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U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri

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Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri

#51

Post by lightedman »

jpgvm wrote: post #30

Pretty interesting platform. Looks to have around 16x300W solar panels, so roughly 4.8KW. A lot but no unreasonable given it has 4 electric turbines and it would take a lot of grunt to influence a balloon of that size especially given air density altitude. If it is a civilian craft it's either government or maybe one of the big Chinese universities. Supporting the spy angle is the pretty obvious connectivity (looks t…

"surely a satellite does what this does but better?"

Nope, which is why Google and Apple pay heavily for on-the-ground recording and aerial photography for their maps.

Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri

#52

Post by ChatGTP »

jkaptur wrote: post #41
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting plane to use when considering the USSR shot down a U-2 in 1960. This history even rhymes: the US initially claimed the U-2 was a weather device like China did with this balloon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident If the Chinese say they can fly their balloons, can we fly our planes at the same altitude?

The Chinese shot down a number of U2s as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Cat_Squadron You can see one of them at the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution, but it's in pretty rough shape (understandably).

That photo of the missiles coming for the pilots planes are incredible and terrifying.

You'd have to have some pretty good nerves for that job.

Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri

#53

Post by walrus01 »

zoklet-enjoyer wrote: post #29

Does anyone who knows anything about solar panels have an estimate of how much electricity that could produce?

ordinary commercially available terrestrial solar panels (which are heavy when built into glass front panel and backing sheet + aluminum frame), made from high efficiency monocrystalline si cells are commonly maxing out like:

60 x 6W 156mm cells = 360W STC rating

72 x 6W 156mm cells = 430W STC rating or around there.

If they used triple junction GaAs cells or something exotic like you'd see on a satellite it could be something very different.

The same mono Si cells could be used in something built to be fragile and light weight for attaching to a giant balloon.

If it's something thin film the efficiency is probably less.

Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri

#54

Post by harles »

jpgvm wrote: post #30

Pretty interesting platform. Looks to have around 16x300W solar panels, so roughly 4.8KW. A lot but no unreasonable given it has 4 electric turbines and it would take a lot of grunt to influence a balloon of that size especially given air density altitude. If it is a civilian craft it's either government or maybe one of the big Chinese universities. Supporting the spy angle is the pretty obvious connectivity (looks t…

> surely a satellite does what this does but better? China has no shortage of high quality spy satellites.

Maybe not. Satellites are highly predictable and things can be tucked neatly away when they’re known to be overhead.

Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri

#55

Post by mrdmnd »

walrus01 wrote: post #43
jpgvm wrote: post #30

Pretty interesting platform. Looks to have around 16x300W solar panels, so roughly 4.8KW. A lot but no unreasonable given it has 4 electric turbines and it would take a lot of grunt to influence a balloon of that size especially given air density altitude. If it is a civilian craft it's either government or maybe one of the big Chinese universities. Supporting the spy angle is the pretty obvious connectivity (looks t…

> (looks to be Ku-band satellite or similar) It's impossible to tell from looking at it in a photo taken from that distance what band a parabolic aimed (pan/tilt motorized) geostationary satellite antenna of that type is. Unless you're close enough to measure the diameter of the feed horn. Small size means it's unlikely to be C-band as not enough gain unless you want to waste a huge section of transponder space at BP…

ex-Loon engineer reporting in. Can confirm, I'm having a good chuckle.

Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri

#56

Post by titzer »

Maybe they weren't just surveilling, but actually attacking cell networks and/or mobile phones through a vulnerability that requires line-of-sight. Just speculation though.

Could also just be a distraction from something else they were up to at the same time.

Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri

#57

Post by throwbadubadu »

jpgvm wrote: post #30

Pretty interesting platform. Looks to have around 16x300W solar panels, so roughly 4.8KW. A lot but no unreasonable given it has 4 electric turbines and it would take a lot of grunt to influence a balloon of that size especially given air density altitude. If it is a civilian craft it's either government or maybe one of the big Chinese universities. Supporting the spy angle is the pretty obvious connectivity (looks t…

> also doesn't really make that much sense... surely a satellite does what this does but better? China has no shortage of high quality spy satellites. I don't think it's obvious what the purpose is.

Don't believe the spy angle that much.. maybe this is not about what its purpose is right now, but what it might quickly need to be at some point.. imagine nations start shooting their satellites, orbit becomes unhabitable, and you still want to go spying.. or just replace your satellite based comms network!

Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri

#58

Post by mmaunder »

jpgvm wrote: post #30

Pretty interesting platform. Looks to have around 16x300W solar panels, so roughly 4.8KW. A lot but no unreasonable given it has 4 electric turbines and it would take a lot of grunt to influence a balloon of that size especially given air density altitude. If it is a civilian craft it's either government or maybe one of the big Chinese universities. Supporting the spy angle is the pretty obvious connectivity (looks t…

For RF SIGINT anything the ionosphere absorbs, scatters or reflects isn’t observable by satellites but may be from this balloon.

Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri

#59

Post by Alupis »

jpgvm wrote: post #30

Pretty interesting platform. Looks to have around 16x300W solar panels, so roughly 4.8KW. A lot but no unreasonable given it has 4 electric turbines and it would take a lot of grunt to influence a balloon of that size especially given air density altitude. If it is a civilian craft it's either government or maybe one of the big Chinese universities. Supporting the spy angle is the pretty obvious connectivity (looks t…

If I recall details of this story as it was breaking - there was an emphasis that the US tried repeatedly to communicate with counterparts in China to discern the nature of the balloon and cool the situation. From memory, the Chinese side refused to engage on any level... which ultimately led to the balloon being shot down.

The Chinese are advanced - there's no chance they couldn't/didn't monitor a balloon of this size launching into their airspace. There's no chance they do not know the true origin and owner of the balloon.

If it were civilian/private and/or university - this would have been easy to explain and prove. The balloon may have still ultimately been downed (it was violating airspace regardless of who owns it) - but the situation would have gone rather differently.

Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri

#60

Post by walrus01 »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #32
cgb223 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the only picture of the balloon fully intact that exists The reason we sent a U2 Spy plane of all things after it is because it’s about the only plane we have still in service that can fly all the way up to 60,000 ft where the balloon was at the time

It's an interesting plane to use when considering the USSR shot down a U-2 in 1960. This history even rhymes: the US initially claimed the U-2 was a weather device like China did with this balloon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident If the Chinese say they can fly their balloons, can we fly our planes at the same altitude?

The history of the U-2 is actually pretty wild, they flew out of Peshawar Pakistan with full cooperation of the Pakistani military for a long time.

Later on, the famous Chuck Yeager was the US military representative in Pakistan.

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