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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

#331

Post by jameshart »

rapjr9 wrote: post #311
anigbrowl wrote: post #114

An unnamed congressional aide claims the object was shaped 'like an octagon.' Sounds like BS, but you'd like to think the Wall Street Journal has some capacity to to identify and filter quality sources. https://www.wsj.com/articles/latest-flying-objects-shot-down...

An octagon is a standard shape for a radar reflector, which are frequently attached to balloons to make them more visible to aircraft: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/china-seen-using-radar... https://www.overlookhorizon.com/how-to-launch-weather-balloo...

That is an octahedron, not an octagon

Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#332

Post by XorNot »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #28
nyokodo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You overcome vast interstellar distances with a balloon and then sit there while primitive missiles blow you up?

To be fair, human beings have been to space as well and routinely get trounced by something as primitive as a mosquito bite. Maybe the UFOs were built to withstand alpha-gamma-laser-magma-pulse rays, not our primitive projectile based weaponry!

The Road Not Taken [1]

A premise I was skeptical with but utterly fell in love with once I read it.

[1] https://www.eyeofmidas.com/scifi/Turtledove_RoadNotTaken.pdf

Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#333

Post by analog31 »

prawn wrote: post #301
analog31 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a grey area at all. The first party is responsible for creating the situation, the second for how they deal with it. This happens all the time in cases where the police have to deal with someone who's threatening people.

That's the grey area I'm talking about though. If China sends a missile into the US, it's shot down, but there is collateral damage, Americans will overwhelmingly consider China responsible. If a Chinese airline flies a regular route and is abruptly shot down, and the plane crashes into a populated area, Americans would hopefully consider their own government responsible. The grey area I'm musing about is in the midd…

Indeed, an objective of psychological warfare (aka terrorism) is to turn a population against its own government.

Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#334

Post by Johnny555 »

moose_man wrote: post #63
georgeg23 wrote: post #6

Balloons 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.

Maybe they want to intercept cell phone data.

If they wanted low key interception of civilian terrestrial radio signals, seems like it would be better to just rent a Uhaul or RV, load it up with radio gear, and drive it across the country.

Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#335

Post by dirtyid »

georgeg23 wrote: post #303
martyvis wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 give…

Starship will make Brilliant Pebbles a real possibility and China knows it.

IMO why PRC/RU going for glide hypersonics instead of ballistic. PRC's primary concern with spacex is hogging all the orbital slots.

Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#336

Post by PeterisP »

Arubis wrote: post #173
blindriver wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have Huawei equipment is almost every cell tower installation to do that already.

What’s the service life on such equipment? Sales of new Huawei telecom equip have been banned outright in the US for a couple months. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-fcc-bans-e...

Decades.

Some hardware failure happens, but it's not that frequent, if it's like previous generations of cell technology, most of it will run until the operator chooses to shut down that particular service e.g. switching to a newer generation and freeing up the spectrum for it.

Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#337

Post by Mountain_Skies »

labster wrote: post #18

I was not expecting the 99 Luftballoons song to happen so literally. This is definitely the darkest timeline.

Interesting timing since the album was released forty years ago last month and the single forty years ago next month.

Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#338

Post by jrockway »

amelius wrote: post #174
DebtDeflation wrote: post #5

On 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.

> Between 900 and 1,300 locations around the globe do routine releases, two or four times daily. Are the electronics in these balloons recovered eventually? Or is it just basically e-waste?

You can return them, but they aren't expecting many to be found and returned: https://www.weather.gov/upperair/radiosonde

Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#339

Post by weard_beard »

Arch485 wrote: post #269
ImHereToVote wrote: post #194

What do you mean the eastern part of the US has just had a Phosphene release causing potentially millions of cancer deaths in the years to come? Look aliens!!!!!!!

Source?

https://apnews.com/article/rail-accidents-evacuations-ohio-h...

Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#340

Post by jrockway »

giantg2 wrote: post #285
elorant wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just the fabric. What about all the equipment you’ll put inside? And for the US to bother to shoot them down my guess is that they’re doing something really funky with what they’re carrying.

If you fly dummies for the purpose of having them shot down, they wouldn't have to carry much. It's probably nothing too expensive or they'd put it on a satellite. If they're flying really expensive stuff at commercial flight levels, that's pretty dumb since it will be shot down.

> If they're flying really expensive stuff at commercial flight levels, that's pretty dumb since it will be shot down.

Seemed like a good strategy until about a week ago!

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