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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

#581
post #441
post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So when the alien invaders arrive with the FTL ships and release their conquering armies...our automatic machine guns and missiles and tanks and bazookas and such totally outmatch the aliens troops who have flintlock rifles and black powder. That doesn't even make sense. Why would having simple gravity manipulation stop progress on the development of other technologies, particularly weapons? Especially if, as it see…

“ That doesn't even make sense. Why would having simple gravity manipulation stop progress on the development of other technologies, particularly weapons?” It’s kinda like asking - why have some of the world’s brightest minds spent the past 20 years trying to get people to watch more ads? What else might they have achieved or discovered instead?

But any dumbass can observe that you can control gravity, that gravity can be used to launch projectiles as weapons?

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

#582
post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So when the alien invaders arrive with the FTL ships and release their conquering armies...our automatic machine guns and missiles and tanks and bazookas and such totally outmatch the aliens troops who have flintlock rifles and black powder. That doesn't even make sense. Why would having simple gravity manipulation stop progress on the development of other technologies, particularly weapons? Especially if, as it see…

It stopped progress on other technologies because there was no need to develop them. They spent all their time expanding and attacking. I assumed that aliens didn’t develop science or industrialization. The story didn’t go into how they improved FTL or how was distraction.

So why don’t they send kamikaze ftl ships? Or rocks?

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

#583
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't tell people the truth about something like this, they will cheerfully make something up and accept it as truth. That's not a "necessary function of any civilization," that's dereliction of duty to the people who elected the leaders.

People do that when you do tell them the truth .

Be that as it may, I don't see how I can be expected to make good decisions as a voter in a democracy without good information.

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

#584

An unnamed congressional aide claims the object was shaped 'like an octagon.' Sounds like BS, but you'd like to think the Wall Street Journal has some capacity to to identify and filter quality sources. https://www.wsj.com/articles/latest-flying-objects-shot-down...

Why bother with quality journalism and concrete sources when the average American can’t read a book at the 8th grade level?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/11/...

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

#585
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have forgotten 20 years ago the US intercepted Iraqi aluminium tubes. They are fully capable of detecting what ever they want to imagine. And these days American imagination is purely restricted to what collects Likes and upvotes.

What do you mean by this?

Probably the fake WMDs motivating the Iraq war.

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

#586

So my thoughts: 1. Are we just seeing more of these things now, due to the US broadening the scope of their radar filtering, and there were always this number of things floating around and now they're just more aware of them? 2. Has something changed in the upper atmosphere/jet stream that's catching balloons that would have previously blown elsewhere, and are now going over the US by accident? 3. Is some really big…

You overlooked an obvious pink elephant; that the “security” state is yanking our chains as a distraction once again, as they so often do so effectively. It could be for a couple different reasons and/or a combination of them, but included in those are probably things like distraction from the lies, failure, and collapse in Ukraine or even the “OMG, it’s UFOs” now is to prevent that huge toxic chemical catastrophe in…

It's not 'overlooking', it's 'omitting' as this line of thought has been brought up numerous times within this thread, and honestly I don't think that it's the case in this instance.

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

#587
post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No I’m saying we seemed to live in a world where this was tolerated without incident literally until this week.

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

#589
post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm getting superfluous search results because of recent news, but yes, this was a decent news story many years ago. The US basically said "fair enough."

Give at least one source, I've never heard of anything like it.

I thought I was remembering a single specific event, but maybe not. Plenty of sources none the less.

https://www.independent.co.uk/space/russia-china-attack-us-s...

This one might have been the one I misremembered, but it doesn't seem like quite the right one: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

I think more likely I just upgraded "jammed" to destroyed - its not like I was imagining an explosion, just overwhelming its optical sensors. Problem is I remember some diplomatic back and forth, too.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/china-uses-laser-to-jam-us-sate...

Unrelated, but it looks like can also take out satellites with just regular missiles.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/science/200...

So maybe I was misremembering, but I really wouldn't be surprised if a sattelite was put out of comission before, but was just not disclosed or admitted to.

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

#590
post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sounds slow and illegal, whereas orbital collection is basically maintenance free and basically legal

As long as you are in airspace and not in space (and those balloons weren't), it's not legal to violate airspace and wiretap signals without permission. So U-Haul wouldn't be much different. And the balloon was very slow as well, at least a truck you can drive and park exactly where you need it.

I think you misread my comment.
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