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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

#101

Post by paulmd »

Infinity315 wrote: post #87
harles wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Satellites are highly predictable and things can be tucked neatly away when they’re known to be overhead. And the same can't be said for a balloon which flies wherever the wind takes it? Does China think NORAD is a joke or that we're incapable of modelling weather patterns?

> And the same can't be said for a balloon which flies wherever the wind takes it?

It doesn't fly wherever the wind takes it. It is designed to move vertically between air layers to whichever layer has wind blowing in the direction it wants to go, and it has turbines to steer itself a little bit on top of that, that's why it's got almost 15kw of solar power onboard. You can literally maneuver the thing in a box-shaped pattern between those air currents and make it hold position over a target area, or at least you can try. Google was doing this a decade ago and it works pretty well.

Actual Project Loon flight paths: https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/955500294921736192

> Much like hot air balloon pilots would do to get from place-to-place, these unmanned balloons ride global wind currents like rivers, climbing, and sinking to find the right flow to get to a destination. Google’s computers take weather data from NOAA and determine which current they need to hitch a ride on to reach their destinations. The balloons can only go up or down.

https://www.wdbj7.com/2020/07/07/googles-project-loon-high-a...

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

#102

Post by testTED »

jvanderbot wrote: post #48
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…

Cell phone snooping they say, but that seems easier from the ground.

How?

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

#103

Post by btilly »

evan_ wrote: post #27

Was this "selfie" literally taken handheld with a cell phone by the person in the shot? Surely they wouldn't bring personal phones into the cockpit- and wouldn't they be wearing gloves anyway?

The plane was at 70,000 feet, the balloon at 60,000. So that's about 2 miles below. My cellphone does not take photos that good from 2 miles away, how about yours? So no, not a cellphone.

The U2 plane travels at about 500 mph and can't change that. (Look up "coffin corner" for why.) So even once you carefully place it to cast the shadow just right from 2 miles away, you have less than 0.2 seconds to get the photo with the plane's shadow placed on the balloon.

That's a very, very impressive photo!

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

#104

Post by mfkp »

jpgvm wrote: post #98
mfkp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100k of solar? 360w panels are sub-$300 at full retail prices. So that's under $5k of panels (unless you're including batteries in the calculation, but even then, it's maybe $10k).

That is house solar panels. For a craft like this you are using aerospace materials. If you were building it in your backyard yeah, you could probably do it cheap but my experience with commercial grade aerospace components makes me think you are going to be in for sticker shock.

I highly doubt they're using aerospace-grade solar panels. If they were installing them on a permanent satellite, sure, but this is on a presumably disposable balloon. Even accounting for higher solar radiation and degradation of the panels, the lifespan of regular terrestrial panels should be plenty sufficient.

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

#105

Post by bpodgursky »

atomicnumber3 wrote: post #90
amscanne wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know the whole “land shouldn’t vote” thing is used to criticize the electoral college, but within the state what exactly are you referring to? I can’t think of any mechanism that wouldn’t be a simple tyranny of the majority but it sounds like you’re implying something more sinister.

I mainly mean that Missouri is a super Red state despite the majority of the population being liberal. They just all live in the 3-4 counties that comprise the St. Louis and Kansas City areas, and Republicans in power use all the usual tricks to disenfranchise more liberal voters. Compared to, say, Seattle/WA, voting in Missouri is clearly designed to make it hard for "certain types" of people to have a say in their…

Missouri was 57/41 Trump over Biden in the 2020 election. You can't gerrymander your way into a statewide election gap...

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

#106

Post by prpl »

onepointsixC wrote: post #69
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…

>Supporting the spy angle is the pretty obvious connectivity (looks to be Ku-band satellite or similar) 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. Two things. It will be significantly better at ELINT, soaking up signals over which it floats. Second, at 60,000 feet it is at least an order of magnitude close…

That’s true but it assumes it can get within ~40 miles as the crow flies of an interesting target, even then you are going through a LOT more dense atmosphere for your photos.

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

#107

Post by iudqnolq »

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…

You're off by orders of magnitude what "reasonably pricey" on means in this context.

For reference, the US plans to spend about 7 million per day over the next five years to build new satellite systems.

https://spacenews.com/dod-satcom-big-money-for-military-sate...

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

#109

Post by sneak »

beebmam wrote: post #13
jxf wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That setup is wild. It's pretty ridiculous to claim this was a civilian balloon.

Even if it can attributed to a "civilian" company, China is not a free country under Xi Jin Ping's rule. The CCP has many mechanisms to control the Chinese private sector as an arm of the state. Xi Jin Ping exercises more control over Chinese society than Stalin could have dreamed of in the Soviet Union, with the various coercive systems put into place in the last few decades.

It works much the same in the US, both related to secret control of major industry (see FAA702 etc) and "various coercive systems" enabled by the IC's surveillance and offensive tools.

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

#110

Post by mardifoufs »

lightedman wrote: post #51
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.

They also don't have access to spy satellite tech though.
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