Do we know why they are shot down? How do we know there is no dangerous material in them (e.g. radioactive)?
Good question. I’d be interested to know too.
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
#142Balloons 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…
China could do the same thing if they wanted. That isn't a good excuse to violate national airspace. Maybe they want to intercept cell phone data.
And try to compete with Starship?
US can always launch more and for these LEO constellations it's all about numbers.
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#143One missing information about all other objects after the 1st balloon is their nature and speed. Why should they keep this information classified? It's like the objects were a lot more complex than a balloon (propelled drones?), with varying attitude and speed and telling what they were doing when they were detected would reveal what they were doing while still undetected, that is, giving information on military capa…
Why would you be puzzled?
Any information given to the public (you) will also seen by the enemy (whoever it is)
It's like when America used to go on television during the Iraq/Afghanistan wars and announce where they were going to do surprise attacks and then get butthurt when they got wiped out.
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The technical change is that you can build very useful, very small sats, which are cheap. Current SpaceX launch costs are lower, but like 1/2 price and 2x is not a big premium for a national security need.
10x cost for Falcon 9 (actual internal cost) and 100x less for Starship when available..
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#145Balloons 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.
They're targeting Chinese capabilities, not Chinese geography.
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
The AIM-9X is infrared imaging based rather than heat signature based. The pilot resolves that contrast between the object and sky before firing the missile and missile targets the object based on the image.
> The AIM-9X is infrared imaging based rather than heat signature based. Isn't heat detected by infrared? What's the difference?
Cloudless sky is cold, and at 30,000 feet extremely cold. Anything not-sky is going to contrast against the sky, even if it has no internal heat source (and remember: if it has electric things in it, it produces heat).
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
China could do the same thing if they wanted. That isn't a good excuse to violate national airspace. Maybe they want to intercept cell phone data.
And try to compete with Starship? US can always launch more and for these LEO constellations it's all about numbers.
They have their own space station dude. They also have tons of satellites, including LEO satellites. China is not some poor country.
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#148Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#149Earlier 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.
First off, I don't buy the underlying premise because the US has been launching satellites with global coverage for 50 years... I don't see why China would wait until now to respond. But for your question, with LEO satellites you don't really target specific countries. They cover every country within a given latitude range. A round LEO orbit that goes over the US must also go over China. However you don't need geosta…
I had to look it up. It must have taken some impressive math work to invent that orbit in the 1960s.
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drone at 40000 feet? That's higher than most airliners - that would need be one heck of a drone, especially given where they have shot it down and how far it would have had to fly. Much more likely sounding/meteorological balloons - a lot of those are sent up every day, worldwide, with payloads that are roughly cylindrical in shape. And some of them can traverse huge distances, even across oceans, so such "UFO" doesn…
To my understanding the latest object traversed from Montana to Lake Huron in less than 24 hours. Can any such balloon really travel that fast?
The jet stream currently has a strong west to east north east component from Montana to the Great lakes. The winds peed varies greatly depending on altitude, but a floating object can easily be pushed along at speeds in excess of 120mph.
A strong jet stream can exceed 250mph.