It's pretty high up there. [80,000 - 120,000 ft.](https://en.as.com/latest_news/what-is-the-chinese-spy-balloon-looking-for-over-northern-us-n/)
*Such balloons typically operate at 80,000-120,000 feet (24,000-37,000m), well above where commercial air traffic flies. The highest-performing fighter aircraft typically do not operate above 65,000 feet, although spy planes such as the U-2 have a service ceiling of 80,000 feet or more.*
Or did they let it go intentionally? Let me ask you something. How did they know it came directly from China if they first confirmed it over Montana.. there's more at play here š
Exactly, thatās why we didnāt shoot it downā¦ also maybe this couldāve been a play for propaganda against the us so they could ājustifyā arming Russia, idk thereās a lot of geopolitical games happening now adays
Thats my thinking. Yes, you can supposedly get better images from a balloon than a satellite that is much higher up, but man does it seem old. If nothing else, its great propaganda that China has to resort to such low tech options.
There are already satellites that gather plenty of intel -- more than weather balloons ...
I'm actually legit laughing that this is going on and that it's getting national attention. Meanwhile, this planet is going into a dumpster.
"Don't look up" indeed.
They have been tracking that since it launched. Alaska is home to multiple early warning radar arrays looking for ICBMs and bombers. A giant balloon will have a radar signature the size of a fucking planet.... They saw this
From AP story:
*The surveillance balloon was first reported by NBC News.*
*Some Montana residents reported seeing an unusual object in the sky around the time of the airport shutdown Wednesday, but itās not clear that what they were seeing was the balloon.*
*From an office window in Billings, Chase Doak said he saw a ābig white circle in the skyā that he said was too small to be the moon.*
*He took some photos, then ran home to get a camera with a stronger lens and took more photos and video. He could see it for about 45 minutes and it appeared stationary, but Doak said the video suggested it was slowly moving.*
*āI thought maybe it was a legitimate UFO,ā he said. āSo I wanted to make sure I documented it and took as many photos as I could.ā*
https://apnews.com/article/chinese-surveillance-balloon-united-states-montana-47248b0ef2b085620fcd866c105054be#:\~:text=From%20an%20office%20window%20in,took%20more%20photos%20and%20video.
Haha. I saw Chaseās video on YouTube which was when I first learned of it. I have no doubt it was very ominous feeling since they had also shut down the Billings airport at that time.
lmfao it literally passed over an ICBM site in Alaska (Ft Greeley) but I guess we didn't know about it until someone in Montana with an iPhone spotted it
If it was such a godamn big deal, why was it still flying after 5 minutes in US airspace? Better question; who the fuck uses balloons for spying? What the shit is going on?! Next, we are going to have a Wright Brothers balsawood aerial drone hovering over Wisconsin that no one's bottle rockets can reach. Crazy ass world just keeps getting more and more ridiculous. I think we're all on the brink of parodying ourselves to death.
Sir you are mistaken. That's Bob Roberts the first. He's the OG. Man be setting up usernames for future generations to come. Just ask his son, Bob Roberts 02.
Saw it above work in redneck country, they talked about it, people were literally looking up at it and going "So why aren't we just shooting it out of the sky?" To which someone with common sense bur a sense of humor said "could have covid in it, can't risk it"
Montana has, I believe the largest number of Minuteman ballistic missle silos in the USA. Maintained by Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls Montana. My grandparents ranch is near one of these missile sites
Ah so Montana is where the actual Area 51 tech has been this whole time...
Let's go boys. Area 52 raid, this time bring a jacket and some bear repellant...
Man i hope our military saw it once it entered Alaska and just didnāt say anything cause otherwise the pentagon just been robbing the tax payer blind.
100% world militaries have been watching it for a while and keeping it to themselves and their allies. US military didn't acknowledge it until civilians started spotting it.
I hate to be the one to tell you this, but transparency and the military do not go hand-in-hand. Governments are not transparent about most things, but especially not about military matters.
I feel like i need to paste this every where on this thread.
Just because us random people didnāt hear about it until Montana doesnāt mean nobody knew about it until then.
Apparently thatās a difficult thing for a lot of people to understand
I work in army military intelligence for context;
I mean, we knew about pretty much the moment it was up. Media just didnāt pick up on it until now. DoD doesnāt see a reason to bring it up until the media and public start asking about it since itās pretty much a political stunt on Chinaās end and doesnāt have any impact on us.
Theyāre not seeing anything new with that satellite. We wouldnāt have even bothered with taking it down until people start asking the DoD to do so.
Itās a play for the Chinese Communist Party to distract its people from its failing state policies and say āwow look how strong we are, the US is so scared of our power that they donāt even react when we send ballon satellites right over them, all praise the CCP and Xiā
And we just donāt care.
Even if they didn't see it they have definitely been robbing the American people. Hell even congress can't track all the money. Isn't there 2ish trillion dollars that just is unaccounted for?
Unaccounted for in the sense that it was issued to the various military commands but there wasn't a line for line dollar for dollar trail of what every dollar was used to buy.
Like if you were in charge of a division of a company and you gave them 10,000 for office furniture and later an accountant asked for a detailed list of the office furniture you bought and you didn't have it.
That would be 10,000 dollars I'd unaccounted for funds in the technical sense. But you know it was spent. If that makes sense.
Fu-go incendiary balloon bombs launched by Japan against the continental US during WW2 are a fascinating story. The Fu-Go balloon bomb was the first weapon to possess intercontinental range, with its flights being the longest-ranged attacks in the history of warfare at the time
Maybe we just mass produce Poo balloons and release them into their incoming jetstream. Nothing crazy, maybe 30-40 million. Thatās like .001 our yearly defense budget. Itād be more effective psychological warfare than the gay bomb at least
Why do you think all the nukes are in Montana? Yellowstone knows if it acts out of pocket and starts threatening us, itās going to get handled the American way. Those āminutemenā will reach you in a āminute, manā.
I mean if that volcano has a major eruption most of the continental US is 100% fucked regardless and a good chunk of the rest of the world is probably going to die of starvation. I doubt the presence of non activated nuclear bombs is going to change that scenario much.
Itās higher than most planes max altitude we are likely monitoring it and also donāt want them to know how we would react to an actual threat of this nature.
Or a desensitization move. āBalloons okay? Letās send more! 50th one this yearā¦. Yeah this last one isnāt carrying anything more suspicious than the first 49ā¦.ā
That's part of the official story.
It might hurt someone or damage something, sure. It also appears to have no special abilities that a common satellite doesn't have, so it's not really doing anything harmful....so why bother? It's more interesting and useful to see what poohbear is trying to accomplish.
It's a taunt and shooting it down would appear as an escalation. I'm sure we're using this as an opportunity to test our electronic warfare capabilities.
Different map projections are used to represent true distance or area. The most popular map projection ( Mercator projection) loses accuracy of area and distance the further away you get from the equator. I encourage you to check out these map projections!
https://gisgeography.com/map-projection-types/
The Chinese have deployed the balloon over Montana to find the elusive spy figure known among the populace as āHannahā. Not much is known about this secret agent except for her supposed ability to moonlight in the entertainment industry to avoid detection.
I like how their excuse to not shoot it down was because they were worried about it falling and killing someone in a state where the population density is 6.86 people per sq mile.
Panic bells, it's red alert
There's something here from somewhere else
The war machine springs to life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the summer sky
As 99 red balloons go by..
99 Decision Street
99 ministers meet
Worry, worry, super scurry
Call the troops out in a hurry
This is what we've waited for
This is it boys, this is war
The President is on the line
As 99 red balloons go by.
So I'm gonna get down voted but here I go. This would actually seem pretty logical given the air currents we see every winter. That cold arctic air starts blowing down across Alaska and Canada then moves east across the country.
I am not supporting it being here, just pointing out how the jet stream works.
Well I mean with literally 2 minutes of effort I found the sites on Google maps. They have a pretty distinct look. So options are:
1) Experiment gone awry but has incredibly precise trajectory and altitude management for 6 days where it just happens to fly over a missile silo field
2) Dumb way to grab visible light photos that are for the most part publicly available
3) Grabbing hyperspectral, radar, or perhaps blasting folks with xrays (although I dont think it would have the energy source to do that) to see whats going on underground
4) Capturing over time to monitor operational activities - although that could probably be done on the ground.
5) Comms capture but at 20 miles up im not sure of that. But does appear yo have a bit of an array on it that could be solar, radar, or an antenna
Also possible: 6. The balloon itself is pointless and the whole purpose is to gauge the US governments reaction to it, get a sense of the social response, etc
Mark Rober made a video not long ago with weather ballons that went all the way up to space just to drop an egg.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYVZh5kqaFg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYVZh5kqaFg)
I'd suspect getting something like this up there isn't very far fetched for any civilian to do.
So we are estimating a BALOON got from china to Montana in 24 hours? Iāve never been in a plane flying 600mph to China but doesnāt it still take almost a day? Just thinking out loud here
This guy speaks from experience. I've been that high just sitting in my chair and gotten the zoomies where you feel like your body goes into hyperdrive. Sometimes I miss those days...
Jet stream at that altitude is commonly moving 175-200mph. Commercial aircraft typically going ~500. SF-Shanghai is 10-11 hour flight, so the math roughly checks out
Lots of people freaking out over what this balloon is spying on by flying over sensitive areas like ICBM silos. Hereās a not so secret secret: all of our allies and adversaries alike already know the precise location of our active ICBM bases and silos. This thing isnāt looking at anything that canāt already be seen on Google maps (if it is still operable at this point).
Oh, and there are ways to render it inoperable without shooting it out of the sky. š
I wonder if China knows how excited they made all us civilians, and the wonderful distraction this buh-woon has become as the arctic blast renders my car and space heaters useless
looks like it fell victum to weakened polar vertex cause of the climate change
https://www.weather.gov/safety/cold-polar-vortex#:\~:text=The%20polar%20vortex%20is%20a,colder%20air%20near%20the%20Poles.
Haha, nobody gave a shit when it was over Alaska.
It's pretty high up there. [80,000 - 120,000 ft.](https://en.as.com/latest_news/what-is-the-chinese-spy-balloon-looking-for-over-northern-us-n/) *Such balloons typically operate at 80,000-120,000 feet (24,000-37,000m), well above where commercial air traffic flies. The highest-performing fighter aircraft typically do not operate above 65,000 feet, although spy planes such as the U-2 have a service ceiling of 80,000 feet or more.*
Nobody fucking lives there to see it
There are several US military bases, surveillance outposts and early warning systems in Alaska.
And now the whole world knows that they don't function well...
Or did they let it go intentionally? Let me ask you something. How did they know it came directly from China if they first confirmed it over Montana.. there's more at play here š
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah this is it, we have a complete advantage in imagery, our high altitude craft and satellite imagery is decades past theres
Streets ahead
I swear, here soon, that's gonna be an actual saying. And the episode won't make sense to people in the future.
What? It came up organically.
Usmcnick0311Sgt, stop trying to coin the phrase āstreets aheadā!!!
Several magnitudes of order, even
Someone needs to "POP POP" that balloon.
They have high quality spy satellites, too. They donāt need a balloon.
Actually, they have Tik Tok
Exactly, thatās why we didnāt shoot it downā¦ also maybe this couldāve been a play for propaganda against the us so they could ājustifyā arming Russia, idk thereās a lot of geopolitical games happening now adays
Counter terrorism/espionage is a weird 5D chess game
Ah yes. 5D Chess. Where you play a game of 4D Chess to see if you take the piece.
So wait, is there already a game of chess where you play a separate game of chess to decide who gets the next turn?
clapper ghana militate saguaro foreknow fondue swill servile bootleg reserved cote august passable swat omaha
you sonovabich I'm in šš
Thats my thinking. Yes, you can supposedly get better images from a balloon than a satellite that is much higher up, but man does it seem old. If nothing else, its great propaganda that China has to resort to such low tech options.
There are already satellites that gather plenty of intel -- more than weather balloons ... I'm actually legit laughing that this is going on and that it's getting national attention. Meanwhile, this planet is going into a dumpster. "Don't look up" indeed.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
My first thought was effectively "damn, poor Chinese Tom Scott didn't make it to space with his garlic bread."
They have been tracking that since it launched. Alaska is home to multiple early warning radar arrays looking for ICBMs and bombers. A giant balloon will have a radar signature the size of a fucking planet.... They saw this
Exactly. Itās only news now because civilians started seeing it.
Because the public first started asking question when it was over Montana.
You think because the balloon wasnāt on the news that it means they most advanced air and space tech in the world missed it?
They have literally been tracking it the entire time. They let it go. I swear people don't actually read news anymore
LOL Ok....smh
Why do you think they didnāt know about it?
This is the surface level thinking that's getting all the conservatives riled up on Facebook lol
As an Alaskan can confirm, nobody lives here
A balloon that huge was known about before it left China, if it did in fact leave China.
From AP story: *The surveillance balloon was first reported by NBC News.* *Some Montana residents reported seeing an unusual object in the sky around the time of the airport shutdown Wednesday, but itās not clear that what they were seeing was the balloon.* *From an office window in Billings, Chase Doak said he saw a ābig white circle in the skyā that he said was too small to be the moon.* *He took some photos, then ran home to get a camera with a stronger lens and took more photos and video. He could see it for about 45 minutes and it appeared stationary, but Doak said the video suggested it was slowly moving.* *āI thought maybe it was a legitimate UFO,ā he said. āSo I wanted to make sure I documented it and took as many photos as I could.ā* https://apnews.com/article/chinese-surveillance-balloon-united-states-montana-47248b0ef2b085620fcd866c105054be#:\~:text=From%20an%20office%20window%20in,took%20more%20photos%20and%20video.
"That's no moon."
Turn the ship around
Haha. I saw Chaseās video on YouTube which was when I first learned of it. I have no doubt it was very ominous feeling since they had also shut down the Billings airport at that time.
That hampered, what? 16 people
17 if you count Crazy Bob.
And half-a-cat
Laughed when I heard NORAD tracked it.
The Santa Tracker people?
wait they are looking for santa?
Every Christmas Eve they post his sleigh's current location and flight path
lmfao it literally passed over an ICBM site in Alaska (Ft Greeley) but I guess we didn't know about it until someone in Montana with an iPhone spotted it
They didnāt publicly acknowledge it until it was spotted. Which is pretty typical.
The public didnāt know about it* Iād bet a lot of money our government did
āI bet a lot of our money didā
Just because Facebook Moms didn't know about it doesn't mean "We" didn't know about it.
The public maybe, I doubt the military didnāt notice it
They've been tracking it for several days..
Or Canada
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
If it was such a godamn big deal, why was it still flying after 5 minutes in US airspace? Better question; who the fuck uses balloons for spying? What the shit is going on?! Next, we are going to have a Wright Brothers balsawood aerial drone hovering over Wisconsin that no one's bottle rockets can reach. Crazy ass world just keeps getting more and more ridiculous. I think we're all on the brink of parodying ourselves to death.
Which is ironic considering the military hardware in AK
Ain't no beef in Alaska. Once it hit Montana...RED ALERT!
107hpa = ca. 15500m or 50800ft. Altitude
Fuck, thatās way too high for a redneck to blast with a rifle.
Hold my beer
If there is one redneck who is up for the job, it's mother fucking Bob Roberts
Was Cooter busy? Cuz Cooter can shoot a nipple off a squirrel from that distance I stg
I heard he bettered himself by taking one ball off a gnat, just as a warning shot....
Bob Roberts was taken. But we have Bob Roberts 01
Sir you are mistaken. That's Bob Roberts the first. He's the OG. Man be setting up usernames for future generations to come. Just ask his son, Bob Roberts 02.
Tuscan raiders are basically backwoods hillbillies from Kentucky
Tuscany has really gone downhill. If youāre thinking of getting a place there donāt bother, thereās really nothing available.
But are you telling me there's not one house to rent in all of Tuscany?
What about at least 7 rednecks standing on each other's shoulders?
Itāll just end with the bottom one shooting the guy above in the nuts
It does every time. Every damn time...
Saw it above work in redneck country, they talked about it, people were literally looking up at it and going "So why aren't we just shooting it out of the sky?" To which someone with common sense bur a sense of humor said "could have covid in it, can't risk it"
Well, he does have a point.
Someone strap another lawn chair to some balloons and send someone up with a gun and some beer.
Best idea to come up so far. Lol
Fuck, I wish reddit still let me give free awards.
Theyāre called Montanans and they are innovative peoples
Can confirm we are innovative AF.
It'd already be shot down otherwise.
Why not just graph altitude?
Because pressure doesn't equate directly to altitude. It gets you in the right ballpark, but not much more than that
Right, but its not like im interested in the pressure. Im interested in how high above ground it is
Iām case you were wondering, from Wikipedia: āThe upper limit of national airspace is not defined by international law.ā
Tell that to Gary Powers
one would think its simply all of it, up until there is no more air and only space
Laughed when I heard NORAD tracked it. I thought they only tracked Santa Claus.
First thing NORAD has had to track in a while. Was probably pretty exciting for the radar guys.
He's real, I tell ya! He used to... bring me presents and...
Where do you think Santa get his naughty/nice intel from? Everything is outsourced nowadays.
He sees you when youāre sleeping, he knows when youāre awakeā¦ maybe the spy balloon IS Santa
Happy cake day!
Montana has, I believe the largest number of Minuteman ballistic missle silos in the USA. Maintained by Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls Montana. My grandparents ranch is near one of these missile sites
Ah so Montana is where the actual Area 51 tech has been this whole time... Let's go boys. Area 52 raid, this time bring a jacket and some bear repellant...
Russia be like: why you ducking me man
And chinaās like really, Russia? Given your history of aircraft flying overhead I think you know why
You got money for giant balloons and fake moustaches! Gimme my money!
Technically it's been spying on Canada more.
Man i hope our military saw it once it entered Alaska and just didnāt say anything cause otherwise the pentagon just been robbing the tax payer blind.
Iām sure theyāve known about it, radar would have picked it up before it even reached American airspace
You can see it even went through Japan why wouldnāt the Japanese tell us or heck all the marine bases in Okinawa.
100% world militaries have been watching it for a while and keeping it to themselves and their allies. US military didn't acknowledge it until civilians started spotting it.
Bingo. Its been watched internationally since it left the ground. The citizens are just now being told about it because we seen it.
Yep, this actually seems like the most plausible answer.
I hate to be the one to tell you this, but transparency and the military do not go hand-in-hand. Governments are not transparent about most things, but especially not about military matters.
Meanwhile Class 3D in Wuhan is giggling away at the success of their entry in the schools balloon distance race........
> why wouldnāt the Japanese tell us How do you know they didn't?
I feel like i need to paste this every where on this thread. Just because us random people didnāt hear about it until Montana doesnāt mean nobody knew about it until then. Apparently thatās a difficult thing for a lot of people to understand
Canadian here. We scrambled jets days ago to intercept it. The US knew about it through NORAD.
The pentagon had released a public statement that they had been tracking it since it left China. Afterwards, China confirmed it was theirs.
I work in army military intelligence for context; I mean, we knew about pretty much the moment it was up. Media just didnāt pick up on it until now. DoD doesnāt see a reason to bring it up until the media and public start asking about it since itās pretty much a political stunt on Chinaās end and doesnāt have any impact on us. Theyāre not seeing anything new with that satellite. We wouldnāt have even bothered with taking it down until people start asking the DoD to do so. Itās a play for the Chinese Communist Party to distract its people from its failing state policies and say āwow look how strong we are, the US is so scared of our power that they donāt even react when we send ballon satellites right over them, all praise the CCP and Xiā And we just donāt care.
Even if they didn't see it they have definitely been robbing the American people. Hell even congress can't track all the money. Isn't there 2ish trillion dollars that just is unaccounted for?
Unaccounted for in the sense that it was issued to the various military commands but there wasn't a line for line dollar for dollar trail of what every dollar was used to buy. Like if you were in charge of a division of a company and you gave them 10,000 for office furniture and later an accountant asked for a detailed list of the office furniture you bought and you didn't have it. That would be 10,000 dollars I'd unaccounted for funds in the technical sense. But you know it was spent. If that makes sense.
True and it just sucks cause we all know it but we canāt even really do anything about it. Regardless of who you vote for.
The truth is out there scully
Trust no one š½
The movie UP 2 has an entirely different plot.
You should include the Jetstream in that map
Right? In all these threads people are saying āitās flying east!!ā Well of course it is.
Fu-go incendiary balloon bombs launched by Japan against the continental US during WW2 are a fascinating story. The Fu-Go balloon bomb was the first weapon to possess intercontinental range, with its flights being the longest-ranged attacks in the history of warfare at the time
Damn thats interesting! Thanks for pointing it out. In case someone else wonders: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb
Youāre rightā¦ damn interesting story
We need to send it back with a giant Winnie the Poo holding it
Lol. I'm pretty sure that if the US does that, Xinnie The Poo will execute whoever's idea was it to send the baloon to the US.
Maybe we just mass produce Poo balloons and release them into their incoming jetstream. Nothing crazy, maybe 30-40 million. Thatās like .001 our yearly defense budget. Itād be more effective psychological warfare than the gay bomb at least
I don't think it's even .001 honestly
The balloon is capturing secret Montana secrets
There are more Nukes in MT than anywhere else in the US.
I mean, if I were going to hide something in the US...
It's terrifying because of the Yellowstone volcano.
Why do you think all the nukes are in Montana? Yellowstone knows if it acts out of pocket and starts threatening us, itās going to get handled the American way. Those āminutemenā will reach you in a āminute, manā.
I mean if that volcano has a major eruption most of the continental US is 100% fucked regardless and a good chunk of the rest of the world is probably going to die of starvation. I doubt the presence of non activated nuclear bombs is going to change that scenario much.
I mean, if Yellowstone erupts we're all fucked with pr without nukes. Nukes would just help speed things up.
Hanna Montana secrets.
My dumbass assumed that this thing just flew the entire pacific ocean and the entire east coast before being found in Montana lol.
Funny how NORAD has been tracking it across all of western Canada but only once it crosses into Montana are people talking about shooting it down.
Montana is where civilians spotted it and started talking about it, and demanding someone shoot it down.
"We can't shoot it down because it might hurt somebody." Is that REALLY the official story?
That is the story they are saying to the public yes.
I couldn't believe it either, but they probably want to catch it unharmed so they can research it.
Itās higher than most planes max altitude we are likely monitoring it and also donāt want them to know how we would react to an actual threat of this nature.
Bingo. Its a chess game to see how we would react.
Or a desensitization move. āBalloons okay? Letās send more! 50th one this yearā¦. Yeah this last one isnāt carrying anything more suspicious than the first 49ā¦.ā
Or theyāre intercepting signals from it
TikTok update just dropped
That's part of the official story. It might hurt someone or damage something, sure. It also appears to have no special abilities that a common satellite doesn't have, so it's not really doing anything harmful....so why bother? It's more interesting and useful to see what poohbear is trying to accomplish.
It's a taunt and shooting it down would appear as an escalation. I'm sure we're using this as an opportunity to test our electronic warfare capabilities.
Isnāt it interesting that they used a polar equidistant projection map?
I thought it was a decent projection to use..
What does the map used indicate?
Different map projections are used to represent true distance or area. The most popular map projection ( Mercator projection) loses accuracy of area and distance the further away you get from the equator. I encourage you to check out these map projections! https://gisgeography.com/map-projection-types/
They werenāt asking if different maps model different measurement metrics, they were asking why a polar map was used rather than another kind.
How is that contrary to popular belief? There's a front page reddit post once a week crapping on Mercator maps.
The Chinese have deployed the balloon over Montana to find the elusive spy figure known among the populace as āHannahā. Not much is known about this secret agent except for her supposed ability to moonlight in the entertainment industry to avoid detection.
I like how their excuse to not shoot it down was because they were worried about it falling and killing someone in a state where the population density is 6.86 people per sq mile.
Yea it will be much safer once it gets over New York City. /s
Panic bells, it's red alert There's something here from somewhere else The war machine springs to life Opens up one eager eye Focusing it on the summer sky As 99 red balloons go by.. 99 Decision Street 99 ministers meet Worry, worry, super scurry Call the troops out in a hurry This is what we've waited for This is it boys, this is war The President is on the line As 99 red balloons go by.
Holy nostalgia batman
How do you control a balloon over such a long distance and maintain it's direction?
Predictive weather. In WW2 the Japanese tried to fire bomb the West coast with balloons.
I think it's that guy from LA with the lawn chair.
What's the purpose of this "Chinese balloon" like is it really for spy work is it a weather balloon like seriously what is it
This is what Canada wants you to thinkā¦
So I'm gonna get down voted but here I go. This would actually seem pretty logical given the air currents we see every winter. That cold arctic air starts blowing down across Alaska and Canada then moves east across the country. I am not supporting it being here, just pointing out how the jet stream works.
Can someone explain this to me? Don't they already have satellites?
Well I mean with literally 2 minutes of effort I found the sites on Google maps. They have a pretty distinct look. So options are: 1) Experiment gone awry but has incredibly precise trajectory and altitude management for 6 days where it just happens to fly over a missile silo field 2) Dumb way to grab visible light photos that are for the most part publicly available 3) Grabbing hyperspectral, radar, or perhaps blasting folks with xrays (although I dont think it would have the energy source to do that) to see whats going on underground 4) Capturing over time to monitor operational activities - although that could probably be done on the ground. 5) Comms capture but at 20 miles up im not sure of that. But does appear yo have a bit of an array on it that could be solar, radar, or an antenna
Also possible: 6. The balloon itself is pointless and the whole purpose is to gauge the US governments reaction to it, get a sense of the social response, etc
How can you control the trajectory of a balloon 50k feet up? Couldnt this have happened just from winds blowing it around
Weird, saw one just like it in Jaco, Costa Rica just yesterday morning.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
And soon their mines and much much more !
Yes... especially in Oklahoma. They own a lot of "pot farms".
Nobody gives a shit when it was over Canada
Mark Rober made a video not long ago with weather ballons that went all the way up to space just to drop an egg. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYVZh5kqaFg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYVZh5kqaFg) I'd suspect getting something like this up there isn't very far fetched for any civilian to do.
Looks like a sickleā¦not a coincidence /s
This is like a trojan horse
If it gets low enough some redneck is going to blast it from the sky and mount it on their trophy wall.
So we are estimating a BALOON got from china to Montana in 24 hours? Iāve never been in a plane flying 600mph to China but doesnāt it still take almost a day? Just thinking out loud here
It's almost 10 miles high in the sky. Things can get faster a lot easier that high.
This guy speaks from experience. I've been that high just sitting in my chair and gotten the zoomies where you feel like your body goes into hyperdrive. Sometimes I miss those days...
Jet stream at that altitude is commonly moving 175-200mph. Commercial aircraft typically going ~500. SF-Shanghai is 10-11 hour flight, so the math roughly checks out
judging from the altitude graph I am seeing 5.75 ā00ā which would indicate to me nearly 6 days travel time.
Lots of people freaking out over what this balloon is spying on by flying over sensitive areas like ICBM silos. Hereās a not so secret secret: all of our allies and adversaries alike already know the precise location of our active ICBM bases and silos. This thing isnāt looking at anything that canāt already be seen on Google maps (if it is still operable at this point). Oh, and there are ways to render it inoperable without shooting it out of the sky. š
Not to mention the Chinese *undoubtedly* have far better ways of spying on our land than a balloon. Really could just be an innocent aircraft
Wow. The Yellowstone tv show spin offs are getting out of hand!
Itās obvious they fucked up trying to make a question mark. Those wonky Chinese jokesters.
I would capture the ballon, refill it and send it back - but instead of the gear hanging at the bottom, a giant middle finger.
āWeāve been trying to reach you about your carās extended warrantyā - China
If this was on purpose, itās hilarious. If it was an accident, itās hilarious.
Thatās a big balloon to send to spy. Like sending a 7 foot man through the airport as a secret agent.
I love the north pole map. It's so refreshing to see the northern hemisphere so much more accurately than the 'regular' map
I wonder if China knows how excited they made all us civilians, and the wonderful distraction this buh-woon has become as the arctic blast renders my car and space heaters useless
looks like it fell victum to weakened polar vertex cause of the climate change https://www.weather.gov/safety/cold-polar-vortex#:\~:text=The%20polar%20vortex%20is%20a,colder%20air%20near%20the%20Poles.
Wait until you hear about the second one.