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Surely this is not the world's slowest declaration of war? Whoever country is sending whatever these artificial objects are, what can they possibly gain from this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Genetrix
Poetic.
I think China erred by sending such a large balloon that was visible to the naked eye, causing the American public to demand it be shot down. There's no hard rule about where national airspace ends and space begins.. a lot of times they fly too high for planes to reach, and under certain circumstances balloons are allowed through national airspace.. so if the balloon isn't causing a problem (like being a hazard to ai…
>erred by sending such a large I surmise you need large balloon to carry required instruments on one platform. Going forward IMO PRC just going to fly them higher, US can keep shooting them down... possible until they can't, both will reveal US capabilities. At minimum, finding out f22 + missile ceiling is worth the cost. PRC isn't going to stop program just because US domestic politics goes full retard, if anything,…
Is there a plausible explanation as to why the US government has not announced objects 2 & 3 are balloons, if they are balloons? They call them "objects", yet must know what they are. They wouldn't randomly missile unknowns. If it's for reasons of secrecy, why announce it at all? The second one was in the middle of nowhere, it could easily have been ignored, or dismissed as a military exercise if anyone had made a fu…
Could be Drones?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>erred by sending such a large I surmise you need large balloon to carry required instruments on one platform. Going forward IMO PRC just going to fly them higher, US can keep shooting them down... possible until they can't, both will reveal US capabilities. At minimum, finding out f22 + missile ceiling is worth the cost. PRC isn't going to stop program just because US domestic politics goes full retard, if anything,…
Higher would be more expensive to shoot down, but given that we have missiles designed to shoot down satellites - at least in LEO - I don’t think it’ll be possible to use altitude as a means of evading response.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Genetrix
> The Soviets recovered many of these balloons and their temperature-resistant and radiation-hardened film[8][9][10] would later be used in the Luna 3 probe to capture the first images of the far side of the Moon. Poetic.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/the-soviets-built-besp...
I wonder what the cost is of sending such a balloon vs shooting it down. If I was China I would be sending thousands of these. It's not going to cause an all out war, but it does impose some security threat which should be dealt with and can't be ignored.
I've not looked into it - but it's possible there is zero or negative cost to shooting down a small number of balloons. Imagine each pilot needs X hours of training or to fire Y missiles in training. A couple balloon missions could just replace training exercises, on net saving money because we wouldn't need to setup the target.
I think China erred by sending such a large balloon that was visible to the naked eye, causing the American public to demand it be shot down. There's no hard rule about where national airspace ends and space begins.. a lot of times they fly too high for planes to reach, and under certain circumstances balloons are allowed through national airspace.. so if the balloon isn't causing a problem (like being a hazard to ai…
Weather balloons are tiny, enough so they need to attach a specific device to reflect radar signals properly and these massive payloads are not innocent climate collection devices
And going by the size isn't conclusive. The ICESat-2 weather satellite is over 3000lbs, for example. So instruments larger than found on a typical weather balloon clearly do have their place in weather/climate science.
I don't know why everyone is so quick to label these other objects as balloons.
The government is apparently not saying what these objects were, so people are assuming they're balloons.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know exactly how fast the air currents at 40,000-60,000 feet will drive a balloon, but I would assume that this most recent balloon was already airborne by the time the previous one was discovered. As long as they don’t launch anymore starting last week, this particular episode should wind down peacefully. As to why use balloons instead of satellites, the most reasonable speculation I’ve seen is that they’re…
Large controllable balloons could probably be 'recalled' by instructing them to crash into the ocean. If any more big ones like the first balloon show up, it's probably on purpose.
I don't know why everyone is so quick to label these other objects as balloons.
A CNN correspondent [0] just claimed that there were conflicting statements from the pilots that it interfered with their sensors as they approached it. And that they couldn't figure out how it was staying in the air. I have no idea where she got those updates, but it certainly adds mystery to the situation.