Has anyone seen a better photo of the balloon?
Another, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/U-2_Pilo...
I don't know why but thinking of a balloon of that size scares me. Megalophobia?
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
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
The F-15 can regularly climb over FL600 and, under special conditions, has exceeded 100K above MSL.
In level flight or in a zoom climb? It's one thing to build up speed and pitch up in an ballistic arc, it's another thing to fly level at altitude.
The service ceiling is published as FL650. That’s defined as being able to sustain a 100fpm climb, so the absolute level flight ceiling is somewhat higher than that. Service ceiling figure is not in a zoom climb.
It would easily suffice to engage a balloon at FL600.
Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri
#73Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri
#74Maybe 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.
What sort of attack? Like stealing data? Or something else that you wouldn’t pick up on? Because attack sounds like you are degrading performance or something, in which case we (or someone) would know about it.
Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri
#75Pretty 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…
Supporting the spy angle is the pretty obvious connectivity [...] but it 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.
Balloons aren't "bad satellites" or "poor-man's satellites." Satellites and balloons each have different things that they are good at.
Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri
#76Apologies for the naive questions in advance. Is it not possible to go up there in a hot air balloon to inspect it from a closer distance? Also, what about base jumping onto it? Are there any methods of getting it back to the ground intact?
BASE jumping? Are there structures 60,000 ft tall?
Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri
#77The full twitter thread is worth a read (https://twitter.com/gbrumfiel/status/1628776107301273601). Brings to mind the story in December 2022 about confirming the B-21 hangar location from the night sky in a press photo (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33912401). Not enough of the sky for that here though. Wonder if folks in this space have a more automated process to recognize the landscape rather than "Hella scrolly scrolly on Google Earth"...
Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri
#78Apologies for the naive questions in advance. Is it not possible to go up there in a hot air balloon to inspect it from a closer distance? Also, what about base jumping onto it? Are there any methods of getting it back to the ground intact?
It's theoretically possible to get up there in a manned balloon, but this was up at FL600. Most aircraft can't even go that high. It's not something that's done casually.
Going up to those altitudes is the domain of either the military or someone trying to set a record. It's not a forgiving environment - you basically need a space suit up there. I'm fairly confident that nobody has the equipment for such a mission sitting around ready for use on short notice, especially if you want to stay up there for any length of time before you run out of air.
As for base jumping... uh, gravity points in the wrong direction for that. This is twice as high as Mt. Everest.
Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri
#79Pretty 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…
>4.8kw of panels
>has $100k of solar on it
Tell me you live in CA without telling me you live in CA
Re: U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri
#80Pretty 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…
> The platform alone has ~100k of solar on it
I’m unfamiliar with solar panels in this application, but would each panel really be $6,250? That’s >20x premium over panels used for terrestrial application for use on a platform that would have little dynamic load.