Genesis 1.
Genesis 1. © BIGELOW AEROSPACE

It sounds like a sci-fi fever dream, but it’s becoming reality. On Friday, SpaceX will launch a so-called “expandable”—a prototype called the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module—to the International Space Station. It will remain there, attached to the Tranquility module, for two years. Bigelow Aerospace hopes its time in orbit will prove the technology worthy of inhabitants.

Robert Bigelow didn’t start his career with visions of astronaut hotels. No, the company’s eponymous founder made his fortune on the hotel chain Budget Suites—extended-stay hotels with a stove in every room. But he soon expanded his worldview. With his money, he founded the National Institute for Discovery Science to research “anomalous phenomena” like UFOs, and donated $3.7 million to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to endow a Consciousness Studies chair.

Beyond those fringe interests, though, he wanted to help people stay in space. So in 1999, he created Bigelow Aerospace to begin work on expandable habitats. He wasn’t the first one to imagine an inflatable outpost in space—just the first who might pull it off.