The Arcane Lens of John Lenard Walson

I'm sure many of you have run across the strange and enigmatic videos of British amateur astronomer John Lenard Walson. And I'm sure a lot of you probably experience the same eerie, dislocated sensation that I do after watching them. 

There's been a lot of controversy- even within the UFO community- as to their credibility. But when faced with one of these unsolvable enigmas dealing with black ops and mysteries in space, the first thing I ask is, "Yes, but is it Art?" 

Then, of course, I ask "Yes, but where are the synchs?"

The video above seems to be of structures built into impact craters on the face of the moon. I don't have the credentials to vouch for their veracity, but taken as psychic artifacts of this disjointed age, they are pretty potent stuff (here's another interesting video showing what looks like a giant cuboid structure on the Moon).

Walson's work first came to my attention with some videos of alleged secret orbital installations, which looked more like Lovecraftian space demons. They ignited a firestorm of controversy, as you might expect. 

I'm not exactly sure why, considering that there's a whole host of objects floating above our heads we're only dimly aware of. It might have something to do with the fact that most "skeptics" these days seem to possess the social skills and maturity level of an anonymous poster on a World of Warcraft message board.

In addition to the big NASA missions we heard about and the covert ones we don't, there are any number of private companies launching strange things into orbit (as we looked at a couple weeks back). 

The BBC has a nice puff-piece on this new commerical space program:

...when the ageing space shuttle fleet is retired in 2010, the US space agency (Nasa) will lose a principal means of ferrying crew and cargo to the ISS. The shuttle's replacement - Ares-Orion - will not enter service until 2015 at the earliest...

That leaves the US dependent on European and Japanese spacecraft for delivering supplies to the space station. But Nasa has also been pursuing a commercial approach. Three years ago, the space agency took the unprecedented step of fostering the development of private spacecraft designed to carry crew and cargo to the ISS.

One of these companies is SpaceX, a startup created by Elon Musk, who made his fortune selling PayPal to Ebay:

"The Falcon 9-Dragon System is intended to replace the function of the space shuttle when that retires in 2010," says Musk.

But SpaceX isn't the only new name in the space game:

The other winning bid in Nasa's cargo re-supply contract was made by Orbital Sciences Corporation, based in Dulles, Virginia.

Orbital's vehicle consists of a medium-lift rocket called Taurus 2 which will be used to launch the Cygnus capsule.

And when you consider the pile of high weirdness that Gene Roddenberry stepped in back in the 70s it's worth noting that there's a new private "space habitat" named in honor of one of his failed 70s pilots.

Genesis II is the second experimental space habitat designed and built by the private American firm Bigelow Aerospace, and was launched in 2007. As the second module sent into orbit by the company, this spacecraft builds on the data and experience gleaned from its previously orbited sister-ship Genesis I to continue testing the viability of long-term inflatable space structures. 

Like its sister-ship and other modules being designed by Bigelow Aerospace, this spacecraft is based on the NASA Transhab design, which provides increased interior volume and reduced launch diameter along with potentially reduced mass compared to traditional rigid structures.

As with Genesis I, it was launched aboard an ISC Kosmotras Dnepr rocket from Dombarovskiy missile base near Yasniy, Russia. It successfully reached orbit after separation from the rocket at 15:16 UTC. - Wikipedia