Posted by tourdemars to Inflatables at February 14, 2005 04:18 PM

Robert Bigelow is a trim 60 years old with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and a matching mustache. He shepherds visitors through his 50-acre, three-building, 56-employee R&D facility, Bigelow Aerospace, on the outskirts of Las Vegas with the quiet confidence of a man who knows exactly what he is doing. “It’s a gamble,” he says of his project, the world’s first private space station. “It’s a huge gamble.” He smiles faintly as he says it, as though he enjoys the sheer outrageousness of his own project. Then, too, he’s no stranger to high-stakes gambling; he was raised in Las Vegas, after all, surrounded by the city’s kitschy, instant-gratification, money-fixated culture.