Area 51: Phantom Works Old News or No News? Photo Updates

What is Area 51, anyway? Does it have a monopoly on weird research? The balloon, at left, is fabricated from HY-30 steel and that is not a propane burner in the gondola, it is a portable anti-gravity device.

Thank heavens fanciful projects like this are not being funded by the Navy. What would be the purpose? (Hint: estimate total weight is 4.2 tons).

I recognize none of the technicians in the photo, although they may look familiar. (Don't worry Bubblehead, it is not you, it is Beavis).

Does anyone recognize the class of this "balloon"? More, here (from The Sub Report).

Phantom Works in Seattle, the part of the Boeing company which handles top secretive programs, collaborated in an experiment by Yevgeny Podkletnov, who claims to have developed a device which can shield objects from the Earth's pull.

The head of the Phantom Works, George Muellner, told the security analysis journal Jane's Defence Weekly that the science appeared to be valid and plausible.
Dr Podkletnov claims to have countered the effects of gravity in an experiment at the Tampere University of Technology in Finland in 1992.