any other folks that are subsequently visiting that particular module or other modules ganged to it are all able to, we would always have enough seats and enough capsules to bring everyone back home.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Steve in Miami, Florida asks, now you don't have to answer all of this.
		You might not be able to.
		What kind of metals are used mostly on your spacecraft?
		Do you custom manufacture your own machinery and or robotics used in the making of parts?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		We do a combination of things.
		We are general contractors, and so we execute a lot of contracts where we subcontract out all kinds of hardware, all kinds of fabrication and manufacturing of items.
		But we also do that in-house as well.
		The usual material that we use for our standard materials is aluminum.
		Composites provide an opportunity, but they are also not user-friendly in some respects.
		So you look at a combination of the practicality of whatever the assignment of the emission is on a particular piece of hardware, you have always multiple choices.
		I mean, you can go to titanium, and there are, oh, gosh, six or eight, ten different kinds of aluminum and alloys that you can use, and some are more difficult to get in large quantities, so it becomes a quantity problem.
		It can be a cost problem, and a machining problem.
		And machining time on titanium is far longer than it would be on aluminum ingots and so forth.
		So each item is a little different as to what its criteria might be, and then common sense drives the decision.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		What are the odds, Bob?
		You're about to launch.
		You're going to launch next month.
		There must be somebody who tells you what the odds are that you're going to have a successful launch versus some trouble.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, you can, you know, the NEPR, as far as the launch of the rocket, the transportation device, those have flown, gosh, a huge number of times.
		And they have not had that many failures.
		You can count them on one hand, but they've flown well over 100 times, I believe.
		And so the odds are in your favor in that respect that you're going to have a successful launch.
		Now, as far as our spacecraft is concerned, we...
		Right.
		Understandably.
		Understandably.
		But, you know, of course, any nation is going to have something that they feel they can count on in terms of a national crisis.
		So in that respect, so it's kind of expected that.
		So it is more reliable than the I think it's more reliable than the shuttle is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So they would give you a one in X number of failures, right?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think they're somewhere around 98.5%, 90%.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		As I recall, I believe that's about where they are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's quite good.
		Yeah.
		Do you insure your spacecraft?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		We do not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		You might say we're self-insured.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So if you were to lose a spacecraft, that would.
		Can you give us a ballpark figure?
		I mean, how expensive are these, or can you not talk of it?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		I really can't give a definitive answer on that, but they are expensive.
		We're prepared, if necessary, to lose spacecraft.
		You know, when you get into something, you have to look at the worst case.
		And so we are prepared.
		The spacecraft costs a lot, and so does the launch.
		And as we migrate up into larger systems, like propulsion buses and rockets that are larger than the NEPAR, and that's the next size up for a Sundancer is a rocket that can carry 20,000 pounds or so.
		And those systems are much more expensive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By the way, for the ham radio operators out there, you may recall in a previous interview I asked Bob if he could put a ham repeater on one of those spacecraft.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And by God, you tried, right?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		We did try.
		We did try.
		And we got the answer back was that, oh, you're going to have to be licensed to do that.
		You know, we said, well, wait a minute.
		It's only a target.
		We're not going to be broadcasting or anything like that.
		Well, they didn't care.
		So that's what we were confronted with.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Which is sort of typical of what you're confronted with in all kinds of areas.
		In other words, there is so much paperwork.
		There is so much bureaucracy to make your way through to get this done, to get something in space.
		It's unbelievable.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		It really is.
		It really is, Art.
		It's so huge.
		And that's one of the reasons it's nice not to have to take government money because there are not only so many strings attached, but just the paperwork alone and the imposition of specifications on you.
		You know, you have a fair idea of what you want to do and all kinds of reasons why you want to do these things.
		But if somebody else is writing that check and it's the United States government or probably any government, they're going to have you dance to all kinds of music.
		And that spells a delay in your schedule and it really spells a horrific increase in costs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Other than the hotel business, for example, Bob, and I know you've been in some preliminary discussions with some hotel chains, and I don't know how much more you can say about that, but you have been.
		Other than that, in terms of a business model, if you had these habitable modules up there now, Bob, would there be enough from the private sector to financially sustain what you're doing?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		We think so.
		And what we're trying to do is go from a position of where space complexes are sort of a novelty to where they become a necessity.
		And we think we have a handle on various business approaches to where they can evolve into absolute necessities.
		Like, you know, what your cell phone and what your TV relies on are satellite transmissions.
		And those are necessities.
		Today, the planet could not do without huge global constellations of satellites.
		So they are necessities.
		And we think that we have some plans and ideas that make a lot of sense, perhaps, that can evolve these from a novelty kind of status in a sense.
		I mean, if you talk about tourism, that is a novelty kind of category.
		But we think we can get them to where they need to be a necessity.
		And once they can reach that position, oh, my gosh.
		And we're actually more concerned, Art, that we have, frankly, our biggest concern, rightly or wrongly, is when and where is the transportation going to come from?
		And are we going to have enough spaceports to handle the volume?
		Because in our first year of operation, we're looking at 13 flights that first year.
		And nobody's ever flown anywhere near that many times to LEO with a crew of people before.
		You know, that's over one a month.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there a best place to launch from?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Theoretically, yeah, you want to fly west to east in the same direction rotation of the Earth.
		And you want to fly in the equatorial belt because the Earth is slightly bulged at the center.
		So the rotation speed is higher there than it is at the North Pole.
		And so for starters, you would like that.
		Now, from a practical standpoint, you need to be where markets are.
		You need to be where customers can get to you easily.
		And you know, I'm a businessman.
		I've had a lot of different businesses over the years.
		I've been involved in banking and general contracting and construction and apartment development and so forth is basically what we've been for gobs of years.
		And so we're customer-driven.
		We understand that.
		And so that's why part of our plan, our program, is that people don't have to write checks to buy these things.
		They can rent them.
		They can lease them.
		And they can lease them for fractions of volume, for half the volume, if they don't want a whole volume.
		And they can lease them for fractions of time, down to 30 days if they want to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, what are the things that you can do in orbit that are financially viable?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I hear people talking about growing crystals, but I really don't know, Bob, what are the financially rewarding reasons to be in low Earth orbit?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, if you are getting back to our two main categories of sovereign clients, if you are a sovereign nation and you have an astronaut core, you need someplace for those people to go.
		And maybe you're a country that would like to have a space agency and like to have a core.
		But why do that if there's nowhere to go?
		So that's a fairly sizable dynamic that we might be able to grow the astronaut community from $225 to maybe $500 to $1,000 to $2,000.
		If the price is right and if they have somewhere to go and they have reliable scheduled transportation, I think there's a huge business waiting for it to be successful there.
		And the other is in the sense of prime clients, international corporations, let's just take the computer chip people or pharma people, pharmaceutical people or medical science.
		If one or two companies decide to put a laboratory, a module to use as a laboratory, and we know that weird things happen in that environment in terms for organic and non-organic substances, that they very interesting properties occur.
		And you can get into nanotechnologies much more easily in that venue than you can on terrestrial circumstances.
		So let's suppose you saw your competitor put a laboratory together, and you're a wealthy company.
		And so the question kind of is then, when the first person starts to do that, how long does it take for the others to stand back and sit there and wait before they decide, well, because obviously the first company is not going to be talking a lot about their successes or failures about what's going on board.
		And they're certainly not going to be broadcasting good news, you know, necessarily right away.
		So they're going to try to get things into the marketplace.
		So I think that we are targeting maybe the top 20 companies in about eight different theaters of the semiconductor world and the biotech world, pharmaceutical world, and there's a number of different communities like that.
		And even something as prosaic as the automobile world, they have sophisticated laboratories of their own also.
		So you might even have Toyota or somebody who would want to use these facilities.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are these people now able to go to NASA or able to go to anybody else?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If they want to get into space for a reason, can they lay down a check and get there?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No?
unidentified		No, no.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		No, they can't.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		NASA's on a prescription to finish up the space station, then shut the fleet down, so there are no payloads for life sciences has been severely cut, and for other kinds of experiments has severely been curtailed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so yes, and then in 2010, we can't get to space, so we hand the keys to the space station to the Russians.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that amazing?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that amazing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Amazing is one word.
		There would be another.
		I'm Art Bell.
		We'll be right back.
		Well, all right.
		Bob Bigelow is my guest.
		Bigelow Aerospace.
		They've got one satellite in orbit right now, another about to be launched, plans that go through 2016 and include something that ultimately is probably going to be bigger than the International Space Station.
		It's going to really be big.
		And if you want to get an idea of how big, just go up to the website, coastcoastam.com, and look at a series of photographs.
		And I took quite a number of photographs of essentially what will be up there.
		It is, at the very least, eye-opening.
		Bob Bigelow, back in a moment.
		Well, here's an interesting question that just popped in my own head.
		Bob, with regard to the modules That you're going to have up there.
		Eventually, there's going to be a big emergency in space.
		It's going to be at the ISS or it's going to be somewhere.
		And I wonder if your modules would have docking facilities that would be compatible with either the standard U.S. or Russian spacecraft?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's a good question.
		Each module is going to, hopefully, the United States is going to have its own docking adapter system.
		At the present time, it does not.
		We use exclusively Russian systems.
		The APAS systems and the Probe and Connor are Russian systems.
		But there is something underway for this country.
		And what we would do is outfit each module at each end for each airlock.
		There would be docking adapters that would accommodate more than one type.
		And that's presuming that, or is assuming that we would have access to that kind of traffic.
		That indeed if we were to Use a Russian docking adapter that presumably we had some relationship there for that kind of traffic provision.
		And same thing with the American system.
		Now, you also have to sort of define what is the crisis, because there are many kinds of crises that may not require or what would not necessitate actually removing people from the complex and sending them back to Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, of course, this is way off the wall, but supposing you had your modules up there and there was a crisis, would you expect help from NASA?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		In that kind of situation, again, it gets back to the kind of crisis that we're talking about.
		Probably time of you could have, let's suppose we have a time of the essence crisis.
		Let's put a parameter that time is essential.
		Let's put that parameter on there.
		Now, if time is essential, there may be no time to respond with a launch and acquiring the target.
		Usually it takes you 24 hours to acquire the target.
		It might be done quicker than that.
		You may have a 48-hour window where that's usually the prescription for the Russians and the Americans where you rendezvous and dock within a 48-hour period.
		So it might be anywhere within a 16-to-40-hour, some odd-hour period.
		So it depends on how urgent that crisis is.
		Let's suppose it's a medical crisis.
		Let's suppose somebody is in need of an aptendectomy.
		And now you've got to do some invasive surgery.
		And this is kind of interesting because there's another whole field out there that we haven't talked about yet tonight, which is informational with regard to removing organs and removing things without having extensive invasions of tissue and only in a small incision and yet being able to extract a lot of stuff.
		So that needs to be performed now.
		That can't wait.
		So you need to have the medical facilities and the first aid capabilities, so to say, so to speak, that empower you to do that.
		Because in Leo, let's suppose you're on the moon.
		Let's suppose you're halfway to Mars and you have these medical emergencies.
		So there's various kinds of preparations that need to be made with a surgical facility on board, with recovery Area on board, and you might have on a long-duration mission or even on the moon, you would want to have a complete clinic available for that because you just can't turn around and go back.
		So, you've got to have kind of the attitude that, hey, maybe you're just like being 5,000 feet underwater.
		You're on your own, in a sense, and you better be pretty well self-contained.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I guess so.
		Grover in Tulare, California asks an interesting question.
		He says that what you described, allowing other countries, for example, to have astronauts on your station, makes you sound a little bit like a space mercenary.
		Is that too harsh?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		I don't know quite what that means.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, in other words, space for hire.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, you're just kind of a mercenary there in the sense that you're allowing your station to be used for those who can afford to use it and want to get their countries into space.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, it would, hmm, I kind of don't really can't see or the direction of that is, particularly.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Let's suppose that would be perhaps no different than, you know, in this country, we do red flag, blue flag exercises with our Air Force.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		And we have for decades and decades and decades had a variety of foreign Air Force pilots fly out here at Nellis, you know, at the Air Force gunnery range.
		And this happens at all kinds of other places around the country as well.
		And so training facilities are really important.
		They're hard to come by.
		And the United States has been the host to umpteen countless number of pilots from other countries in that regard.
		And these are countries that are friends of ours.
		These are countries that the United States looks upon as folks that certainly we look upon them as satisfactory from a standpoint of selling them military aircraft, which Northrop Grumman and other companies certainly have done for many years.
		So in addition to that, we also look at them as friendly forces in terms of battle and having them be prepared and so on.
		And they're all part of usually the NATO forces, you know, that's all kind of a family, the NATO family.
		And so in that regard, we kind of look upon these complexes in the same way, that why not use these for training facilities, which they can't get that kind of location anywhere else.
		I mean, you can go through all the centrifuge trials you want to and so forth and neutral buoyancy tank experiences, but nothing, nothing, nothing comes close to the real deal.
		And there's only one place you can get that.
		And so we think, hey, you know, let's go to the same countries that the United States already is predisposed to for a variety of reasons for NATO alliances and ISS flights and say, look, hey, we're here, you know, and we're here to serve you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Stephen and Vista, California then described it a little differently.
		Maybe this is easier.
		Instead of leasing, it sounds like these will be essentially space timeshares.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's not too far.
		We actually have two different situations.
		There are modules that are leased for various kinds of time, like a timeshare, and various kinds of volume.
		And then there are modules that are given freely to the hangtime sovereign client users, the astronauts.
		And I say free in the sense that those are not leased.
		These are two separate users entirely.
		You would not find hangtime users on a leased module that is leased by a prime client exclusively for them.
		But you may find hangtimers there together with different nationalities, and they're on a complex that's dedicated to that particular mission, to satisfying the needs of those hangtime astronauts.
		And they are charged a fee based on the transportation cost and the time of duration on board that complex.
		And actually, the video that we have on the website is a little misleading.
		Our intent really is to have, as early as possible, three separate complexes rather than having one all ganged together.
		And the reason for that is it's derived from two directions.
		One is that there are sensitive, a number of sensitive activities that a prime client might want to do without having a lot of disturbances, a lot of docking and undocking and a lot of perturbations on board that complex.
		And also, the second reason, it might need to be in a different orbit of inclination to make it more accessible for the traffic provider, for the transportation provider.
		So we talked earlier about the 64-degree inclination and the 28-degree inclination, and that therefore you might want to have several complexes in different geographical, so-to-speak, locations.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Circling back to another item.
		When they told you with regard to amateur radio, ham radio, that you would have to have a license.
		I wonder, Bob, if any licensed amateur, I'm an advanced class, W6OBB, it may well be that if I were involved or any licensed amateur were involved, that would be what they're talking about.
		And it might simply take an application by a licensed amateur to do it.
		Or maybe if it's in space, there's some further license that I don't understand involved.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		That is possible.
		Now, you are into territory that I don't understand.
		So that may very well be possible.
		And what we should do then is hook you up with any one of the three program managers we have.
		We have Eric Hackenstadt, who's the program manager for Sundancer.
		And we have Jay Ingham and Dan, who's Dan Cohen for The program managers of Genesis 2 and for Galaxy.
		And Galaxy probably is the one.
		See, right now, it's too late for GT.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I know.
		I know.
		But Galaxy in 2008, maybe not so late.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Maybe not so late at all for that one.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		And what we do is, if we hook you up with any of those three guys, we could maybe make it happen if what you're suggesting here by using you as the venue for this, maybe you could make it happen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I would be happy to become involved.
		Have them contact me, and we'll look into it, Bob.
		I'd love to see something for amateur radio get up there.
		Okay.
		And it would be quite a public kind of thing, so I think it'd be good.
		The more you can get the public involved.
		And again, let's come back one more time to this.
		Let me try one more time.
		I know there are a lot of choke points here, but there's got to be somebody, some agency that the public could contact and in some way help you out and help you through some of this mess that you're constantly going through.
		Did you check with your Washington office?
		Did they have any ideas?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		The Washington office response would be to contact the Department of State and, well, actually, it would be to contact Congress and put pressure on the space and science committees of Congress to probably transfer back the authorities over ITAR to the Department of Commerce,
		where they were once upon a time.
		And once upon a time, they were more user-friendly, so I'm told, when they resided in the Department of Commerce versus the Department of State, because the Department of Commerce cared a little bit more about commerce, about actual commerce.
		Yeah, actual commerce.
		They kind of felt that, hey, there's a connection between commerce and paychecks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, indeed.
		All right.
		Well, maybe some in the audience can certainly help out with that.
		Listen, a couple of few weeks ago now, I had George Knapp and Colum Culliher on, and we did a show on the Skinwalker Ranch, which you own.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wonder if you can give us any late updates on the Skinwalker Ranch.
		Things we've been kind of going through a UFO flap over the last months since the O'Hare airport incident.
		And it's been pretty wild, Bob.
		Do you have any comments on that and any update on the ranch?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, you know, I still am involved in investigations, not of the intensity that I was in the 1990s and the late 80s and prior to when I just had to jump in on the space subject.
		But going to the ranch, yeah, we had a period of time where there was a lull in that ranch activity, and that lasted for, oh, gosh, perhaps a year and a half or two years.
		I don't recall exactly how long it was, but there was a time there when it, you know, in this subject, it kind of ebbs and flows, as you know.
		And so lately, in the last couple of years, we've had a re-emergence of activity, and it's, and again, it doesn't repeat itself.
		The characteristics are that they're very unsuspecting as to, you do not suspect the time or the kind of performance or the timing of the performance, number one.
		These do not repeat themselves either in the same way, number two.
		And number three, there does not appear to be a hostile intent.
		It's not a performance that appears to deliberately or cause harm.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		More like poltergeist activity.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there is a sense of game with it.
		There is a strong sense, and I'm not sure I won't go down the relationship characterizing it as relationships or anything of that sort.
		But there is, I'm sure you know, there's, you know, this is a topic that seems to lend itself to conscious behavior or consciousness connections.
		I'll put it that way.
		That's right.
		And so you can get the feeling that there is an awareness that we can't account for.
		There is an awareness that is not something in which you have control over.
		And so therefore, you know, these performances are at the behest of the performer.
		We are an observer and a bystander and a participant, willing or unwilling, you know, in this.
		And we are getting an education.
		You know, all of this kind of stuff produces information.
		And just like the little spacecraft that we're flying in an attempt to try and do something grand someday, it's all very informational.
		And, you know, in the cattle mutilation area, for example, gosh, we've researched all these different subjects from crop circles and cattle mutilations and abductees and propulsion systems and shapes of craft and all kinds of other Consciousness-connected kind of things.
		And so, you know, you just, well, I don't know where you want me to go in this, but I think that in the cattle, I mean, in the cattle mutilation area as an example, if you want to say, well, what could you make use of?
		Let's say this.
		Suppose you were to ask the question, well, is there anything about this that might relate beneficially to an application that you could do in some time soon?
		Well, I would say in a cattle mutilation area, for example, gosh, there are some very interesting exhibitions of relatively non-invasive surgery that have removed a great deal of tissue from an animal, and you don't know under what circumstance that animal was anesthetized or was it already dead or what.
		But the less invasive you can make your surgery, the faster your recovery, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of course.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		So in a space-based application, that's very important.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		You don't want a lot of loose liquids flying around, and so you want to do things to heal a patient that are the least invasive that you could do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I never thought about that.
		There might actually be application there.
		I never thought about that.
		All right, Bob.
		I've got a whopper of a question when I get back.
		I know you've funded scientists.
		You've looked into consciousness.
		You've looked into survival of what our, I guess, our soul after physical death.
		And so when we get back, I want to ask you if you've come to any conclusions with everything you've funded about life after death.
		Bob Bigelow, we'll be back in a moment.
		For years and years, behind the scenes, most of it, frankly, behind the scenes, Bob Bigelow has funded scientists who are looking into areas that we talk about all the time on Coast to Coast AM.
		Areas like survival of consciousness beyond bodily death, as an example.
		He's done work and has funded people that you just wouldn't believe.
		There's been a very great deal of it behind the scenes that's gone on.
		So in a moment, we'll ask Bob what he thinks about that.
		Stay right there.
		Bob, I probably only know about a small portion of the funding that you've done of various scientists into this area.
		But I wonder if you've come to any personal conclusions over the years about the survival of consciousness, an increasingly important question for you and I beyond death.
		Do you believe that it does survive?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, you sure kicked this conversation up a couple notches, didn't you?
		Like Emerald said.
		Bam, you just knocked it up.
		Yeah, this is the holy grail, isn't it, of topics.
		This really is.
		And I am a person that has difficulty accepting things on faith alone.
		This is the way I am.
		And so I'm one that needs quite a few rocks on the pile for convincing.
		And I'm also, I need more than just one pile of rocks.
		I have to have different ways that I come about validating a hypothesis or some notion or some piece of information that I get.
		And so I always come at it multiple different ways, different directions.
		So for me, on this particular topic, which is so profound, so huge, and has so much diverse meaning behind it, I came at it multiple directions.
		Now, in this area, let's talk about consciousness for a minute because we're talking about does consciousness survive bodily death?
		And then we have to say, well, exactly, what do we know about consciousness?
		What is it that we think we really know?
		And of course, none of our science, our traditional science, can, whether it's quantum mechanics or not, can begin to handle the subject of consciousness.
		And there are so many different, in this whole theater, there are many, many different compartments to this whole area.
		For example, you know, we can talk about consciousness as it affects things in micro-macro PK or psychometry, mental telepathy, remote viewing, the power of prayer.
		You know, we have all kinds of famous authors that have written about apparitions and poltergeists.
		And so we have even the remote viewing that was famously engaged by the CIA for 20 years.
		And friends of ours have been ran those programs for SRI.
		And so we have Bob John and Brenda Dunn's work at PER on random remote generators.
		And so we understand all that.
		We know those people.
		And so we know that if we look at any one of these kinds of areas and say, is there any substance to any of this stuff?
		I mean, can we find one white crow?
		If you find one lousy white crow here, you've got a problem from a normal science context.
		In that context, you have a problem.
		And so what I did was I tried to find as many, our first one white crow, and was there a second one or a third?
		And how did I really know it was a white crow?
		And so you'd go down that road until finally you say, yeah, there's legitimacy here because there's too many validations of this.
		So then you get into, oh gosh, other subjects like past lives that Brian Weiss engages in.
		And that opens up all kinds, because then you find out guys like Harold Sherman wrote about this a long time ago.
		And then you find out people like William James wrote about it even way before that.
		And William James was no slouch.
		He was a world-class scientist and researcher in his time.
		Even James Pike.
		So you had these kinds of folks.
		And so for me, I went back like I did in a UFO topic.
		In fact, our science advisory board, you may not know this, when we initially formed NIDS, it had two pillars of interest, UFOs and consciousness.
		And we had a population of members on that board that fit in both camps.
		And so we were blessed to have, like, you know, Ian Stevenson was a member, and we had William Morris, I think, yes, Melvin Morris, sorry.
		Melvin Morris was.
		Emily Cook, who was also an associate of Ian Stevenson's, and other people, very, well, very high caliber, world-class researchers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Top people, I guess.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, very top.
		And, you know, we talked with people like Larry Dossi, familiar with all his work and the power of prayer, and how do you validate that that is, you know, do you have double-blind studies where you have a placebo situation and then you're able to validate that the control group is securely in place and yet, you know, you're having this effect?
		And is there a difference between whether the patient is assisted by the physician or is there a factor of how many people are praying?
		Does that make a difference?
		Or the conviction of the people that are praying, including the physician?
		Is there a component here that's connected to the belief?
		How strong is the belief in facilitating this?
		And then you get into the apparitional side of it and poltergeist activity.
		And so I think, long story short, I do believe in a God force.
		I think I come at that from a cosmological perspective as well as a belief that the accumulation of all these other things suggests that to me very, very, very strongly.
		And I do think there is a survival of consciousness because there are just far too many fields that tell us consciousness can operate independent of time.
		It can operate independent of location.
		I mean, look at Edgar Casey.
		You don't have to, you know, a person doesn't have to take any one of these things and say, well, gee, I don't really kind of believe all that that really happened that Edgar Casey could do those things and so forth.
		Well, then move into one of the other topics and research the hell out of that and see if you go from topic to topic to topic until you come up with a white crow.
		And now you've got a problem.
		If you're a skeptic, you have a problem here.
		Sure.
		And try to explain that.
		And so eventually you come to these topics and you find out that, oh my gosh, consciousness behaves independent of any of the explanations of normal science and physics and independent of your container in a sense that in several different ways it exhibits independence of the container that is spawning that consciousness.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Here, here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you find or do you believe there to be any connection, Robert, between consciousness and the appearance of UFOs?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Oh, gosh, yes.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I thought you might say that.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Oh, gosh, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		All right.
		I want to allow the audience to ask some questions, but I really did have to get that in.
		Joe in Baltimore, Maryland says, good evening.
		I'd like to congratulate you, your guest, on his work.
		If I might be so bold, I'd like to encourage him to consider promoting it to the public more.
		We need hope in this world more now than ever.
		What you're doing here can give us that, a new dream.
		And in this country, Bob, since we've been to the moon and haven't been back, we've lost something.
		Something is missing in America.
		Would you agree?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Oh, absolutely.
		Heck yes.
		We're missing inspiration, for Christ's sake.
		We are missing inspiration in this country.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we really are.
		And I guess if it's not going to come from our government, or some of it will, certainly the private sector obviously has a lot to offer.
		Anybody who's been up to look at the photographs that I took, and I only got around a little bit, is going to know how very, very serious your effort is.
		It's not just talk.
		I have a lot of people on this program who talk.
		It's a talk, Joe.
		But you're doing, and you're really doing.
		So we need hope in this country, and I don't know where the next big hope comes from, but maybe it won't be government.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know what?
		It really, government is good at some things and lousy at a lot of others.
		And government really is not good at advanced planning.
		Our government is good as a reactionary force.
		We are a fabulous, fantastic power in a reaction, as a point-counterpoint kind of reaction.
		So we are very good in a sense of emergency.
		We are very good in the sense of a serious challenge.
		But we're terrible in advanced planning.
		And we do not provide, and it's not really appropriate for the United States government to be looked to for providing inspiration.
		It just will not.
		And historically, it has not come from a government.
		It comes from the people.
		It comes from some action or actions of a group of people in some way that provide inspiration.
		And I think that, you know, there's a movement here, as far as space topic is concerned, by a number of companies, not just ours, but a number of companies.
		There's probably six, seven, eight companies here in this country that are trying to do Very challenging, unique things that can be, if they're successful, they can be terribly inspirational.
		And we know that the age group, there was a recent study and it showed that the age group of people between 18 and 24 years of age, 48% of them didn't even know anything about the International Space Station.
		72% of them were ambivalent about space and couldn't care less as to whatever happened.
		And that's a function that nothing has been going on.
		The answer is, Art, we need to have some action.
		You can't have inspiration if there's no action.
		That's right.
		How are you supposed to be inspired when there's no action, when there's nobody doing anything?
		And in our sense with NASA, it's been the same old, same-oh, as far as the shuttle flights and so forth for years and years and years.
		There's just real no action.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me go to the phones.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Marcus, in Los Angeles, you're on with Robert Bigelow.
unidentified		Hey, how are you doing today?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Quite well, thank you.
unidentified		Great.
		Well, I just want to say it's great to have you back in this country.
		By the way, it's a couple months you've been here, but Mr. Bigelow, I know you have your place out in the desert there as well.
		I was wondering if you had any plans of having a certain kind of colony or setting up a country there in the future for next generations.
		Next comment is also if any.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm not sure I got that one straight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What was the question again?
unidentified		I know he's talking about private businesses and countries and things interested in going there.
		And I was wondering if there's any plans to have some kind of country actually or things set up on the station that he is building.
		And the next comment would be just basically have any secret societies or secret police been monitoring him?
		And have any of these people been talking about trying to get better themselves?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		I'm still not sure I got the first question.
		Robert, did you?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, I take a stab at it, I guess.
		You know, we're the space now has evolved into less of a question mark in terms of can it possibly happen for us to, oh my gosh, okay, it looks like it has a good chance, and what do we do for, how do we prepare for success, and what is the business program like, and who are those prospective clients going to be?
		And so if we look at who's going to populate, yes, we've looked a lot at who the prospects are to populate these complexes.
		And all of that, however, is orchestrated in the context of a business plan that would be respectable if you were to present it to a banker or to a Wall Street person.
		It has to have enough integrity that it's going to stand on its own feet and be able to be conscripted if necessary into a stock market offering situation or a portion of it or that it has borrowing capabilities and it has the kind of horsepower that that provides.
		Now, we have not in contact with any kind of esoteric groups that are overseeing what we do, and probably they're so good at that that we don't even, we're not aware that they are peering into what we're doing.
		We're fairly transparent.
		Folks wouldn't have to look too hard, the NSA or anybody else, into what we're doing, CIA.
		I mean, we're pretty transparent.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you become aware of any surveillance at all?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, we know that folks know that we exist.
		But I think people understand where we're coming from.
		I think people understand that we're trying to do something for this country.
		We're trying to do something for people in other countries.
		And we're trying to do a benefit to human development globally.
		This isn't just a story about one company, our company.
		We're part of a family of companies that are trying to fulfill something for the private sector, generated from private enterprise, that maybe can take this out of the purview of government-owned and operated and controlled activity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there going to become an official consortium of private companies?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, we're all kind of like a herd of cats.
		We all kind of go off in our own direction.
		And yeah, we do have membership.
		There is an organization that a lot of us belong to.
		There's a certain sense of self-preservation from Uncle Sam, you know, because we're small and it's easy to get stepped on and crushed and pounded into the sand.
		And Uncle Sam may not even be aware that he's done that, you know.
		So, yeah, we do have an organization that, yes, the last caller would want to know if you have a secret handshaker.
		No, you know, some of the signals like that that we save for other people can be aired.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Paul in Missouri, you're on with Robert Bigelow.
unidentified		Hi.
		Evening, Art.
		Evening, Mr. Bigelow.
		I had a couple of points that were interesting for you.
		First, let me go ahead and identify myself.
		I'm Carl in Hallsville, Missouri.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm K-A-A-Z-I-Z.
unidentified		Wave in K-0AZI, and that's 30 years, and that's Kilo0 Arabic.
unidentified		Hold on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You can't really give call letters on the air.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So go ahead and ask your question.
unidentified		Okay, yeah.
		I was going to throw a religious element in here.
		Now, I'm not particularly sure if God, if it's a standard religion format through a lot of religions, that God created us in his own image, or if that's just a particular tenet of the Christian religion.
		But if it is throughout several religions, did not God as a creation and himself give man the power to create?
		And God Being able to create reality in which we now live, do we not perhaps have the power to create as a collective consciousness or perhaps even individually our own realities?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, give it a try.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, actually, there are some physicists and scientists that have kind of come to the conclusion that there is a God force that has a conscious aspect to it.
		And in fact, there's a new book out by Bernie Hait, who is a zero-point expert, as is Hal Putoff.
		And in his new book, it's something like the God Theory.
		And he espouses the notion that a lot of us have, that if there is a universal God force that was prior to the Big Bang existing and caused that information to take place, that probably that permeates every single organic and non-organic substance in the entire universe.
		That all of it, every single thing in the entire universe is part of that God force.
		And that way, that God force in theory is able to express itself by being part of every living and non-living thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wonder if there's any limit to the creation that we're going to be allowed to do.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, I would guess there would be.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, in other words, when we get to creating life ourselves, we may not be that far from it.
		All right.
		Robert Bigelow is my guest.
		We're going to take a break here and come back and take your calls.
		I'm Art Bell.
		God, I'd love to take a ride.
		I'd love it.
		Matter of fact, a friend of mine contacted Zero G, a company that takes 727s up.
		And it just so happens that 727s are going to be in the Las Vegas area in September.
		And I may take a ride.
		That may be as close as I'll ever get, but what an opportunity that would be, huh?
		So there you've got it.
		Why not?
		It would be interesting to experience zero G, wouldn't it?
		Robert Bigelow is my guest.
		He'll be right back.
		Seems to me that if some of you were to contact Congress, your Congressperson, perhaps those on the Space and Science Committees, and sort of make a general request that those who are reaching out, like Bob Bigelow, that the path be greased a little bit better for them because it's rough going.
		It's really rough going.
		We had a long, long conversation about that, and I'm not sure exactly where the pressure is applied, so I guess a general pressure in Congress would be a good idea, and let them have a good hard look at what people like Mr. Bigelow are doing.
		David in Tempe, Arizona, you're on the air with Robert Bigelow.
unidentified		Thank you, Mr. Bell.
unidentified		I'm a past guest, the guy who wrote a book called Sunstroke.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Oh, Mr. Bell, special sincere congratulations to you for your outstanding lifetime achievement award.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, thank you.
unidentified		Oh, my gosh.
unidentified		You have indeed set the highest standards for excellence in radio broadcasting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much.
unidentified		I mean, literally this is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This is David, who wrote a book called Sunstroke, which was about a satellite that returned energy.
		It was a science fiction book, about a satellite that returned energy to Earth.
		And, of course, it's science fiction.
		So in that book, the satellite began to wander, and, of course, the field of energy began to burn its path across buildings and humanity and everything in its way.
		David Kagan, is that correct?
unidentified		That's correct, Mr. Bill.
		Thank you so very much.
		And I would like to change the subject matter a little bit here.
		I have a couple questions for your outstanding esteemed guest, Mr. Bigelow.
		Mr. Bigelow?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		I'm on Cloud 9 speaking with you, sir.
		Believe me.
		Well, I greatly admire your stunning accomplishments, both in science and technology, and especially, my gosh, Genesis 1.
		Wow.
		You know, you do remind me a little of Bill Lear, but what you're doing is far larger and infinitely more important for humanity.
		And as I mentioned, Mr. Bell, I've got a couple questions for you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead, David.
unidentified		Thank you.
unidentified		Does Bigelow Aerospace have any plans to lease orbital labs for doing R ⁇ D research and perhaps manufacturing pharmaceuticals in microgravity, drugs that could possibly lead to miraculous cures of diseases on Earth?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Pharmaceutical applications has always been the category that people have referred to most often as applicable to that location, and we very definitely intend to target that entire community as prospective clients.
unidentified		Fabulous.
		Fabulous.
		No doubt it will be a great boon to humanity, perhaps in the near future.
		Wonderful news.
		Now, my second question is, would you at all be interested in participating in a feature film thriller that does indeed spotlight Bigelow Aerospace in a highly positive way?
		In other words, you guys save the world from a different kind of catastrophe that could actually happen.
		Would you at all be interested in something like that?
		Does that kind of resonate at all with you, sir?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Oh, not, you know, to be honest, Dave, it probably doesn't because we're kind of in our own little thriller every day, every week, and month, and trying to do what we're about.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		But I thank you for the offer and the invitation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		However, the concept of becoming as public as you can be, Robert, under the circumstances is probably a good one.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		That is true for multiple reasons.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, Anne, in Walnut Creek, California, you're on with Robert.
unidentified		I was afraid I was going to have to follow that because I wasn't going to be anywhere near as complimentary.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Quite all right.
unidentified		All right.
		And I'm not feeling negative, but I am feeling questioning.
		You know, I think it's wonderfully exciting, and I guess the best word to describe Mr. Bigelow, in my mind, is adventurer or explorer.
		And what I'm concerned about, and I know you are too, Art, and this is not the first time that I've commented about this on your program, I'm concerned that there will be an inadvertent return to Earth, not necessarily in Mr. Bigelow's exploring, but in someone's, of, say, microbes that could wipe out all life on Earth.
		And I think that already the NASA people have admitted that they were careless in the beginning.
		And, of course, their use of the word sterilization of spaceships, I don't know what techniques they're talking about, whether it's extreme temperatures or chemicals or whatever.
		But I mean, even on Earth right now, we have an example of microbes that cannot be killed, namely prions, which as far as we can tell, cannot be killed by extremes of temperature or chemicals.
		And, you know, there are about four different categories of ways that we could destroy ourselves.
		And that's one of them.
		And, you know, and then a couple of others are from our not applying our energy and brains and money to trying to prevent things like not looking out for asteroids.
		You know, instead we're waging war.
		So I just wonder what Mr. Bigelow thinks about this and how concerned he is about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, let's stick with the microbe question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm not sure how much of an issue that is with LEO craft or even or any other craft that are doing anything other than going to the moon or Mars, and you'd certainly have that concern, but who knows, Robert?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think you have two sources for that concern.
		One is something that was brought back from another planet or body in some way that had some contaminant with it.
		Now, we have experienced on this planet for almost five billion years, four and a half billion years, meteors and meteorites hitting this planet of sizable quantities, and there were sufficient mass that survived re-entry and did not burn up.
		And so it suggests that if there are microbes indigenous to those kinds of foreign bodies, that they somehow are acceptable if, in fact, there were living organisms inside meteors and that sort of structure.
		The other is the quarantine process that would be automatic if you were to come from Mars to Earth and from the moon with any materials.
		And of course, those were all quarantined from the moon.
		About 875 pounds of material was brought back, and so that was all quarantine.
		The other area, though, is something that would be, let's suppose, created inadvertently or intentionally on board a space complex.
		And we've had to look at that.
		And so what we've decided is that we have rules of behavior that we would then implement these rules where it pertains to what activities are being functioned on board these systems, these modules, and could they be used for military purposes, let's say, or some sort of harmful intent.
		Now, so the thing of it is that we're not going to be the only ones creating these complexes over a period of time.
		Other countries are going to.
		Other companies are going to.
		We're not going to be alone in an isolated situation forever on this.
		I think in the macro sense, what you've got to say to yourself is this.
		Look, there are probably, I think you and I have talked about this before.
		I felt, well, there's always two kinds of species in the entire universe.
		There are those that have command and control over robust facilities in space.
		And there are those species that have not and that do not.
		And I think if you say, well, which group has probably a greater enhancement of a future in all respects, it's probably the group that has both command and control over robust large facilities in space-based locations as well as terrestrial locations as opposed to the one that only other has half the menu.
		It's like having a periodic table.
		One group has a periodic table of 175, the other group has 115.
		So it isn't fair.
		So you might think, well, gee, the group with the access to the space-based facilities ought to be able then to innovate positive things, not just negative, but positive things, and perhaps enhance the length of duration of life, find cure for cancer, muscular dystrophy, who knows?
		So maybe there's a holy grail or two or three waiting, unbeknownst to us, for significant enhancement of physical problems that we have now that maybe other species do not have those because they long ago solved them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, if I were to be asked where I think pharmaceutical companies would be more likely to be developing positive things for the human race, perhaps curing diseases, in a spacecraft like yours or in a U.S. government spacecraft, I'd have a real quick answer.
		Bob in Kansas City, Missouri.
		You're on with Robert Bigelow.
unidentified		Hey, how are you, Art?
		And Mr. Bigelow, I'm enjoying this program tonight.
		As a retired biochemist and drug scientist, I am now a science fiction writer.
		I've got a couple of questions for you.
		And I realize you've had a lot of difficulties with the government on getting some of your programs off the ground.
		Governments are easy to take power away, but they're kind of hard to get it back to the people.
		You mentioned that you're having a lot of bureaucratic red tape.
		Have you been approached or have you considered approaching second-tier or third-tier countries who I'm sure would more than love to have a spaceport as part of their program to set your system up or, for that matter, even getting an abandoned oil platform or natural gas platform outside the 12-mile limit, or you wouldn't have to deal with these crazy bureaucrats.
		And I'll take my answer offline, sir.
		Okay.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Well, a short answer is no, we have not.
		This is the first year we have actually started to promote what or even expose what our business program is.
		We've kept quiet for all this time, and we've decided because of last year's activity with a number of companies that had asked us to sign letters of intent and memorandums of agreement on relationships with them that we would do more harm than good if we postponed this for another year or two.
		So we have not had any engagement of conversations with other countries yet that might occur this year, however.
		But I'm not sure I quite got the question relative to the 12-mile limit unless it is for a launch facility like Space Sea Launch is, where Sea Launch goes to an equatorial area on the ocean and then launches a Zenit vehicle from that location.
		But certainly we will be most anxious to contract with folks who provide user-friendly spaceport locations and facilities as well as the transportation facilities.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From Toronto, Canada, Chris, you're on the air with Robert Bigelow.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi.
		Art, great show today, and congratulations on the award.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		Mr. Bigelow, there's one kind of giant elephant in the room that I haven't really heard you address.
		And that's probably one of the holy grails of the physical problems that you mentioned earlier.
		And that is artificial gravity.
		Being in a space hotel, I can't imagine a lot of people being all of a sudden used to suddenly floating and going through 30, 60 days, however the lease is, just floating around.
		So how would you figure to solve the problem of using artificial gravity or training courses or what?
		I'll take my answer off.
		Yeah.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Oh, okay.
		Thank you.
		Yes, well our first target market, of course, is not the tourist sector per se.
		It is the professional astronaut community to expand those cores, expand those numbers, and those folks are more accustomed to expecting that environment and what it has to offer.
		And secondly, if we go to serving prime clients, international science corporations and even nations as clients, they may want payload specialists or they may not.
		So in that case, our own astronaut corps will function incidentally free of charge the experiments that they want to implement.
		But if they do want payload specialists, then we will train and fly those people as well.
		So they will probably be more orientated than the novice would be in both of those instances.
		The tourist is in a novice category.
		And to date, there have not been all that many, for sure.
		And however, gee, if Vanusa Ansari is any example, she is a tremendous spokeswoman for tourism.
		And she was ecstatic about the experience that she had.
		And most of the other experiencers have felt the same way, that they want to go back.
		And so I think that having artificial gravity is probably not a prerequisite for getting these structures to be successful.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it something you considered?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		To avoid the Coriolis effect of AG, you need to have a structure of a certain rotation speed and spin, and those RPMs are a function of the entire length of that structure.
		If it were a quarter of a mile in length in sort of a large barbell, dumbbell kind of configuration, that AG is produced better at the extremities of that structure.
		And then you have docking concerns because you need either to hold a center core stable for docking purposes or it has to be in motion with that structure at the same speed.
		There may be times when that rotation needs to stop and then you'd have to queue it up again.
		That is more for more advanced deep space missions than probably is necessary in the first generation of LEO operations, but you might consider that for a Mars expedition.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do we know a lot about the prolonged biological effects of weightlessness on human beings?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		We know a fair amount.
		We know that there's a degradation of muscle mass and bone supply at a rate of 1% per month, and then it tends to level off.
		However, that can be mitigated by aggressive exercise.
		And that's a direct relationship with the amount of exercise that's imposed on the physical structure.
		Then the reaction is positive to that exercise.
		But the good news is that it does taper off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Does it actually level off so that we can imagine a trip to Mars and back?
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		I think so.
		I think so, because we already have folks, both Russian and American, that have ventured to a year in space, which would be beyond the duration of weightlessness that you would have to endure going to Mars.
		And, of course, if you had a system that could get you there in a month and a half or two months or so, so much the better.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		Well, I would like to congratulate you.
		We're coming to the end of the program.
		When it's over, it's over.
		There's nothing we can do.
		But I would like to congratulate you on doing what a lot of people have dreamed about doing and you're not dreaming.
		You're doing it.
		So let's stay in touch.
		I really want to get that ham repeater up there, Bob.
		So let's look into that one.
		And, of course, we will have you back, obviously, with what you're doing.
		The story will continue forever.
robert bigelow ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you, Art.
		This has been a great fun tonight.
		The four hours went by so fast, I'm still jazzed up and not the least bit sleepy.
		And thank you very much for this opportunity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Good night, Bob.
		That's Robert Bigelow.
		He's really one of a kind, folks.
		And that's it for tonight.
		We'll be back here tomorrow night.
		Same time, same station from the high desert.

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