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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

#571
post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not a ground strike device. While it could of course be seen as a ground strike enabler, if the operator saw it as a sufficient counter to any opposing second strike capability, it's strictly an interceptor for suborbital passers-by.

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

#572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Germa…

There is no singular factor for the long peace in Europe. I don't claim superpowers are the reason either, just that the argument is made. The situation is far too complicated for me -- one who is neither a historical, economist, nor military strategist -- to make strong conclusions. There's too many coupled variables and causal variables.

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

#573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I found that line of thought, peace through war or rather weapons, very weak when I first encountered it in a school's classroom in the 80s. I find it untrue. Real peace can only be without weapons. I don't want to go back to this same old rhetoric I grew up with and which I was happy to have ended, until 9/11 and the US making a 180° turn, because now they had no one to counter their ambitions to dominate the world,…

I found the argument weak as well when I first encountered it. But as I got older I realized something important into the game theory. If all but one power had no weapons then this means that if that singular power decides to be aggressive, then they will have the ability to take from the rest. I then realized that weapons are fairly ubiquitous in that neither can you have defensive systems that can't be used offensively nor can you have a lot of engineering without also having weapons related technologies. This to me doesn't mean we need a military industrial complex, but it does mean, to me, that we need some minimal military. It does also mean that as citizens we should protest needless violence by our countries. (And if the US is going to act as world police regardless, we need to ensure that situations we engage in are moral. E.g. you could support Ukraine's fight for freedom but not the war in Iraq). The real world is extremely complex.

I'd love to live in a world without weapons, but I don't see how such a thing is even possible, from multiple angles. If that's not possible, then it is about how to minimize fighting and lives lost. After all, that is why we'd want no weapons. That solution space is rather complex and likely non-convex.

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

#574
post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right and all of the EU benefits and invests in the World Bank which is one of the major forces used to keep the third world always in a state of "developing" through structural adjustment policies that keep them from ever actually developing

I can’t tell if you think the World Bank should do more/different or stop meddling entirely and allow the countries to develop on their own.

I think at this point the World Bank owes a lot of these countries but every time they market something as "debt forgiveness" it just turns into more of the same thing we've seen with structural readjustment. I'd recommend Ha-Joon Chang's Kicking Away the Ladder if you wanna see a deep dive into the topic

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

#575
post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 20k feet, that's solidly in the middle of everyday commercial air traffic.

Understood, but is it reasonable to say that any car sized balloon floating at 20k ft is now worthy of a military response?

If it’s occupying airspace illegally, without a license to operate or a flight plan, without any means of control or contract, where it might become a deadly obstacle to legitimate air vehicles?

Who else but the military would enforce that kind of thing? The cops?

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

#576
post #501

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.

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.

Well, technically if I'm not completely wrong the moon's ground track missed the southernmost extension of the USSR by a few degrees of latitude, but that nitpicking certainly does not put your point into question.

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

#577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True, but I'd consider a height at which an object with sufficient speed will happily do a few orbits before eventually succumbing to drag to be safely in the "not air" realm.

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

#578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Run for election to propose this. Many people disagree with absolute real time openness because it puts one at a disadvantage when adversaries are not.

This is about like saying Linux is at a disadvantage to Windows because it is open source It is non-sense

Or it might be like live streaming while you are in a league of legends or paintball tournament while your opponents are watching in real time.

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

#579

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…

That’s dumb sci fi logic though. Aliens don’t need deep ocean FTL fuel. If you can move matter at the speed of light, you have the capability to kill everything on earth very easily.

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

#580

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.

The odd exception being, halflife (1/2) Apparently those games have a ton of unused lore that actually does a realistic invasion scenario from a dyson-sphere level civilization. So in that case, it was called the "7-hour war" for a reason.

No half life is very dumb. The aliens invade using largely small arms weapons. It is called the 7 hour war because a guy surrenders on behalf of earth after 7 hours.

If anyone imagines fighting alien invaders with small arms they’re already stupidly out of touch.

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