That’s too fucking funny.
In this hypothetical the project was ruined when they assumed it was lost. It is a moot point what happens to it afterwards.
Ooh - are we shooting down UFOs now?
It would be ironic if this became a reverse Roswell - shooting down a “weather balloon”, only for it to turn out to be an alien UFO.
Reminds me of the description of what an American Airlines pilot reported seeing a couple of years ago:
They’ll scream “why didn’t he wait until it was over water and then shoot it down so we could recover it?” They know their base will not see the hypocrisy.
As far as “floating”…what lighter than air gas can be used that won’t expand past the size of a small car at that altitude? I don’t think there is any?
Actual weather balloons
And as mentioned, drifting at 40K feet whatever it is becomes considered a hazard to air traffic, which a balloon above 60K would not necessarily be.
A small car to me is about 10-12 ft in length. A typical weather balloon expands to 20+ ft in dia at altitude so that seems too small.
I can’t tell for sure that the “small car” reference is specifically to the payload of the balloon rather than the balloon itself … but that’s what I assume. Some guest on CNN ~90 minutes ago was making that same assumption, for what that’s worth.
Yeah, I was thinking they were talking about the payload. We’ll have to wait for a better description of the object.
Even model rockets above a certain weight and engine class have to have authorization from the FAA before flight. Any legit project will register with the FAA.
Don’t worry, we have top people working to identify it.
“unidentified object flying”
Say it!
They should have been watching CNN, so tough.
Actually, it was over water, ice in this case, so the best of both worlds. Won’t fall on anyone and easy to recover.
A long cylindrical object sounds sort of like, lets see… Opps. Sorry Alaskan Airlines.