Balloon Question.

[Disaffected]

If the Chinese balloon is a "spy" balloon, why is it coloured white? One would think black or dark blue would be much more likely to evade visual detection.

[LakeArenal]

1. Why hasn't our government told us what exactly it is?

Why haven’t we seen footage from our spy satellites that should be able to be track from China onward.

Did we hear of any salvage from the balloon?

There’s a lot we don’t know.

[Disaffected]

6. They have had the wreckage for only a short time so

are probably still analyzing it and formulating a response. Who knows though, maybe they will say little or nothing or lie about it.

As for satellite footage, I'm not sure that would reveal much other than it's origin and trajectory which is pretty much known anyhow.

[onenote]

8. Why do you think the government should share sensitive intelligence information with everyone?

Maybe Trump had it right -- nothing should be classified.

[LakeArenal]

9. I'm not saying they should tell us. I'm just saying there's so much we don't know.

So speculation helps nothing. But the government has those answers.

[Hekate]

19. There's photos here of a Navy crew in a very small boat hauling the deflated balloon aboard

No, I don’t have the link, but I saw it at DU this very day as is. And I’m sure there are multiple vessels out there handling SCUBA divers as well.

Looks like a well-planned operation.

[mobeau69]

2. So people would think it wasn't a spy balloon.

Not an expert but read a lot of Spy v. Spy in Mad magazine.

[Xavier Breath]

16. Yep, hiding in plain sight. n/t

[lordsummerisle]

3. Maybe heat is a factor

A dark color would absorb heat and white would reflect it...

[Disaffected]

5. Yeah, I though about that too.

However, it seems to me that absorbing heat might be an advantage as it would expand the gas in the balloon, increasing it's volume and therefore buoyancy (lift capability). OTOH, it would cool off at night and the extra lift would be lost. So, maybe white is better as it would serve to maintain a more consistent pressure/volume in the balloon(??). I dunno, maybe something transparent would serve both purposes (hard to see and more consistent temperature.

Questions, questions - and few answers (so far).

[FakeNoose]

4. That's a very wise question, since it's obvious the Chinese knew what they were doing

They already have spy satellites in orbit, looking down on us all day and all night. (As we have satellites spying on them, and we did it first.) The purpose of that balloon was possibly to cause disruption in the social media and to give Faux Noise something to blame on Joe Biden. Maybe? I don't know.

It was never going to make it all the way across the continent, as the Chinese well knew. It had to be shot down. Why haven't the Repukes asked Chump why he let the other 3 balloons go unscathed?

[Disaffected]

7. It wouldn't be too surprising at all IMO

if they have such Machiavellian motives (both the Chinese and Repubs for that matter).

[Throck]

10. Actually I'm impressed.

Look at the low carbon footprint the balloon had.

[Pobeka]

11. Does anyone honestly believe anyone was fooling anyone at all?

We can detect a rocket launched from China.
We can detect airplanes much smaller moving faster than the speed of sound.

A piece of metal the size of 3 school buses floating in the sky was on our radar (figurateve and literal) long, long, long before we ever heard about it from mass media.

Chinese know our capabilities quite well, so there really was no point attempting to do anything other make it as cheap and functional as possible, whatever it was/is.

I would bet our sensors where trained on it, jamming it, and learning far more from it than it was from us, if in fact it was a spy device.

[Bootlace]

12. This balloon could steer and maneuver.

It had propellers. What ever we think we did to jam or blind it, didn't disable its maneuvering capabilities.

[Disaffected]

14. "It had propellers."

Where did that information come from?? About all that was visible from the images of the thing I have seen were a couple of large solar cell panels with a small capsule in the middle.

[Bootlace]

15. John Kirby

The national security council coordinator for strategic communications described the balloon as having propellers and a rudder.

[Disaffected]

22. OK, found the quote:

"One detail already known, Kirby said, is that the balloon was not merely drifting but had propellers and steering to give a measure of control, even as it was swept along in high altitude jet stream winds.

“It is true that this balloon had the ability to maneuver itself — to speed up, to slow down and to turn. So it had propellers, it had a rudder, if you will, to allow it to change direction,” he said. "

I'd like to know though how they concluded that as the images taken before it was shot down show AFAIK no sign of such hardware.

Maybe he thought it was a blimp.

[dalton99a]

24. The military probably sent up aircraft to inspect the balloon and take close-up photos

Easy job.

It was an F-22 that went up to 58,000 ft and shot it down.

[Disaffected]

25. Or maybe not.

Any propellers and rudder large enough to overcome the wind drag on the balloon itself would, it seems to me, to be large enough to show up on the images made public. All I can see in one of the better ones is two rather large solar panels mounted on either side of a relatively small payload capsule. Who knows??

[dalton99a]

27. Those photos were taken by random people on the ground.

From ABC News today:

Another official confirmed that the balloon was equipped with self-destruct explosives, but so far, no explosives have been found.

The same official confirms that U.S. U2 spy lines were used to photograph the payload area carrying the sensor equipment, adding that allowing the balloon to fly over the U.S. provided valuable information about how they operate.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/navy-releases-close-photos-chinese-surveillance-balloon-recovery/story?id=96950346

[Disaffected]

28. ??

That article doesn't provide any info to confirm the presence of props or rudder.

Look, I see no point in debating this further - lets just wait and see if actual evidence from examination of the wreckage or unreleased images shows up.

[ProfessorGAC]

29. Remember...

....that at 60,000 feet air density is about 1/12th of that at sea level.
So, any drag would be correspondingly reduced. It's also probably electric motors. So, nothing that large
That said, low density would suggest bigger rudder & props, unless they were OK with moving really slowly.

[Disaffected]

30. Yeah, I would think air density would not affect the situation all that much as,

you point out, lower density means less drag but larger props and rudder. But, large enough to be visible in available images, and, fast enough to provide meaningful course changes over long distances? Hopefully sufficient information will be released to settle the questions, the basic one being is it a spy balloon or not??

Here BTW is an interesting article on value of balloons in intelligence gathering:

"While it’s unclear what information the uncrewed airship gathered before the Pentagon shot it down Feb. 4, experts say balloons loitering at high altitudes can offer some advantages over satellites and drones — or could at least augment their intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities.

Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said one benefit of these balloons is their ability to hover closer to the ground than satellites, and they may be able to intercept communication or electronic signals that orbiting systems can’t."

https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2023/02/06/how-stratospheric-balloons-could-complement-space-based-intelligence/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=c4-overmatch

So, maybe it is a spy balloon after all.....

[ProfessorGAC]

31. We Used Them On The USSR

Even after the U2 & SR-71. Obviously they became less useful in the satellite age, but certainly not useless.

[mn9driver]

13. It's very unlikely that this was actually a "spy" balloon.

All of the imagery shows a gas envelope and an instrument package. Nothing else. The only “control” this thing had was the ability to go up and down somewhat by venting gas overboard or releasing gas into the envelope.

Although such a craft could be steered, sort of, by moving vertically into an air mass that was moving in the direction it wanted to go, it would not be precise, and would be limited by the direction and speed of the air it was moving through.

China has a few dozen low orbit satellites that pass over the U.S. every day. THEY are designed for spying. This thing is not.

[onenote]

18. So why did the Biden administration treat it as a surveillance device?

Are they lying? Are they incompetent? Why should we think you know more than they do?

[mn9driver]

21. I suspect that the administration knows just as much as I do about how balloons do and do not work.

Maybe more. But not a lot more.

I cannot say the same for the American Public or the Media.

Why are they treating it as a surveillance device?
-I don't know.

Are they lying?
-Maybe, maybe not.

Are they incompetent?
-Maybe, maybe not.

Why should you think I know more than they do?
Find your own high altitude balloon expert and ask them.

[Xolodno]

32. Saw this the other day....

[LAS14]

17. Winnie the Pooh faced exactly that dilemma.

Should he use a gray balloon, to look like a rain cloud? Or should he use a white balloon to look like a regular cloud. I think I've got that right, but can't remember how the bees figued in.

[Hekate]

20. The bees detected a bear at their doorstep, and Pooh detected that the bees were not fooled...

Meanwhile his arms got kind of stuck in the “up” position from hanging from a balloon.

Christopher Robin had to deploy his pop-gun to burst the balloon so Pooh could return to earth — and he fell into a gorse bush.

Silly old bear.

[LAS14]

23. Thank you so much! nt

[Disaffected]

26. Ah, that takes me back!

Winnie the Pooh was my favourite book when I was a small kid. Thanks!

[True Dough]

33. Here's an idea: