"The American people don't need classified details, just that they're safe. That's it."
That's not how democracy works. That's how sheep farming works.
Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
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Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#32On the one hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon >Between 900 and 1,300 locations around the globe do routine releases, two or four times daily. On the other hand, weather balloons are not silver-gray and cylindrical. A Google image search shows them almost always white and spherical to teardrop shape and pretty much unmistakably a balloon.
Also the weather balloons are launched on consistent schedule / from consistent consistent locations and they often have a transmitter that allows them to send back data and even be found right? Not to say one of these can't be a weather balloon, but I would expect these also are known possibilities / somewhat detectable / aren't trying to be sneaky ...
Yup. There are different requirements depending on payload size, but if you’re doing it regularly even if you don’t have to, you send appropriate information anyway notifying the right people locally what is flying where, expected flight paths, descriptions, exact times, etc.
We did a balloon launch a long time ago, it had a radio sending back telemetry and we chased it across Colorado scrub land hundreds of miles.
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#33I wish there was more clarity on if these are balloons or not.
Yeah, I don't understand the ambiguity from the government and military. They have to have pictures of these things. Show us what they look like. Tell us if they are balloons. Are they under power against the wind? What speed? All these details must be known, it's been days, why aren't they telling us?
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#34Balloons could be a clever counter to what the US is doing with Low Earth Orbit satellites recently. SpaceX is launching tons of spy/missile defense satellites over China as part of the Space Development Agency: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Development_Agency China has been complaining to the United Nations about it. https://press.un.org/en/2022/gadis3698.doc.htm More details: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Star…
Something that puzzles me is how you specifically target China with a satellite. They can't be geostationary unless they're over the equator.
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#35I was not expecting the 99 Luftballoons song to happen so literally. This is definitely the darkest timeline.
99 knights of the air
Ride super high-tech jet fighters
Everyone's a superhero
Everyone's a Captain Kirk
With orders to identify
To clarify and classify
Scrambling the summer sky
99 red balloons go by
Only got the season wrong …
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#36So I’m guessing we recently upgraded or reconfigured some software and now we are seeing a lot of things that have been there but we didn’t detect. Or something finally crossed a line and the enemy, which did not know we were watching was going to find out so it’s all being cleaned up now.
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#37Why are there no photos of any of these except the original Chinese balloon?
The original ballon was large enough to be noticed and photographed by civilians on the ground.
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#38Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#39Balloons could be a clever counter to what the US is doing with Low Earth Orbit satellites recently. SpaceX is launching tons of spy/missile defense satellites over China as part of the Space Development Agency: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Development_Agency China has been complaining to the United Nations about it. https://press.un.org/en/2022/gadis3698.doc.htm More details: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Star…
Something that puzzles me is how you specifically target China with a satellite. They can't be geostationary unless they're over the equator.
Lots and lots of satellites that keep passing overhead and you compose the images to abstract away the fact they came from multiple physical satellites.
Idk how many companies/govs have this capability but: https://www.palantir.com/offerings/metaconstellation/
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#40Ok so it’s either a massive foreign program or UFOs.
You overcome vast interstellar distances with a balloon and then sit there while primitive missiles blow you up?
You know when you’re playing with a little kid and they fake punch you, and you dramatically go flying across the room and they laugh, they’re proud of themselves, and you laugh? Yeah the aliens playing that game with us right now.