AIUI, the Pentagon has known about it since Monday but we’re only hearing about it now because citizens on the ground finally noticed it.
That and it was probably over Canada before then, and we wouldn’t have cared until it came south of the border. But, why didn’t Canada tell us about it?
Probably because no one in Canada saw it (except NORAD, I’m sure). Canada is pretty sparsely populated out west.
Why do you have to shoot down the entire balloon? The flexible gas bag is indeed hard to destroy. But the interesting part of it is not the gas bag–it’s the camera or whatever instruments it carries, which presumably are located in a
rigid box on the bottom of the balloon . And that’s a target which I’m guessing could be hit and destroyed by a missile fired from a US Air Force plane .
No manned interceptor can get closer than 6 miles below the altitude of the balloon. And since you can’t easily fire straight up, and especially not at your own max altitude, the minimum slant range to the target at launch will be more like 10-12 miles, maybe more like 20. Any interceptor or missile is going to be trying to use radar to see a rubber(?) object floating in the sky. Not easy.
The instrument package is a box maybe what, 5 feet on a side? And is probably even less. How do you propose to aim a missile at that, or the cable it’s dangling from, rather than at the center of mass as seen by a radar. Missiles are not scalpels.
Bottom line: IMO, not gonna work.
Also, I would assume that the government would want to recover the device if possible, to see what instruments were on board.
Was it? I haven’t heard or read anything about the path of the balloon. It might have come over Washington or Oregon.
Another assumption here, but I imagine we’ve been tracking it a lot longer than before it entered US airspace, because how else would they know it came from China?
Testing ways to get around Space Force?
Checking upper air currents to release some biological agent?
Donnie Junior said that the Montana militia could just shoot it down. Yeah, firing randomly into the air is always a good idea. And the idea that he’s actually calling for help from militias is a frightening thought.
This is what i don’t understand. What do you get from a spy balloon that you don’t get from a spy satellite? “Listening to our cell phone chatter” seems like a stretch.
Can’t they send a space cowboy up there to lasso the balloon and drag it back to earth for study?
Well of course, once you understand that the current D administration in Washington are nothing but traitors and all red-blooded militiamen are True Americans, then it becomes easy to understand why you want the militiamen on the job, not those sissified wokies from the Pentagon.
It’s like 600-1200 miles closer, so you can get much more detailed images. Lots of the images from Google Maps are from planes, for example, not from satellites.
Well, he’s obviously an idiot (but we knew that already), but as @LSLGuy referred to, the balloon is at an altitude of 60,000 feet, or miles above the operating ceiling of the U.S.'s fighter planes; obviously, the Montana militia’s AR-15s aren’t going to make it more than a tiny fraction of the way there.
Junior’s just stirring up the base with a worthless suggestion.
Only if it happens to get that close to a sensitive site, which it has almost zero chance of doing (and while I’m not an expert I thought the quality of an image through the atmosphere at a glancing angle was much worse than one directly down from a satellite due to the density closer to the earth)
The idea that a balloon released from China would happen to pass close enough to a nuclear site to get a good surveillance photo is laughable
Then why don’t they just use Google Maps?
According to the Pentagon press secretary, the balloon “has the ability to maneuver.”
Has the altitude been publicly released? Why do you think the instruments are that size?
You should consider that you’re not an expert on the navigation of balloons.
If this was viable for their purposes, why do they have the satellites either?
Exactly. It’s not like it’s hard to get that data.
I thought I had read 90,000 feet in at least one article. Although whether the source for that was any good or not is unknown. But that’s what I was running with.
As to instrument size, there are vids & still from vids available. Which include what appear to be an array of rectangles suspended under the balloon.
Typical high altitude weather / research balloons are long tapered things when released that eventually assume a near-spherical shape at their maximum altitude when the internal amount of gas can fully expand the envelope versus the greatly reduced outside pressure up there. I was WAGging / Feynman-ing off a guess of a balloon 50 feet in diameter. If the balloon is much larger or smaller my estimate will be off.
Bottom line: Somewhat anally extracted, but not totally wacko-unfounded.
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