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Balloons?


Dirty Dan Dawkins

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The Chinese are using every spying device that they can use, everything from centuries old technology to ultra modern. IMO, a balloon probably isn't going to provide much more information than satellites can. I'd be much more concerned with the millions of Chinese spy devices already in place in the US...TikTok.

 

It isn't really the idiotic content of the Tik Tok videos...it's the hidden information...the info hidden in the background of every video. Then, of course, there is the overtly recorded video containing images of military bases/aircraft/personnel/vehicles/tactics/etc, utility infrastructure (water, electric, gas, etc) and all kinds of other information that by itself doesn't look like anything worthwhile. Combine the info from millions and millions of videos...you get the picture. It provides a great overview of everything the Chinese would want to know in the event of military conflict.

 

The premise of collateral damage created by the downing of the balloon doesn't hold water. With all of the weapons (lasers, sonic, pulse, etc) at our disposal, there must be some way of downing it without spraying the countryside with ordinance. The only thing to worry about then is the balloon debris itself. Gee, the government doesn't seem to worry about all of the debris from defunct spacecraft. All of that stuff doesn't burn up on re-entry regardless of what they claim.

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7 hours ago, Sedalia Dave said:

The problem with shooting down the balloon is not where will it land, but where will the projectile(s) used to shoot it down will land.

Reports have it at an altitude of around 40,000 ft.  Well within the altitude ceiling of fighter aircraft. If you use the 20mm gun those rounds will impact earth tens of miles from where they were fired. 

 

Use a surface to air or air to air missile and you have the same problem. Fragments of the missile will land tens of miles from the impact point. 

 

News reports claim that it is not a hazard to commercial aviation yet a lot of aircraft cruise at or above 40,000 ft. A quick check shows no aircraft above 50,000 ft. Normally balloons of this type are above 80,000 feet and I suspect that if this one was above 60K it would have never made the news. My guess is that it got the attention of somebody when it made its way onto a flight briefing. 

 

 

 We sent those to Ukraine

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1 hour ago, Utah Bob #35998 said:

But then whatever equipment the baloon is carrying plummets to terra firma and plonks a citizen on the head, sparking another spate of personal injury lawyers commercials.

I get that.

We conquered the west, defeated Santa Ana liberating Texas, ended slavery, built the Hoover Dam under time and under budget, defeated Nazis and imperial Japan, and we’re debating over our ability to take out a balloon?

Our government worries about money, liability and lawsuits all of a sudden? Their just worried about bad press. They proved they can print more money.

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5 minutes ago, Dirty Dan Dawkins said:

I get that.

We conquered the west, defeated Santa Ana liberating Texas, ended slavery, built the Hoover Dam under time and under budget, defeated Nazis and imperial Japan, and we’re debating over our ability to take out a balloon?

 

 

We are to worried that the Asian Community would be offended by us taking out a Balloon that that might Identify as a Rainbow Unicorn  

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1 minute ago, Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984 said:

the balloon over Montana was tracked as over Alaska, Canada, then Montana.

NBC indicated it was another one, but we all know how much faith we can put in the media these days.

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21 minutes ago, Michigan Slim said:

A ballon near Atlanta being tracked on Flightradar24. Same same?

 

Not the same one. That one was made by Raven Aerostar.  It was launched on Feb 1st a little north of Moriarty NM.

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What's the hold up here??????

 

a) China shares the technology and balloon capabilities with U.S. (if it is indeed innocuous)

b) if it's controllable, they fly it home within 24 hours (or at least out over the ocean), while US jams all outgoing signals

c) China refuses to play and the minute atmospheric currents (or whatever they're called move it over a tract of unpopulated area or the ocean(PEW..PEW..PEW) 

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On 2/2/2023 at 10:24 PM, Forty Rod SASS 3935 said:

Take the shot.

I would have used a Buntline. But heck, his eyesight is probably better than mine.

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2 minutes ago, Capt. R. Hugh Kidnme said:

I would have used a Buntline. But heck, his eyesight is probably better than mine.

It's over 35.000 feet in the air!! Buntline really??:lol:

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I don't want to rain on anyones parade here, but have you considered Terminal Velocity ?

Terminal velocity is the maximum velocity attainable by an object as it falls through a fluid. It occurs when the sum of the drag force and the buoyancy is equal to the downward force of gravity acting on the object. Since the net force on the object is zero, the object has zero acceleration. I can't see where the falling object, given drag lines ,would be a problem..One hole would release the gas, allowing the ballon to fall slower as gas escapes its balloon container.
V_t=\sqrt\frac{2mg}{\rho A C_d}
V_t =  terminal velocity
m =  mass of the falling object
g =  acceleration due to gravity
\rho =  density of the fluid through which the object is falling
A =  projected area of the object
C_d = 

drag coefficient       

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3 hours ago, Rye Miles #13621 said:

It's over 35.000 feet in the air!! Buntline really??:lol:

Okay, maybe a Sharps big .50.:D

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This 

5 hours ago, Capt. R. Hugh Kidnme said:

What's the hold up here??????

 

a) China shares the technology and balloon capabilities with U.S. (if it is indeed innocuous)

b) if it's controllable, they fly it home within 24 hours (or at least out over the ocean), while US jams all outgoing signals

c) China refuses to play and the minute atmospheric currents (or whatever they're called move it over a tract of unpopulated area or the ocean(PEW..PEW..PEW) 

 

We should just send up a couple of toll booth balloons. Charge...I dunno...10 cents for passage. I can see the Chinese now...

 

 

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While everyone and his duck are presuming that it is a sign of our indecisiveness and weakness, in not bring this thing down, I wonder if there might be another reason why it has been allowed to cross the U.S. mainland and our military installations.... And that might so we can determine what kind of data is being transmitted to China and how (by satellite relay) they are controlling it. Might we have been jamming their signals or screwing up the data being transmitted?  

ALERT! The balloon is now coming down!  Fox News has been showing it continuously, and I saw no sign of fighter aircraft or missiles.  Could we have used a directed energy weapon to puncture the balloon?  The payload will obviously sink. But where will it sink and land on the ocean floor? If it sinks over the continental shelf, no problem.  If it sinks to deeper parts of the ocean, it shouldn't be too much harder to recover with remote deep submergence vehicles.

 

As far as this balloon having photographed the location of our ICBM Minuteman III bases is concerned, the location of the silos and Launch Control Facilities/aka Missile Alert Faclities is concerned, their locations have been known to everybody from the ranchers, on whose fields they were built, the Russians, and whoever, since the 1960's. When we had maintenance teams on a site, we would periodically "flip a salute" skyward, just in case a Soviet satellite happened to be passing over! :P

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7 hours ago, Capt. R. Hugh Kidnme said:

What's the hold up here??????

 

a) China shares the technology and balloon capabilities with U.S. (if it is indeed innocuous)

b) if it's controllable, they fly it home within 24 hours (or at least out over the ocean), while US jams all outgoing signals

c) China refuses to play and the minute atmospheric currents (or whatever they're called move it over a tract of unpopulated area or the ocean(PEW..PEW..PEW) 

Option c Hooray! Good job Joe and all US military.

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54 minutes ago, Trailrider #896 said:

While everyone and his duck are presuming that it is a sign of our indecisiveness and weakness, in not bring this thing down, I wonder if there might be another reason why it has been allowed to cross the U.S. mainland and our military installations.... And that might so we can determine what kind of data is being transmitted to China and how (by satellite relay) they are controlling it. Might we have been jamming their signals or screwing up the data being transmitted?  

ALERT! The balloon is now coming down!  Fox News has been showing it continuously, and I saw no sign of fighter aircraft or missiles.  Could we have used a directed energy weapon to puncture the balloon?  The payload will obviously sink. But where will it sink and land on the ocean floor? If it sinks over the continental shelf, no problem.  If it sinks to deeper parts of the ocean, it shouldn't be too much harder to recover with remote deep submergence vehicles.

 

As far as this balloon having photographed the location of our ICBM Minuteman III bases is concerned, the location of the silos and Launch Control Facilities/aka Missile Alert Faclities is concerned, their locations have been known to everybody from the ranchers, on whose fields they were built, the Russians, and whoever, since the 1960's. When we had maintenance teams on a site, we would periodically "flip a salute" skyward, just in case a Soviet satellite happened to be passing over! :P

Looks like it was an F-22 out of Langley AFB. While I am no fan of Sleepy, I think the delay was deliberate! It would take at least 900 warheads to attempt to knock out Malmstrom alone. (2 to a Launch Facility + a couple for each MAF (capsule), and we wouldn't be sitting on our hands. And if you target two warheads to a single target, there is a risk of "fratricider" by one warhead on the other, if detonated too close to the other.  Besides, there are the other two legs of the Triad, bombers and "boomer" subs.  Hopefully, we can recover the instrument package intact enough to get some good intel.:ph34r:

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It's all an experiment. Test the time to recognize the threat and to react to it. The threat wasn't even recognized until it had flown over a 1/3 of the country and wasn't reacted to until it had passed over the ENTIRE country. 

 

During WWII, Both the Allies and the Axis experimented with using balloons to deliver a different type of "bomb" on their enemy...invasive and crop destroying insects. They also experimented with bubonic plaque bearing fleas. The Germans actually succeeded in the destruction of potato crops...their own. Seems they tried it out on their own crops but couldn't find any evidence that the insects dropped had any affect...until the next years growing season when many potato crops were failing due to an infestation of the larvae of the very insect dropped the previous year.

 

The Chinese know that they cannot overwhelm the US on it's own ground in one fell swoop. They don't care about starving another country's people, look at what they have done to their own people over time.

 

I'm not saying that this is what the Chinese have in mind but they flew (what I consider) a threat to our national security all the way across the US, from coast to coast. Sounds like a pretty successful experiment to me.

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maybe we sent our own balloon up to encounter ? dueling balloons ? if our government doesnt care why should we be concerned ? after all inflation is down for the 6th month in a row .........oh yes if you leave things out of the equation you can make it seem however you want it to seem , huh ? imagine that 

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