This morning Robert Bigelow—budget hotel billionaire; paranormal investigator; space entrepreneur—unveiled the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), which will soon ship to Kennedy Space Center, stowed in a SpaceX rocket. It will launch in September, expand, dock with the International Space Station, and become sort of a test chamber slash astronaut lounge. It is also—depending on who you talk to—probably the shape of much to come, in terms of extraterrestrial habitation.

I arrived at Bigelow Aerospace's North Las Vegas headquarters early, the desert morning bright, still mercifully cool, storm clouds draped over distant snow-spattered mountains. A poster on the wall at the security check caught my eye— a fuzzy image of a small oblong craft in orbit around an earth-like planet. Along the bottom, in big blocky letters was a single word: "Believe." The guard had on the company patch, bearing the company logo, which at first looked to me like two slanted footballs followed by a swooping line. Then I realized it was an alien head.