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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

#541

Post by htrp »

hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #411
oneoff786 wrote: post #151

Earlier 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.

It doesn't have to be FTL capable after the crash. Just imagine, you with a rifle, an armor, a good sword and some grenades went back in time to say 20K yrs ago, for sure you are like God to the primitives for a moment but whence you exhausted the resources it's done business. Same thing for aliens, imagine an alien refugee ship capable of FTL but needs a special fuel that it has to collect from deep Earth ocean very…

So basically they up in district 9

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

#543

Post by PicassoCTs »

actionfromafar wrote: post #525
PicassoCTs wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then there were the Nordbats: https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2017/9/20/trigger-h...

AKA Shootbat

The pattern of civilized diplomats and governments being incapable to handle or even imagine the dog-dominates-dog perspectives of aggressors, even chastising parties acting appropriate, while being placated by other diplomats- who try to gamble for time, to create facts on the ground.

If anything, the doves are way to often the pets of the butcher.

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

#544

Post by imtringued »

godelski wrote: post #456
esperent wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you be more specific? I'm from a country that people would consider part of "The West". However we've never attacked anyone except invaders in entire country's history. I'm sure you could dredge up some connection to the US and get angry with us about it, if you were an Islamic extremist or something. More realistically though, you could find fault with any country with that attitude. Speaking of current geopolit…

> So, tell me again about why everything is the fault of "The West", including all the western countries who have never attacked anyone, in your mind? Not the person you're responding to, but I think it is important to recognize that the US is practically the military of The West (and some more like Japan and Korea), or rather those on the side of democracy in the cold war. Lots of this is because after a bunch of ve…

The reason there is peace is that the European nations formed an economic union with a high degree of interdependence and the obvious restriction on a certain ww2 losing country to no longer have a functioning army and go full pacifism as its geographic location allows it to attack all of Europe simultaneously.

The German Bundeswehr is a joke to the point where it is even unable to defend its own country and no German politician in charge of the military has ever felt like that is a problem worthy of attention for more than half a century.

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

#546

Post by georgeg23 »

imtringued wrote: post #513
Seb-C wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A limit to the airspace belonging to each country has to be defined. Otherwise (for example) the Apollo missions would have violated USSR's airspace whenever the moon's orbit was above it's territory, which would make space unusable for everyone.

It would be a ridiculous definition of airspace if it included the vacuum of space. So yes, Ballons are by definition in airspace because they use lighter than air buoyancy to rise and sattelites do not.

There's actually a non trivial amount of air in low earth orbit. For example the ISS or Starlink satellites would experienced drag and reenter in only a few years without periodic thrusting. At Starlink launch dispense they are even lower and reenter in days.

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

#547

Post by georgeg23 »

flakeoil wrote: post #495
arwineap wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm failing to understand how balloons are different from satellites, save for altitude; those sats could be carrying payloads other than ISR as well.

I guess a balloon could drop bombs. A balloon could also be in the way for airplanes. A balloon could also drop its payload, on purpose or by accident. The recent balloons have been reported to carry a load the size of up to several buses so I guess if that falls to ground it could cause quite some damage. Not sure satellites can shoot missiles or drop bombs that could hit earth in any effective manner.

Low Earth satellites can indeed shoot missiles or drop bombs. It's what the DoD chief called for, https://breakingdefense.com/2018/08/space-based-missile-defe... and almost happens decades ago with Brilliant Pebbles.

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

#548

Post by georgeg23 »

usrusr wrote: post #499
arwineap wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm failing to understand how balloons are different from satellites, save for altitude; those sats could be carrying payloads other than ISR as well.

Payloads from a balloon could be dropped, payloads released in orbit stay in orbit. LEO would be a very bad choice for anything intended to eventually interact with the ground in other ways than using electromagnetic waves.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles

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

#549

Post by fooblaster »

golol wrote: post #488
dismalpedigree wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I predict a Chinese version of Starship within 18 months of a successful launch. The Chinese industrial espionage machine is unmatched.

You underestimate how incredibly difficult the work that SpaceX is doing is. No spaceflight oraganization in the world is close to having the capabilities that SpaceX has right now (Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy). Meanwhile Starship is almost ready.

looking at the launch numbers from 2022 you can see that china is fairly close to having the capabilities of the us. Falcon heavy is still several years away from being useful in any capacity.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00048-7#:~:text=1.....

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

#550

Post by georgeg23 »

porbelm wrote: post #498
golol wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You underestimate how incredibly difficult the work that SpaceX is doing is. No spaceflight oraganization in the world is close to having the capabilities that SpaceX has right now (Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy). Meanwhile Starship is almost ready.

That's why you do industrial espionage though; take advantage of all the R&D done by someone else, so most of the pitfalls are overcome and a lot of the testing is done. Like knowing what kinds of alloys turned out not to work and why, etc. So you don't have to repeat all that.

Honestly this espionage thing is overrated. Plenty of employees in the US take their knowledge to (domestic) competitors and find it quite hard to just clone a business. The Russians and US were stealing each other's plans during the space race but this often led to misunderstood and suboptimal designs. See Buran

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)

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