Earlier quoted context omitted.
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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
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm trying to think of potential grey areas in the middle where the agitator could say "It was minding its own business. It wasn't dangerous until you shot it down. That gas mix was part of the cooling system and would've been completely fine if you didn't launch a missile at it." And some portion of the host public could be convinced that this was a reasonable opinion and hold their government responsible. I don't t…
I think a good example for your hypothetical would be the sinking of a nuclear plant propelled ship. If country B invades the territorial waters of country A with a nuclear destroyer and country A destroys it, the fallout (morally and chemically) would still be on the aggressor for creating the situation where it's reasonable to expect their harmful payload would be destroyed.
I'm imagining something far less obviously threatening (balloon rather than a destroyer) and far less explicitly damaging (maybe a liquid or gas that would mix with the missile impact, and rain down barely noticeable granular substance that, oops, contaminates farm land).
I can appreciate this is quite far fetched given that the material would need to drop such a distance rather than completely disperse with wind, and not be super obvious about it (e.g., pellets).
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#293Do we have international agreement about what constitutes sovereign space in the sky and what doesn’t? I mean at what height does it make it not okay to shoot down an object another country sent up? Is it at the height of the low orbit satellites? Should it be out of the earth’s gravitational pull? Or can China shoot down one of US’ low orbit satellites saying it flew over its airspace?
There is no agreed altitude.
> can China shoot down one of US’ low orbit satellites saying it flew over its airspace?
These balloons beg that question.... The first one was even made to look like a satellite.
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If you don't have a large enough LEO constellation you will have sporadic and predictable coverage. This is especially true if you want global coverage to monitor a military like the USA with a global presence.
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#295I 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?
I would imagine that if these are small and hard to detect, you may not want everyone to understand the exact extent of your capability to detect them.
The first balloon didn’t have this consideration because it could be seen from the ground.
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
People need to understand that if you’re being attacked by a FTL capable alien invader, you are so incredibly f**ed that it just does not matter. People don’t write popular sci fi novels about realistic alien invasions because they would be so utterly one sided and brief that it simply wouldn’t make a good story.
I forget the name of the TV series but there was a great show where aliens had occupied earth and the drones were just completely lethal and unstoppable. It was very realistic, the machines would just show up and instantly frag everyone in sight. The story was about a cop who ended up working for the alien occupiers, I wish I could remember the name of the show.
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#297So my thoughts:
1. Are we just seeing more of these things now, due to the US broadening the scope of their radar filtering, and there were always this number of things floating around and now they're just more aware of them?
2. Has something changed in the upper atmosphere/jet stream that's catching balloons that would have previously blown elsewhere, and are now going over the US by accident?
3. Is some really big budget scifi coming out soon, and some marketing team thought that after the chinese balloon thing, launching a ton of cheap weather balloons painted silver would be a cool guerrilla marketing campaign for it?
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>Also the UN is an absolute joke UN is literally just a forum for countries to meet and discuss matters. Nothing more nothing less. I have no idea why people expect UN to take action, when UN is explicitly not an organisation for taking any actions.
/derail
Feels like intentional bury. The OP about Space Development Agency is a big deal.
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#299Balloons 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…
Actually this morning I was thinking about the inaugural and hopefully successful flight of Starship maybe next month. While it is meant to demonstrate capability to orbit, it won't complete it and is intended to crash land off the coast of Hawaii. I think it will be passing over China to achieve that. Maybe they would like interpret it as effectively an ICBM test - and by allowing these balloons to be shot down gives them some sort of tit-for-tat justification to bring down Starship earlier than Elon (and NASA, FAA, etc) would like. (Some sort of MAD muscle flexing)
Here is the submitted flight plan https://apps.fcc.gov/els/GetAtt.html?id=273481
Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
I forget the name of the TV series but there was a great show where aliens had occupied earth and the drones were just completely lethal and unstoppable. It was very realistic, the machines would just show up and instantly frag everyone in sight. The story was about a cop who ended up working for the alien occupiers, I wish I could remember the name of the show.
Colony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_(TV_series)
Thank you!!!!