Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies

Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) was a subsidiary of Robert Bigelow's aerospace and real estate enterprise, established as a scientific research and contracting organization to pursue anomalous phenomena investigation, including unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). It was the primary contractor for the Defense Intelligence Agency's AATIP-related research program (formally designated the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, AAWSAP) from 2008 to approximately 2010.¹

Background: Robert Bigelow

Robert T. Bigelow was born in 1944 in Las Vegas, Nevada. He built a significant fortune through Budget Suites of America, a chain of extended-stay apartment hotels, and through Bigelow Aerospace, a commercial space company focused on the development of expandable habitat modules for space stations. Bigelow had maintained a longstanding personal interest in UAP and anomalous phenomena, influenced by his family's reported UAP encounter and by his relationship with Nevada Senator Harry Reid, who shared his interest in the subject.¹

In 1996, Bigelow purchased the Sherman family's ranch in northeastern Utah - known as the Skinwalker Ranch - for $200,000. The property had been the site of reported anomalous events including cattle mutilations, apparitions, unusual craft sightings, and other phenomena reported by the Sherman family and documented in local press. Bigelow established the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) in 1995 to conduct systematic investigation of anomalous phenomena, and NIDS researchers conducted observation at Skinwalker Ranch from 1996 through the early 2000s.¹

AAWSAP Contract

In 2008, the Defense Intelligence Agency awarded a $10 million per year contract (for a minimum of two years, totaling approximately $22 million) to BAASS to conduct the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program. The contract was secured through the advocacy of Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and two colleagues, Senators Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), who obtained the funding as an earmark. The contract specified research into advanced aerospace threats including potential foreign developments - the framework that allowed UAP investigation to be packaged as a defense intelligence requirement rather than a paranormal inquiry.¹

BAASS employed approximately 50 full-time researchers and contracted hundreds more to staff the program. The chief scientist was Hal Puthoff, the physicist who had directed the original SRI remote viewing program in the 1970s and maintained decades of research interest in advanced propulsion and UAP physics. BAASS investigators conducted site visits to UAP encounter locations, collected witness testimony, analyzed materials, and commissioned studies on advanced propulsion, exotic physics, and human physiological effects from UAP encounters.¹

Skinwalker Ranch and Anomalous Phenomena

BAASS investigators conducted detailed ongoing research at Skinwalker Ranch during the contract period. The ranch had been the site of continued anomalous events since NIDS's initial investigation, and BAASS deployed instrumented observation posts, camera systems, and resident researchers. The scope of reported phenomena at the ranch - which Colm Kelleher and George Knapp documented in Hunt for the Skinwalker (Paraview Pocket Books, 2005) - included UAP, cattle mutilations, poltergeist-type effects, and what researchers described as a "hitchhiker effect," in which phenomena reportedly followed investigators home.¹

Reports and DIRD Studies

BAASS produced a series of Defense Intelligence Reference Documents (DIRDs) - technical reports on advanced aerospace science topics relevant to UAP propulsion and performance. Hal Puthoff and other contributors addressed topics including warp drives, traversable wormholes, high-frequency gravitational wave communications, and exotic materials. The reports, produced between 2009 and 2010, were contracted at $25,000 each from subject matter experts in theoretical physics and advanced engineering. Several were later declassified and released as part of the post-2017 UAP transparency process.¹

Medical Effects Research

BAASS research included investigation of physiological effects reported by individuals claiming proximity to UAP, building on a database of cases with reported biological effects. Kit Green, the CIA neurophysiologist who had overseen the original SRI remote viewing program from 1972, contributed to this aspect of the research, applying forensic neurological analysis to reported injury patterns. The physiological effects research represented a continuity between the 1970s government anomalous phenomena programs and the AATIP-era research.²

Termination and Legacy

The BAASS contract was not renewed after its initial two-year period. The AAWSAP program transitioned to a smaller successor effort designated AATIP, directed by Luis Elizondo within the Pentagon's Washington Headquarters Services. BAASS's accumulated research and case files remained with the program's intelligence customers. Robert Bigelow later sold Skinwalker Ranch to a new ownership group in 2016.¹