Why are there no photos of any of these except the original Chinese balloon?
Information is being selectively withheld to manipulate public opinion, and legacy media outlets are cooperating because that’s what they exist to do - amplify on demand.
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
#42Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#43Random question - anyone know how a sidewinder missile hits these objects (whatever they are)? My missile knowledge is non-existent but movies show me it has something to do with heat signature - which these don’t seem to have.
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#44Ok 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?
“The Asgard would never invent a weapon that propels small weights of iron and carbon alloys, by igniting a powder of potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulfur.”
—Thor, Stargate SG-1, “Small Victories”
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#45Have aliens invaded and we just don’t know about it, the government holding them off lowkey? Edit: Now China’s shooting them down! https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/02/12/china-says...
> That balloon’s journey set off a huge debate within the U.S. about why it wasn’t shot down earlier, with Republicans arguing President Donald Trump never would’ve allowed such a thing to happen. Except that it did, many times, including over sensitive military facilities in Virginia and California.
There’s something hilarious about the idea that, if this was the start of an alien invasion, our journalists and politicians started off the coverage not being curious about what on Earth these objects were, but instead slinging political slime at each other
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#46From Huron in we have to demand answers
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/
Planet.com. Maxar. Etc.
CubeSats are cheap and effective.
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#48On 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 ...
A "well behaved" balloon should also carry a corner reflector, so it clearly stands out on radar.
https://www.overlookhorizon.com/how-to-launch-weather-balloo...
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/
There's only one company with that capability and that's the only organization in the world ever to achieve first stage (and soon all stage) reusability for LEO launches.
Because to achieve that you need to put a lot of stuff in orbit and the only way to affordably do that is cheap (reusable) launches.
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#50Balloons 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…
SpaceX has launched 8 Starshield satellites. Nobody knows what they do but they are probably testbeds for platform and space link communications. There are SDA launches planned for March and June.
I wouldn't expect to see spy satellites from the SDA; the NRO has always controlled those. I could believe small spy satellites if launched from NRO. There haven't been any details on how missile defense will work from space with small satellites. The descriptions I've seen have been about communication and detecting hypersonic weapons with infrared sensors. The latter is not what I would think of as spy satellite or missile defense.