President Obama's cancelling of the Moon mission is meant to save money - but at what cost to the human spirit?

NASA's new budget means that the International Space Station (ISS) will continue to fly until 2020. But it's unlikely to get funding beyond that. Maybe we can do some good science up there in the next decade. But it's not long, is it? And when the money runs out, NASA will send the ISS screaming in flames into the ocean, at the cost of about $2 billion - that's just to shut the damn thing down.

Long before then, the Shuttle will have stopped flying. If the Ares I isn't finished soon, US astronauts will be hitching rides on Russian rockets to get to the ISS.

What the hell has happened to our sense of adventure and our longing to explore?

The Moon landings happened before I was born. There wasn't a single year of my life when there wasn't a space mission in progress. For me, space exploration means people flying on rockets, putting their lives on the line to expand mankind's horizons.

Space exploration will continue, of course - with unmanned probes and robots. And they're great. But there's something even greater about a human going physically into that realm.

And yeah, I got a buzz when George W Bush talked about going to Mars. For about five minutes. Then I realised he was bullshitting (I know, big surprise). He was just trying to lay claim to Mars with a tenth-rate copy of John F Kennedy's speech about going to the Moon. Kennedy helped that happen. Bush was just trying to carve some piece of posterity for himself, something good that people could remember about him - as if we'd forget all the shit he did.

But anyway ... it's all been downhill from there. The bankers stole all our money and one of the consequences is that we can no longer afford to enlarge the boundaries of our knowledge. The cancellation of the Moon mission is just a way of coming to terms with financial reality. But somehow it makes us less human.

Yeah, I know, I haven't posted in a while. It's been a long, strange holiday season.

I got fired by the Inquisitor - twice. Then rehired both times. But that wasn't the strange thing - they do that all the time here. It's a way of keeping people on their toes, or reducing wages. Usually both.

No, the weird part of it was that I got fired for not putting enough fear in my stories. "We're in the fear business," said Robin, my editor. First time I've heard of it. I thought we were in the truth business. Selah.

There have been all kinds of odd edicts coming down from on high, about the words we can and can't use in the publication, that sort of stuff. I think some of it's from corporate. But some sounds more official. Like we're now supposed to use the term 'Un-American' instead of 'foreign' or 'international'. I think that one came from the Government.

Even away from the office, things are getting weirder. Several times now I've been followed, sometimes aggressively, while driving. And has anyone else noticed the appearance of military Humvees on the streets? Or is that just Reno?

Anyway, I'll tell more in future posts. At least I can use this blog - it's still the case that no-one at the Inquisitor reads it. I'm not convinced they can read.

A while back, the Inquisitor ran a story about how we are all going to be chipped, sooner or later. Well, for me it turned out to be sooner.

That's why I haven't posted for a while. I thought I was depressed. I now realise I'm afraid.

It happened a few weeks ago. A normal Tuesday, or so I thought. Got to work slightly late, looking forward to another day of humiliation, defeat and futility. And I found the office deserted. It wasn't lunchtime, or anywhere within two hours of lunchtime, so I knew something was up.

We have this receptionist who specializes in making my life hell. She's a vicious, baying-for-blood bull-dyke with all the charm of a wounded doberman on PCP. She's called Petal. Anyway, after verbally savaging me for a while, she eventually said I was expected in the meetings room. I didn't know we had a meetings room. She seemed to relish the prospect of me entering a door I had never seen before.

They were all in there, the whole staff of the Inquisitor, rubbing their arms. It wasn't what I was expecting - just an empty office littered with the detritus of whatever failed business had last fled owing back rent. The team was in one corner looking even more morose than normal for this early in the morning. In the other corner was a nurse standing by a table.

She gave me a look. I shudder still when I think of it. Nurse Ratched would have walked in fear of this woman.

Maybe that's why the rest of my experience in that room is such a blur. I remember her checking my name against the computer. Selecting a chip the side of a grain of rice and putting it in a small gun-like device. And then firing it into my arm. "Welcome to the American Century, big boy," she said. It didn't sound welcoming.

Now, every time I enter or leave the building something beeps. Yesterday, Petal took great delight in showing the log on her computer screen that listed the precise time and date I entered and left each room in the building, including the restroom. I spend longer in there than I thought. You can imagine what Petal made of that.

I swear I can feel the little RFID chip in my arm like it's some kind of infection. Everywhere I go I feel like I'm broadcasting something. I don't know what, but it makes me feel guilty. It's like I've been branded the way criminals once were. Like I've been reduced to a number, a serial number to be processed.

This morning I went into Starbucks and something beeped.

Area 51 is a tourist attraction. We all know it's there. Maybe the reason that the US Government pretends it isn't is because it has darker secrets to hide.

The US Government keeps up the charade of pretending that the Groom Lake base - or Area 51, or Dreamland, or whatever else you want to call it - doesn't exist. But that's not because it thinks it will convince us. I think they are manipulating an open conspiracy to stop us looking elsewhere. They're playing the same game we are, but with a different agenda.

On the face of it, the Government has other good reasons not to talk about Area 51. Yes, we all know it's there, but if it becomes official then it has to start appearing on budgets, becomes subject to congressional oversight, it moves to the public side of the military-industrial complex.

So we download high-resolution images from Russian or European satellites, and hike along public paths where you can just catch a glimpse, and flee from the camo-dudes like kids running from a farmer's orchard. And all this time they're really protecting something that isn't there.

So where are the real secrets to be found? Well, if we knew that...

Nevada and Utah are empty states. There's so much hostile territory out there. And great swathes of it are military reserves - radar test ranges, bombing ranges, all kinds of special-purpose land where the military can claim good reasons for keeping people out - for their own good, of course.

And a facility housing alien artefacts, maybe even alien craft, wouldn't have to be big. There wouldn't necessarily be much to see from satellites.

Maybe it's time to stop playing the Government's game. If we focus on what we can see, we may be a part in their conspiracy. There are other ways of looking.

For years now I've kept careful records of all the encounters I've witnessed, investigated or had reported to me. I'm going to share a number of these reports with you through this blog, in a kind of sporadic, ad hoc series. And I'm starting with a recent story - one I came across during a recent tour through the South and East while on 'rest leave' from my job.

Case #: 1073

Date: Aug 13, 2008

Location: Algebra, Kentucky

Report type: Verbal report to investigator

Entity type: Triangular craft

A young man, identifying himself as 'Charles' (real name withheld on request), aged 24, approached this investigator at a hospitality establishment outside Horse Cave, Kentucky. He was in an agitated state.

I had been talking with the manager of the establishment and had informed him of my interest in UFOs and unexplained phenomena. The manager called to Charles and told him to relate his own story. It appears, from the comments of other members of the establishment, that he had been doing little else since the event of two nights before.

Following an evening spent at the same hospitality establishment, Charles had been walking to his trailer, about five miles away. He had recently been deprived of the privileges of his driver's licence, for reasons unexplained.

It was a dark night - apparently moonless and with a thick cloud cover.

Charles spotted what he thought was a fire in the distance. Then it vanished. From time to time, he saw the same orange glow appear between trees, apparently on the distant hilltops, but his vision was frequently obscured by the forest. But he became aware that the location of the 'fire' did not seem to be fixed.

He also started to be aware of a strange noise - a deep "rumbling" or "throbbing". He said he found the sound "disturbing" and yet, at the same time, "kinda frisky."

Charles said he then stopped by the side of the road to "relieve the tension." As he stood there, "the sky just seemed to get darker," he said. "I thought it was, you know, gonna rain or something. But then I saw that the sky was moving, and that it wasn't no cloud. I figured it was time to button up and get the hell outta there."

But Charles found himself unable to move. As he stared at the sky he could make out a huge triangular shape, darker than the sky. He estimated its length at 300-400 feet and a similar width at its base. It was impossible to make out any details in the craft itself. But it seemed to emanate a strange force that made Charles tremble, caused a "churning in the guts" and made his hair stand on end.

The craft had nearly passed when a bright orange light appeared at the rear end, "like its ass was on fire." The craft vanished quickly. Charles was so overcome that he collapsed into the ditch by the side of the road.

When was was awoken the next morning, following a brief search by his common-law wife, 'Tina', it was found that Charles' watch had stopped at what he estimated was the precise time the craft had disappeared. He was still weak from the experience and took several hours to gain sufficient strength to revisit the hospitality establishment.

No-one else in the vicinity has reported any sightings.