Clearly, Dark Brandon should have flown his X-Wing through the 5G time vortex and blown up the balloon factory hidden beneath the Forbidden City long before Fu Manchu himself ever schemed to devise the fiendish contraption.
I think this is a red-herring argument here …
I also think that heat-seeking A-to-A missiles are searching for high volume-extremely-high-temperature jet-exhaust signature, and not “below-hand-warm”, which is the temp. my my battery packs reach with a good solar charge.
Also: lead-acid-battery??? unless that was a steampunk balloon - we can be pretty sure there were no lead-acid batteries on that globe…
It would be laughable and sad if this balloon kill goes down as the sole kill in history of the 187-jet Raptor fleet.
The missile appears to have hit the bottom of the balloon. The equipment would generate some heat. Apparently there were motors to drive propellers. How warm to solar cells become?
solar cells when exposed can get pretty warm (think “dashboard warm” in a convertible car 
… on the other hand those are only a few mm thin and are operating in an environment that is probably around -50°C (going from memory here - they typical temp. gauge you see as a passenger in commercial flights) . so they are going to shed heat at a huge clip on the rear side …
so in short: hard to tell the temp of the panel, if in direct sun, they might be warm/hot to the touch, if in shadow they might be “tongue froze solid trying to lick it” … and that might change within a few cm of distance on the same solar panel.
My guess: given the strong winds up there, it will shed a lot of heat in no time … so rather cold is my guess (which is good for production, as panels produce more when being cold)
IIRC, it’s got an impact fuse to detonate if it hits it’s target/plane.
I’m just back from a trip to Whiteman AFB, and am getting caught up on news/this thread. Putting together some past experience/current knowledge, I think I can see why . . .
- We let this thing drift across the CONUS
- People think its maneuverable
- Politics of the whole situation
I need the jet lag to cool off, and the coffee to warm me up first.
Tripler
No need for tin foil hats . . . yet.
Don’t forget the US also had a high level meeting with China and also wanted to hear their explanation of the device.
Ref the back-and-forth upthread about where = when to shoot it down …
Do we on SDMB know NORAD / Canadian Armed Forces / US DoD were tracking it across the Pacific and into the Aleutians? Or we assuming that?
If DoD said in the last couple days “Oh, yeah, we were watching that thing since last Tuesday, just letting it do its thing while it wandered into our clever trap set in South Carolina” are we believing that? Should we?
Am I reading correctly that China has threatened repercussions for the downing of said balloon?
Meanwhile, I would pray that the world ends up being a place where this was the only necessary kill for the Raptors.
Also, what was the altitude over the Aleutians/Alaska? Previous reporting indicated 90k’ to start and descending as it went over the CONUS. If that is true, then shooting it down was not possible then.
Google/Loon did not figure out how to “steer” balloons.
I haven’t read any solid evidence that a traditional heat seeking missile was used.
Advanced Electro Optical Targeting System
“EOTS combines forward-looking infrared and infrared search and track functionality to support the pilot both in air-to-air and air-to-ground, in day and night conditions. EOTS allows aircrews to identify areas of interest, perform reconnaissance and precisely deliver laser and GPS-guided weapons”
As for the batteries, they just need to generate enough heat to show on infrared sensing equipment for target acquisition.
I think you are suffering from a misconception:
Batteries dont work at -50°C
So, in order for batteries to work in those environmental temperatures, they will be brought up to and stabilized at operating temperature (donno: 10-20°C) using HEAT-pads (just like in EVs at the arctic circle during the winter) within a compartment with prob. 5-10" worth of styrofoam (etc…) isolation, to keep them from radiating their valuable warmth into a -50°C environment.
IOW: if the “warm” batteries showed up as warm to the outside, the isolation process is faulty … in order to work, the battery box isolation will have a temp gradient from +15°C to -50°C … and register at “environmental temperature” on the outside - that’s the job of the isolation in the first place.
I see the solar panels and even the WHITE globe (catching full sun) as way more of a heat-signature than batteries.
Also - 3 school buses worth of “structure” should ping a radar (especially if you already know where it is and you can crank up your radar gain against a completely empty sky).
Were they speaking of the solar cell array to be the length of three buses?
I’ve been trying to understand this as well. Why would China care if we downed a wayward weather balloon over US territory?
Because it it their damn weather balloon.
Am I wrong in suspecting these flyovers happen all the time without incident? Perhaps an unofficial Open Skies policy. The only difference here is that we muggles got whiff of it. The shoot down seems demonstrative, especially since it was done where muggles couldn’t reach the crash site before the authorities.
I got the impression that previous balloons haven’t travel far into the US, so there wouldn’t be enough time to get aircraft close enough to shoot.
I’m not suffering at all. My original premise was that the video showed a low hit on the balloon, where the batteries might be stored and the outriggers are attached. The hit severed the payload, which sent it free-falling to the ocean.
I asked if it was an optimal hit or would taking the top out of the balloon have been a better choice because the drag of the balloon might have slowed the decent and better preserved the evidence.
It was you that focused on the batteries and so I tried (unsuccessfully) to answer your question.
Maybe it was optimal because it’s better to sever power to equipment that is not waterproof prior to submersion to prevent shorting it all out.